Sales didn't pick up, and they studied the problem, noting that the group mentality in Asia is quite different from the West, where everyone is individualist. So the new campaign went with the idea of "Get our phone - just like everybody else". And the results were much better...
This potrayal of herd-mind (or hive-mind?) Asians on Slashdot has got to be the next big Slashdot meme. While it is true that Asians have historically more community minded that the West, community minded != groupthink. Indeed, given that personalizable phones (ones with removable faceplates, places to attach photos etc) do quite well in India and Singapore, two markets I'm familiar with.
I'd really like to see one of these "get our phone - just like everybody else" ads.
Re:The Unofficial Back Doors into Vista
on
No Backdoor in Vista
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd even be willing to bet that the new RSS feed being built into the OS at a low level will provide lots of ways into the Bitlocker.
*rolls on the floor, laughing and scaring the cat*
Jeez, thanks for a good laugh on a Saturday morning. This really ought to be nominated for a Slashdot stupidity hall of fame award.
> I wouldn't mind something like CNR (click-n-run) being available.
I'm sure click-n-run works for you, but the notion of using a free (and Free) Operating System and then paying $20 a year to _install software_ sounds hilarious to me.
Anyone can write an OS. Only a few can turn an OS into something used by more than a small niche -- as Microsoft did with Windows and Linus did with Linux. OSX is still not there, which is why it remains stuck with single digit marketshare, but turning to Unix from MacOS has certainly helped -- lots more apps are easier to port.
The last thing the market needs is each hardware maker pushing its own OS. A hypothetical Sony PC OS would be a joint fourth after Windows, Linux and OSX. OSX already has a huge mindshare problem (in the real world, not the/. mirror world where $99 Apple Leather iPod cases are drooled over).
Sony'd have to make a OSX-level slick version of Linux before the world took any notice. And GPL it too so it'd run on non-Sony hardware.
> I have to deal with two incompetent Indians on a daily basis... if India is anything like the people I am forced to suffer through on a daily basis you should get tons of suckers
Wow. You extrapolated that from a sample size of 2 (out of an Indian population of 1 billion?) ? Can we nominate you for the Slashdot's Stupidity Hall of Fame?
Apps (and documents) downloaded off the network are flagged in XPSP2 and some restrictions do apply on them, but there's no sandbox. I saw network-flagged items get flagged and sandboxed by default in Vista, but that was in an early build and I'm not sure what the current behavior is.
> Microsoft is not serious about security otherwise they wouldn't sell it as an addon package.
It's all fun to say "OMG they're so lame they need OneCare to secure the OS!" but it makes a lot of sense:
a) Despite Vista there's going to be a huge base of un-upgraded Windows PCs to secure (assuming it's available for prior versions of Windows, which I believe it is)
b) Even with a putative very secure OS, let's not kid ourselves. These OSes are not used by experts (and even experts make security errors). OneCare as part of a defense-in-depth strategy is definitely praiseworthy.
I like how Vista runs *usefully* as a least privileged user by default, asking for the password only when necessary (to be fair, most Linux GUIs and OSX have gotten this right).
I like how it virtualizes access to \WINDOWS and \Program Files so that legacy apps that expect to write there do, but are really writing in a 'jail'. I like how IE7 runs in its own jail, has most ActiveX controls disabled (the useful ones having been reimplemented as native objects), is unable to write to the filesystem by default. Now add a two-way firewall (which really should have been part of XPSP2, but hey) and MS Antispyware^W^W Windows Defender, and you have a pretty strong base. Add OneCare which adds antivirus and remote maintenance and troubleshooting and you have a pretty good service to keep users safe.
It's a matter of opinion whether antivirus software should be free, but given that a bundled antivirus would kill the antivirus industry and that the industry benefits from having lots of antivirus researchers out there, I believe charging for antivirus is not unfair -- after all bad guys can do bad things to your car, your computer or your home, and you pay for home and auto theft insurance -- so why not pay for antivirus if you believe you're at risk? (and no, I don't work in the antivirus biz:-))
So yeah, OneCare does not imply not being serious about security, rather to me it implies the opposite.
>> As for *this* Mac OSX is the greatest ever > What's wrong with that? You buy a car this year, next years model is better, no?
Security (and reliability, and other features) been improving with every Microsoft operating system too. Of course when Apple does it the automobile excuses come out, whereas when Microsoft rightly points out that its operating systems are improving too, idiot Slashbots post ridiculous, karma-whoring logs of their previous marketing campaigns, which are totally meaningless to the discussion at hand, and what's more fools (especially Apple fanboy types) fall for it.
The point is that 2000 (and XP) was an improvement simply by virtue of supporting modern hardware. And NT4 was 'in the wild' when USB became popular-- but NT4's USB support remained iffy.
> People are very positive, there are a lot of new ideas, new startups
Yeah, but how many of them are Web 2.0 shops that aim to reimplement everything from photo sharing to to-do lists, but with tags and social networks?:-)
> BS because they wouldn't bundle WMP or IE if they were serious.
Spare me your schoolboy sanctimoniousness.
Not bundling iexplore or wmplayer is a legal issue with very little technical bearing on security. These apps front a large set of libraries that are open for 3rd parties to use (and 3rd parties do use them! -- AOL/Netscape/thousands others for the browser libs; Napster/Yahoo/AOL/thousands others for the media libs).
Not bundling these is to leave OEMs who depend on Windows delivering libraries for media playing and internet browsing in the lurch (the EU-special XP N contains the libraries, only wmplayer.exe isn't there). It also leaves customers looking for browsing and media support in the lurch, which is why XP N has been such a huge hit. Not.
The right way to do security is to fix it. And an auto-updated, firewalled XPSP2 machine is pretty damn secure. (And its mail client and IM blocks EXEs and many other attachments by default, and the browser stops drive-by downloads and random ActiveX installation -- the biggest malware infection paths) Now, with Vista and its least-privileged-user feature, they're shooting for securing systems run by the sort of user who go out of their way to download random CuteKitties.exe screensavers.
> Apple doesn't keep saying the same thing.
No, they just keep saying *this* Mac OSX is the greatest ever -- right upto the moment they release the next one. The folks who ponied up good money for Jaguar must have been ecstatic to see the bugfix count in Panther -- some of which were bandied about as features. Oh but wait, they were blissfully in the Reality Distortion Field, weren't they.
NT 3.51 was stable because it did so much less. Ever tried getting decent USB support on 3.51 (or 4)? Tried getting good instant-on from standby and hibernate? Tried gaming on it?
NT->2000 was huge and 2000->XP wasn't that big a leap (That said 2000->XPSP2 was quite good, a well-installed XPSP2 on a modern internet-connected system is far more secure than a 2000 system). But XP did bring a _lot_ of value to consumers and businesses upgrading from 9x/ME->XP (and there were a LOT of them). As a developer, I'd say XP was worth it to put the final nail into the coffin of 9x.
Yeah, because lord knows Apple has never had cause to ($deity forbid) _improve_ their operating system. All of you who remember the first release of OSX, raise your hands.
You linked to the WMI Classes. WMI classes are used to instantiate 'manageable' objects in a Windows system to make system administration and automation easy. When people say 'Win32' in a development context without qualification, they usually mean the Platform SDK, which is (last I checked) definitely _not_ OO.
Bringing WMI into a discussion of Qt vs RoR vs.NET makes very little sense.
Win32's successor (WinFX) has large parts of managed code, though and hence is partly OO.
> The Mideast, was where many technologies, like writing, urban living, astronomy and symbolic math were invented or mastered.
You scored one out of 3, and even that is doubtful -- Mesopotamia is where the earliest structures have been found. However recent work in China and India show significant remains, all around the same time period. Of course, since these countries are a lot more crowded and didn't have significant desertification (which acts as a archelogical preservative), digs there are never as pristine as the Middle East.
> writing China is widely credited with inventing both paper and writing. As for mastering-- given their skill at calligraphy, I'd say they had pretty much mastered it.
> symbolic math I'm surprised a slashdotter doesn't know where 'Arabic' numbers and zero came from. The Hindus had mastered numbers long and were writing complex mathematical texts long before Arabs even heard about 'em.
And if blowing people up is a source of pride for you, I'm sure that you can find gainful employment somewhere like pakistan, along the border there.
I was being sarcastic there-- guess it didn't carry through.
The IRA could have dropped half the politicians in the UK if it took their fancy.
Yeah, but were they unhinged enough to go about sawing John Bull from Swindon's head off? My point was, anyone looking at the IRA earlier and radical Muslims today would think the IRA were much more decent. Which just goes to show you what a fucked-up world we live in -- we have to deal with a 10x worse enemy with 10x the amount of political correctness. Bah.
It was clear to me that the GP was suggesting negotiation, not with the most extreme nutters (such as Osama), but rather with more moderate (or less extreme) people who represent the views of the very much larger group of people in the support network.
The moderate imams -- and indeed anyone favoring a moderate position -- have little credibility and impact on Islamic radicals and young people with Al Qaeda sympathies. After 7/7 in the UK many denunciations from appalled imams were brushed off as 'preachings from rent-an-imams'.
And oh, shall we drill into these so-called moderates a little more? Shall we ask them what they think of the permissive attitude to homosexuality in the West? our fondness for dogs and pigs? the right of our women to not wear the hijab? Check out this dude called Sir Iqbal Sacranie, apparently one of the faces of British Muslims, and what he thinks about homosexuality ('not accceptable') and Salman Rushdie ('death would be too easy for him'). With leaders like these, why aren't we surprised the fringe elements are much worse?
The problem is what passes for moderation in Islam would be beyond what Jerry Falwell and his pathetic ilk can manage. It's just that most of the Islamic teachings stay below the media radar, which is merciful because otherwise we'd have lynchmobs in the streets.
It's not a question of negotiating with Osama or not. The problem is that there's no one -- no Islamic pope, no respected King -- to turn to, no one with any stature in the Islamic world who can bring these people out of the 7th century and into the 21st.
Jesus H. Christ, here comes one of the graduates of the West Coast school of multiculturalism (the one which believes you can call yourself a 'good' multicultural while knowning nothing about other cultures/religions so long as you keep saying good things about it).
> The proscription against images of the prophet is one of the fundamental tenets of islamic religion.
It is not. The basic five tenets of Islam are: the profession of faith in Allah, regular prayer (5 times a day), fasting (at the prescribed times), paying alms to charity and the Hajj to Mecca. Everything else is gravy. Not depicting Mohammed is mentioned in a Hadith, but there are lots of Hadiths and not all of them are followed. And non-Arab Muslim cultures have traditionally ignored these hadiths, hence you get Turkish, Persian and Indian Mughal miniatures depicting Mohammed all the time.
Here's a hint: next time someone tells you cows are holy to Hindus, take that with a pinch of salt. That too is established practice (and one piously obeyed by 99.9% of all Hindus) but not a central tenet of Hinduism (which, incidentally, is "There are many paths to the truth, none more valid than the other."). And you don't see Hindus torching steakhouses in the US and Europe, do you?
> Or have you forgotten the great public outrage in the USA over The Last Temptation of Christ"?
Another fine characteristic of the multi-culti brigade. Moral relativism. Yeah, Outrage. Outrage as in, lots of demonstrations (at which no embassies were burnt (bar a molotov bombing in (of all places) Paris)) and fiery sermons. No artists were threatened with death. (Willem Dafoe still has a good career going.) Obviously to you that's the same thing as what Salman Rushdie and now these poor Danish cartoonists were put through -- state sponsored death threats and media manipulation. (People don't have the freedom to gather peacefully in the Mid-East, and yet suddenly the cartoons inspire them to burn embassies? Hah! If you really believe these demonstrations were not government encouraged, you're a tool.)
> So hold off on casting that first stone
I'm not interested in casting stones. I am interested in collecting evidence based on which future action can be decided. And the evidence is increasingly pointing to the fact that we have dangerous tinpot governments in a volatile part of the world, feeding their citizens propaganda and claiming it's the 'Arab Street' at work.
I don't care about military actions we may or may not pursue against the Mid-East. What is clear is that we cannot export our liberal (and that is not a dirty word, despite what the GOP says) and secular values directly to the people in the Mid-East, we'll be in deep shit one day.
> However ignoring demands and dealy harshly with the IRA would seem to contradict what you are saying here.
Talks with the IRA were a lot more effective because of the sustained campaign. Bad cop/Good cop works, but you've got to do the Bad Cop routine first otherwise the Good Cop finds out nothing.
Also, the tactics Islamic terrorists use make the IRA (who routeinely warned the police to evacuate before the bomb went off) look like newborn kittens. Sorry to bust your Irish pride.
And the other problem is that the IRA had a clear goal governments could comprehend: Give Northern Ireland back! Compare this to Osama's original demands:
- get out of $occupied_territory (Jerusalem, Gaza strip, Chechnya, Kashmir, Andalucia (in Spain!)) - let Muslims everywhere live under the Shariat (there goes equality under law) - no contact with the Middle East anymore (so they can grow beards and marry as many women as they like) - a couple of others I forget
It's one thing to negotiate legitimate demands and another to humor a bunch of megalomaniacs with a death-cultish belief in virgins in paradise. Sorry, but I'm not willing to play along with their historical fantasies, let them isolate themselves and arm themselves to the teeth and then nuke us all one day.
> It is immoral to say "I don't like the conditions they're selling it under, so I'm going to violate them."
No it's not. Sometimes the rules must be violated for progress to happen. Everyone from Martin Luther to George Washington to Gandhi to MLK violated the rules at some time or the other. (of course the real question is, do you believe in your cause enough to risk your liberty (as all these other guys did) for what you believe in? Geeks do not have a good history of civil disobedience -- but I digress.)
In this particular case, running a copy of OSX _you own_ on your own PC is not immoral in any way. It indicates a DIY spirit that ought to be encouraged (cue all the political blather about how We Are Falling Behind In Technical Education, etc).
Distributing this cracked copy of OSX is (IMHO) wrong however-- unless you take the (again IMHO) extreme position that copying commercial software is a 'victimless crime', which frankly makes little sense.
Now, in an ideal world, you would be able to tell others how to run _their_ copies of OSX on their PCs. The DMCA can be an impediment to this (which is why I believe the DMCA is bad law) but it is not an insurmountable impediment, see Ed Felten's DeCSS gallery.
Great question. As I understand it, Blackberry-style 'push' is a proprietary way (on the client and server) of doing IMAP IDLE, and is less of a power drain (why?). Interestingly, apparently the Blackberry client can support IMAP IDLE if the server is configured correctly.
Would love some more details on this from someone who knows more about how exactly Blackberry-style Push works.
> Whoa! It's the "But Clinton..." defense that Republicans like to use when they are cornered.
I'm not invoking the Clinton defense. I'm saying his softball tactics were worse than useless, they exacerbated the problem. Comprende?
And supporting Bush != Supporting Republicans. As it happens, I'm an independent and am not particularly attached to Bush (though currently he's the best option I see). I think the mideast status quo is untenable because a lot of our problems with the 'arab street' is really the handiwork of tinpot rulers protecting their own turfs and holding us hostage to oil. I don't mind voting for anyone who has a realistic solution for solving this mess.
Of course, now that I've said this, I'll probably get attacked as a baby-mulching Republican shill. And then they wonder why middle-of-the-road voters get turned off Democrats... *shrug*.
If this happened here (Argentina), people would be REALLY alarmed (go and find out what happened during the military regimes in South America). Military regimes have started with less than what's happening in the US.
Yeah, we had a softie prez who got blowjobs in the Oval office and whose solution to every military problem was to lob softball Tomahawks at them. No thanks, I'll take a hardline stance from the prez anyday because that's what we need NOW.
And the US != Argentina. Much longer tradition of democratic rule, instead of a coup-riddled history. Stop projecting your insecurities on us.
It's difficult for a lot of people to grok (the same who were predicting utter defeat for Bush in the 2004 elections). Dubya doesn't care for being 'politically correct' (ironically this boosts his popularity with a lot of people who see him as an 'outsider president') but democracy is something he genuinely believes in-- and has even got into fights with agencies like the CIA because they felt maintaining the status quo would be 'cheaper'.
I disagree with a lot of Dubya's policies (most notably stem cells) but I'll be the first to say the status quo in the Middle East is untenable in an era of globetrotting radical mullahs. And this problem won't go away by appeasing or ignoring Muslims, it'll go away only when Muslim societies are free of their tinpot rulers.
Er, I'd still be a bit sceptical of this. Indian and Chinese urban agglomerations are pretty dense too but have low suicide rates (the suicide and attempted suicide counts have risen sharply in India over the last 10-15 years but are still quite low). So density could be a factor but it's probably not the only factor. I'd also look into what kind of family networks suicide victims had, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Sales didn't pick up, and they studied the problem, noting that the group mentality in Asia is quite different from the West, where everyone is individualist. So the new campaign went with the idea of "Get our phone - just like everybody else". And the results were much better...
This potrayal of herd-mind (or hive-mind?) Asians on Slashdot has got to be the next big Slashdot meme. While it is true that Asians have historically more community minded that the West, community minded != groupthink. Indeed, given that personalizable phones (ones with removable faceplates, places to attach photos etc) do quite well in India and Singapore, two markets I'm familiar with.
I'd really like to see one of these "get our phone - just like everybody else" ads.
I'd even be willing to bet that the new RSS feed being built into the OS at a low level will provide lots of ways into the Bitlocker.
*rolls on the floor, laughing and scaring the cat*
Jeez, thanks for a good laugh on a Saturday morning. This really ought to be nominated for a Slashdot stupidity hall of fame award.
> I wouldn't mind something like CNR (click-n-run) being available.
I'm sure click-n-run works for you, but the notion of using a free (and Free) Operating System and then paying $20 a year to _install software_ sounds hilarious to me.
Anyone can write an OS. Only a few can turn an OS into something used by more than a small niche -- as Microsoft did with Windows and Linus did with Linux. OSX is still not there, which is why it remains stuck with single digit marketshare, but turning to Unix from MacOS has certainly helped -- lots more apps are easier to port.
/. mirror world where $99 Apple Leather iPod cases are drooled over).
The last thing the market needs is each hardware maker pushing its own OS. A hypothetical Sony PC OS would be a joint fourth after Windows, Linux and OSX. OSX already has a huge mindshare problem (in the real world, not the
Sony'd have to make a OSX-level slick version of Linux before the world took any notice. And GPL it too so it'd run on non-Sony hardware.
> I have to deal with two incompetent Indians on a daily basis ... if India is anything like the people I am forced to suffer through on a daily basis you should get tons of suckers
Wow. You extrapolated that from a sample size of 2 (out of an Indian population of 1 billion?) ? Can we nominate you for the Slashdot's Stupidity Hall of Fame?
Apps (and documents) downloaded off the network are flagged in XPSP2 and some restrictions do apply on them, but there's no sandbox. I saw network-flagged items get flagged and sandboxed by default in Vista, but that was in an early build and I'm not sure what the current behavior is.
> Microsoft is not serious about security otherwise they wouldn't sell it as an addon package.
:-))
It's all fun to say "OMG they're so lame they need OneCare to secure the OS!" but it makes a lot of sense:
a) Despite Vista there's going to be a huge base of un-upgraded Windows PCs to secure (assuming it's available for prior versions of Windows, which I believe it is)
b) Even with a putative very secure OS, let's not kid ourselves. These OSes are not used by experts (and even experts make security errors). OneCare as part of a defense-in-depth strategy is definitely praiseworthy.
I like how Vista runs *usefully* as a least privileged user by default, asking for the password only when necessary (to be fair, most Linux GUIs and OSX have gotten this right).
I like how it virtualizes access to \WINDOWS and \Program Files so that legacy apps that expect to write there do, but are really writing in a 'jail'. I like how IE7 runs in its own jail, has most ActiveX controls disabled (the useful ones having been reimplemented as native objects), is unable to write to the filesystem by default. Now add a two-way firewall (which really should have been part of XPSP2, but hey) and MS Antispyware^W^W Windows Defender, and you have a pretty strong base. Add OneCare which adds antivirus and remote maintenance and troubleshooting and you have a pretty good service to keep users safe.
It's a matter of opinion whether antivirus software should be free, but given that a bundled antivirus would kill the antivirus industry and that the industry benefits from having lots of antivirus researchers out there, I believe charging for antivirus is not unfair -- after all bad guys can do bad things to your car, your computer or your home, and you pay for home and auto theft insurance -- so why not pay for antivirus if you believe you're at risk? (and no, I don't work in the antivirus biz
So yeah, OneCare does not imply not being serious about security, rather to me it implies the opposite.
>> As for *this* Mac OSX is the greatest ever
o m_Criticizing_Intel_Integrated_Graphics
> What's wrong with that? You buy a car this year, next years model is better, no?
Security (and reliability, and other features) been improving with every Microsoft operating system too. Of course when Apple does it the automobile excuses come out, whereas when Microsoft rightly points out that its operating systems are improving too, idiot Slashbots post ridiculous, karma-whoring logs of their previous marketing campaigns, which are totally meaningless to the discussion at hand, and what's more fools (especially Apple fanboy types) fall for it.
If you're so concerned about Truth-In-Marketing, maybe you should talk to the folk at Infinite Loop as well:
http://digg.com/apple/Internet_Archive_of_Apple.c
The point is that 2000 (and XP) was an improvement simply by virtue of supporting modern hardware. And NT4 was 'in the wild' when USB became popular-- but NT4's USB support remained iffy.
> People are very positive, there are a lot of new ideas, new startups
:-)
Yeah, but how many of them are Web 2.0 shops that aim to reimplement everything from photo sharing to to-do lists, but with tags and social networks?
I kid, I kid!
> BS because they wouldn't bundle WMP or IE if they were serious.
Spare me your schoolboy sanctimoniousness.
Not bundling iexplore or wmplayer is a legal issue with very little technical bearing on security. These apps front a large set of libraries that are open for 3rd parties to use (and 3rd parties do use them! -- AOL/Netscape/thousands others for the browser libs; Napster/Yahoo/AOL/thousands others for the media libs).
Not bundling these is to leave OEMs who depend on Windows delivering libraries for media playing and internet browsing in the lurch (the EU-special XP N contains the libraries, only wmplayer.exe isn't there). It also leaves customers looking for browsing and media support in the lurch, which is why XP N has been such a huge hit. Not.
The right way to do security is to fix it. And an auto-updated, firewalled XPSP2 machine is pretty damn secure. (And its mail client and IM blocks EXEs and many other attachments by default, and the browser stops drive-by downloads and random ActiveX installation -- the biggest malware infection paths) Now, with Vista and its least-privileged-user feature, they're shooting for securing systems run by the sort of user who go out of their way to download random CuteKitties.exe screensavers.
> Apple doesn't keep saying the same thing.
No, they just keep saying *this* Mac OSX is the greatest ever -- right upto the moment they release the next one. The folks who ponied up good money for Jaguar must have been ecstatic to see the bugfix count in Panther -- some of which were bandied about as features. Oh but wait, they were blissfully in the Reality Distortion Field, weren't they.
> Not all releases have been improvements
For your definition of 'improvement', of course.
NT 3.51 was stable because it did so much less. Ever tried getting decent USB support on 3.51 (or 4)? Tried getting good instant-on from standby and hibernate? Tried gaming on it?
NT->2000 was huge and 2000->XP wasn't that big a leap (That said 2000->XPSP2 was quite good, a well-installed XPSP2 on a modern internet-connected system is far more secure than a 2000 system). But XP did bring a _lot_ of value to consumers and businesses upgrading from 9x/ME->XP (and there were a LOT of them). As a developer, I'd say XP was worth it to put the final nail into the coffin of 9x.
Yeah, because lord knows Apple has never had cause to ($deity forbid) _improve_ their operating system. All of you who remember the first release of OSX, raise your hands.
You linked to the WMI Classes. WMI classes are used to instantiate 'manageable' objects in a Windows system to make system administration and automation easy. When people say 'Win32' in a development context without qualification, they usually mean the Platform SDK, which is (last I checked) definitely _not_ OO.
.NET makes very little sense.
Bringing WMI into a discussion of Qt vs RoR vs
Win32's successor (WinFX) has large parts of managed code, though and hence is partly OO.
> Win32 would be a good example of a framework where you get pretty good performance but very inflexible classes.
Nitpick: Win32 has classes?
> The Mideast, was where many technologies, like writing, urban living, astronomy and symbolic math were invented or mastered.
You scored one out of 3, and even that is doubtful -- Mesopotamia is where the earliest structures have been found. However recent work in China and India show significant remains, all around the same time period. Of course, since these countries are a lot more crowded and didn't have significant desertification (which acts as a archelogical preservative), digs there are never as pristine as the Middle East.
> writing
China is widely credited with inventing both paper and writing. As for mastering-- given their skill at calligraphy, I'd say they had pretty much mastered it.
> symbolic math
I'm surprised a slashdotter doesn't know where 'Arabic' numbers and zero came from. The Hindus had mastered numbers long and were writing complex mathematical texts long before Arabs even heard about 'em.
And if blowing people up is a source of pride for you, I'm sure that you can find gainful employment somewhere like pakistan, along the border there.
I was being sarcastic there-- guess it didn't carry through.
The IRA could have dropped half the politicians in the UK if it took their fancy.
Yeah, but were they unhinged enough to go about sawing John Bull from Swindon's head off? My point was, anyone looking at the IRA earlier and radical Muslims today would think the IRA were much more decent. Which just goes to show you what a fucked-up world we live in -- we have to deal with a 10x worse enemy with 10x the amount of political correctness. Bah.
It was clear to me that the GP was suggesting negotiation, not with the most extreme nutters (such as Osama), but rather with more moderate (or less extreme) people who represent the views of the very much larger group of people in the support network.
The moderate imams -- and indeed anyone favoring a moderate position -- have little credibility and impact on Islamic radicals and young people with Al Qaeda sympathies. After 7/7 in the UK many denunciations from appalled imams were brushed off as 'preachings from rent-an-imams'.
And oh, shall we drill into these so-called moderates a little more? Shall we ask them what they think of the permissive attitude to homosexuality in the West? our fondness for dogs and pigs? the right of our women to not wear the hijab? Check out this dude called Sir Iqbal Sacranie, apparently one of the faces of British Muslims, and what he thinks about homosexuality ('not accceptable') and Salman Rushdie ('death would be too easy for him'). With leaders like these, why aren't we surprised the fringe elements are much worse?
The problem is what passes for moderation in Islam would be beyond what Jerry Falwell and his pathetic ilk can manage. It's just that most of the Islamic teachings stay below the media radar, which is merciful because otherwise we'd have lynchmobs in the streets.
It's not a question of negotiating with Osama or not. The problem is that there's no one -- no Islamic pope, no respected King -- to turn to, no one with any stature in the Islamic world who can bring these people out of the 7th century and into the 21st.
Jesus H. Christ, here comes one of the graduates of the West Coast school of multiculturalism (the one which believes you can call yourself a 'good' multicultural while knowning nothing about other cultures/religions so long as you keep saying good things about it).
> The proscription against images of the prophet is one of the fundamental tenets of islamic religion.
It is not. The basic five tenets of Islam are: the profession of faith in Allah, regular prayer (5 times a day), fasting (at the prescribed times), paying alms to charity and the Hajj to Mecca. Everything else is gravy. Not depicting Mohammed is mentioned in a Hadith, but there are lots of Hadiths and not all of them are followed. And non-Arab Muslim cultures have traditionally ignored these hadiths, hence you get Turkish, Persian and Indian Mughal miniatures depicting Mohammed all the time.
Here's a hint: next time someone tells you cows are holy to Hindus, take that with a pinch of salt. That too is established practice (and one piously obeyed by 99.9% of all Hindus) but not a central tenet of Hinduism (which, incidentally, is "There are many paths to the truth, none more valid than the other."). And you don't see Hindus torching steakhouses in the US and Europe, do you?
> Or have you forgotten the great public outrage in the USA over The Last Temptation of Christ"?
Another fine characteristic of the multi-culti brigade. Moral relativism. Yeah, Outrage. Outrage as in, lots of demonstrations (at which no embassies were burnt (bar a molotov bombing in (of all places) Paris)) and fiery sermons. No artists were threatened with death. (Willem Dafoe still has a good career going.) Obviously to you that's the same thing as what Salman Rushdie and now these poor Danish cartoonists were put through -- state sponsored death threats and media manipulation. (People don't have the freedom to gather peacefully in the Mid-East, and yet suddenly the cartoons inspire them to burn embassies? Hah! If you really believe these demonstrations were not government encouraged, you're a tool.)
> So hold off on casting that first stone
I'm not interested in casting stones. I am interested in collecting evidence based on which future action can be decided. And the evidence is increasingly pointing to the fact that we have dangerous tinpot governments in a volatile part of the world, feeding their citizens propaganda and claiming it's the 'Arab Street' at work.
I don't care about military actions we may or may not pursue against the Mid-East. What is clear is that we cannot export our liberal (and that is not a dirty word, despite what the GOP says) and secular values directly to the people in the Mid-East, we'll be in deep shit one day.
> However ignoring demands and dealy harshly with the IRA would seem to contradict what you are saying here.
Talks with the IRA were a lot more effective because of the sustained campaign. Bad cop/Good cop works, but you've got to do the Bad Cop routine first otherwise the Good Cop finds out nothing.
Also, the tactics Islamic terrorists use make the IRA (who routeinely warned the police to evacuate before the bomb went off) look like newborn kittens. Sorry to bust your Irish pride.
And the other problem is that the IRA had a clear goal governments could comprehend: Give Northern Ireland back! Compare this to Osama's original demands:
- get out of $occupied_territory (Jerusalem, Gaza strip, Chechnya, Kashmir, Andalucia (in Spain!))
- let Muslims everywhere live under the Shariat (there goes equality under law)
- no contact with the Middle East anymore (so they can grow beards and marry as many women as they like)
- a couple of others I forget
It's one thing to negotiate legitimate demands and another to humor a bunch of megalomaniacs with a death-cultish belief in virgins in paradise. Sorry, but I'm not willing to play along with their historical fantasies, let them isolate themselves and arm themselves to the teeth and then nuke us all one day.
> It is immoral to say "I don't like the conditions they're selling it under, so I'm going to violate them."
No it's not. Sometimes the rules must be violated for progress to happen. Everyone from Martin Luther to George Washington to Gandhi to MLK violated the rules at some time or the other. (of course the real question is, do you believe in your cause enough to risk your liberty (as all these other guys did) for what you believe in? Geeks do not have a good history of civil disobedience -- but I digress.)
In this particular case, running a copy of OSX _you own_ on your own PC is not immoral in any way. It indicates a DIY spirit that ought to be encouraged (cue all the political blather about how We Are Falling Behind In Technical Education, etc).
Distributing this cracked copy of OSX is (IMHO) wrong however-- unless you take the (again IMHO) extreme position that copying commercial software is a 'victimless crime', which frankly makes little sense.
Now, in an ideal world, you would be able to tell others how to run _their_ copies of OSX on their PCs. The DMCA can be an impediment to this (which is why I believe the DMCA is bad law) but it is not an insurmountable impediment, see Ed Felten's DeCSS gallery.
> Why not use the IMAP4 IDLE command?
Great question. As I understand it, Blackberry-style 'push' is a proprietary way (on the client and server) of doing IMAP IDLE, and is less of a power drain (why?). Interestingly, apparently the Blackberry client can support IMAP IDLE if the server is configured correctly.
Would love some more details on this from someone who knows more about how exactly Blackberry-style Push works.
> Whoa! It's the "But Clinton..." defense that Republicans like to use when they are cornered.
I'm not invoking the Clinton defense. I'm saying his softball tactics were worse than useless, they exacerbated the problem. Comprende?
And supporting Bush != Supporting Republicans. As it happens, I'm an independent and am not particularly attached to Bush (though currently he's the best option I see). I think the mideast status quo is untenable because a lot of our problems with the 'arab street' is really the handiwork of tinpot rulers protecting their own turfs and holding us hostage to oil. I don't mind voting for anyone who has a realistic solution for solving this mess.
Of course, now that I've said this, I'll probably get attacked as a baby-mulching Republican shill. And then they wonder why middle-of-the-road voters get turned off Democrats... *shrug*.
If this happened here (Argentina), people would be REALLY alarmed (go and find out what happened during the military regimes in South America). Military regimes have started with less than what's happening in the US.
Yeah, we had a softie prez who got blowjobs in the Oval office and whose solution to every military problem was to lob softball Tomahawks at them. No thanks, I'll take a hardline stance from the prez anyday because that's what we need NOW.
And the US != Argentina. Much longer tradition of democratic rule, instead of a coup-riddled history. Stop projecting your insecurities on us.
It's difficult for a lot of people to grok (the same who were predicting utter defeat for Bush in the 2004 elections). Dubya doesn't care for being 'politically correct' (ironically this boosts his popularity with a lot of people who see him as an 'outsider president') but democracy is something he genuinely believes in-- and has even got into fights with agencies like the CIA because they felt maintaining the status quo would be 'cheaper'.
I disagree with a lot of Dubya's policies (most notably stem cells) but I'll be the first to say the status quo in the Middle East is untenable in an era of globetrotting radical mullahs. And this problem won't go away by appeasing or ignoring Muslims, it'll go away only when Muslim societies are free of their tinpot rulers.
Er, I'd still be a bit sceptical of this. Indian and Chinese urban agglomerations are pretty dense too but have low suicide rates (the suicide and attempted suicide counts have risen sharply in India over the last 10-15 years but are still quite low). So density could be a factor but it's probably not the only factor. I'd also look into what kind of family networks suicide victims had, etc.