Much as I dislike Microsoft, I don't see why people who are downloading pirate copies can really complain when the pirate copy is full of scumware... if people are willing to break one law to crack the software, why do you think they won't break more to install scumware on your computer?
"Nobody is demanding from those users to click the movie, the email-address containing the phishing address or opening a funny picture from an email."
Right. Blame the users rather than the programmers or designers who put such a retarded security hole into a movie file format... anything that lets files access the web without user intervention is inevitably going to be exploited.
I remember the days when a movie file was... a movie file. What kind of idiot lets people access the web or, worse, run Javascript, from a bloody movie?
"So the jihadis zerg the airlines, and see who makes it through, and who doesn't"
Indeed, as has been pointed out numerous times, this kind of thing is far more onerous on the law-abiding than the terrorists, as so long as they can collect together a few dozen aspiring suicide bombers they can then see which ones _aren't_ given the gloved finger when they get on a plane. It only works if it's nearly 100% accurate at identifying potential terrorists so they can't find anyone who passes through.
Meanwhile, the one single most accurate identifying characteristic -- i.e. that all recent terrorist attacks of this kind have been committed by Muslims -- can't be used because it would be 'racist'. Far better to strip-search Italian grandmothers so we can pretend we're not 'discriminating'.
"I can envision a lot of people deciding they don't really wish to fly to the US anymore."
Welcome to several years ago: a heck of lot of people have already decided they don't want to visit America anymore.
I used to travel to America regularly before 9/11, but I've only been there twice since and both of those were short stops between planes when flying to and from Canada. Why go to a country that will treat me like crap at immigration, then potentially kidnap me and ship me to Cuba if some computer tells them I might be a terrist?
"It's a waste of time to send massive military invading forces into another country if they aren't allowed to actually wage war."
Blah, blah, blah, if only we'd nuked North Vietnam, we'd have won the war, blah, blah, blah.
How exactly would flattening a city in Iraq help? You're going to convince the Iraqis to love you by killing them and their relatives?
Is it really that hard to see that you can't win a fight against locals with AK-47s, RPGs and remotely-controlled bombs with F-16s? Ok, maybe you kill a handful of them, but then all their relatives have a blood-feud against you, and you kill a dozen innocent bystanders with the same bomb, which means that all _their_ relatives now have a blood-feud against you. The only way to 'win' a war when killing one of the guys on the other side turns a dozen more against you is to kill everyone in the country.
"Except, this is not, what Iraqis are doing. They are killing each other instead."
Yes, which is what they've wanted to do for decades. Are you claiming that this is somehow proof that Americans control Iraq? Because the Iraqis can happily kill each other at will?
"Meaningless sound-bite."
No, for sound-bites I prefer "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them."
That's from Martin van Creveld. Oh, but you probably don't even know who he is, do you?
"Somehow, I don't see any victory parades... Nor any territory held by them."
Insurgents don't win by 'holding territory', they win by forcing invaders to cower in their 'Green Zone' because they're too scared to come out and play, until they finally decide it would be a good idea to leave.
The whole problem in Iraq is that America thought they could win a 21st century war with 20th century tactics.
"I think occupations can create democracies, by holding a diverse group of people together long enough to develop a common identity."
We can't even 'create a common identity' in Northern Ireland, which Britain has occupied for centuries.
"It was done by some European powers, take India for example."
You mean the India we had to split up into two different countries when we pulled out, where perhaps a million or more people died in the violence before it stabilised (so many that no-one has accurate figures), and where the parts we created are now pointing nuclear missiles at each other?
Or were you talking about a different India that I wasn't previously aware of?
More to the point, most of the world _wants_ America to fail so they can rub your nose in it; they'd laugh at any suggestion that they should send their soldiers in to die in order clear up your mess.
In any case, the only way the mess is likely to be cleared up is by imposing another Saddam Hussein-like dictator on the country, making a mockery of Bush's 'freedom and democracy' crap; either way he ends up a laughing stock.
"..before we remove a significant fraction of the soldiers from Iraq, we will plan and implement a self-standing, well trained Iraqi police/armed force.."
Why would Iraqis want to fight for Americans against their own people? If you want them to get serious about running their own country, there's only one way to do so: tell them you're leaving in a few months and then they're on their own.
"It will also destroy what little credibility the US has left."
Bush has already destroyed most of America's credibility, and attempting to continue an occupation that's already lost will only destroy the rest. If you wanted to maintain some credibility in the world, you shouldn't have invaded a third-rate country that posed no threat to you, but did have a population who'd be eager to fight against an invader for as long as it took to kick them out.
So yes, American 'military power' will be a joke after you've been tossed out of both Iraq and Afghanistan by locals with AK-47s, but so what?
"Even if our cameras are watching us, at least there's no Patriot Act here... yet."
The British government don't need it, because we don't have a constitution to protect us. That's why they can force ID cards on a public who don't want them and lock people up without charge.
Quite frankly I think it's absurd to see the British people sit back and watch TV while the government remove ancient protections against government abuse that our ancestors fought and died for. But hey, I no longer care, I'm getting out of here before Britain becomes a total-control, total-surveillance police state; when those who chose not to emigrate along with the 'paranoid' start complaining about the restrictions on their lives, I'll remind them that 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.'
The funny thing is, I strongly suspect that it's far more likely that these powers will be left in the hands of a neo-Nazi party like the BNP rather than a neo-communist party like Labour; Labour have done so much to screw the country up that support for extremists is growing rapidly.
Not to mention that many of the fans will boycott a Hobbit movie that isn't made with Jackson's blessing, even if he isn't directing it. I don't see how it makes any sense for New Line to make a movie without him.
"I want the cowboy astronauts back. The boys that few Apollo 13 and duct-taped their space craft together and rode it home."
Or maybe not. The Apollo Guidance Computer software had at least one serious issue in flight: the early versions allowed you to run the launch setup program in space and that would reinitialise the Inertial Measurement Unit so it forgot where you were. I believe someone did that by mistake on Apollo 8, fortunately NASA were able to send them the data to load into the computer to tell it where they were and the mission continued without a problem. Later versions had a 'we're in space, don't run program 01' flag to ensure it didn't happen again.
I read an article a while back by a guy who was a motoring reviewer in the 60s and 70s. He talked about the time he had a new car on loan for review shortly before it was due to be sold to the public, and the brake pedal came off on the approach to a sharp bend at 140mph...
Apparently he didn't mention it in the review because the manufacturer told them they'd fix the bug before they shipped. Obviously they had a lot of faith in those days.
The 'man-rated' Saturn V was still coming close to a destructive breakup due to engine problems as late as Apollo 13. 'Man-rating' basically seems to be the NASA equivalent of 'NIH'... if they designed it it's 'man-rated', if someone else designed it, it's not.
Windows will eat your bookmarks if you get a blue screen or spontaneous reboot while running Firefox, if they're on a FAT32 partition. It sometimes eats them on NTFS.
This bug has been around for years, I don't know why something that serious hasn't been fixed yet (well, I'm assuming it hasn't been fixed, I haven't been hit by it since I switched from FAT32 to NTFS). I'm hoping they might have fixed the 'switch to a random font size' bug that has become really annoying lately.
"Years ago, before there were any, I was approached to develop a live online poker site. I declined, saying it will never work because you can't stop people from cheating."
I've read at least one plausible-sounding verifiable online poker system in the last few years: it may have been in one of Bruce Schneier's books. I seem to remember it involved letting each player 'shuffle' the deck and hand out cryptographic hashes of their 'shuffle' so the other players could reproduce the starting deck afterwards and verify the game went as it should.
However, I'm not sure how you could prevent collusion between the dealer and one of the players unless you set up the system so that no-one could know what the next cards would be until the player decided whether to take them or not. Otherwise they could at least tell the player what the next cards were so they'd know whether they'd be a better hand than they had before.
"It's established beyond doubt that it does do this - there's no belief required."
Except that 'global warming' has so many meanings to different people that it's pretty much impossible to make any objective statement using the term. It's almost certain that increased CO2 is warming the planet to some extent, so to people who use the term to mean 'the planet is warming because of CO2 emissions', then you're right. But to those who use the term to mean 'oh my God! The sky is falling! We're all going to die if we don't give control of global industry to the commies^H^H^H^H^H^Hgreenies!', that's only a belief (and a false one at that).
Great idea! And we should make it illegal to own a telephone without a license so people can't make crank calls!
A far better solution is to fix the operating system so it's much harder for idiots to screw it up. Not requiring root access to do anything useful on a Windows box would be a good start: OK, so Joe Sixpack would still download his 'nude Jessica Alba screensaver bot', but at least it would be easier to clean up afterwards.
"Besides gaining knowledge on a subject most people go to College & University to set themselves aside from the pack, to make themselves look more attractive to employers."
But almost everyone has a degree these days, so if you want to 'set yourself aside from the pack', you shouldn't be wasting your time at university.
"If they wanted to send more men to either warzone they could, but it would look bad in an election year."
Only by starting a draft, and it would take months to get 300lb teenagers out of their parents' basement and into a state where they're ready to charge screaming across the DMZ into North Korea.
Maybe you should read some of the things the US military has been saying about its own readiness after years of occupying Iraq. The troops are worn down, the equipment is worn down and recruitment standards have hit rock bottom as no sane person wants to join up to be sent to some godforsaken country to get their balls blown off for Bush.
"Should N. Korea hit the fan, not only will you have your own troops ready, you'll have the rest of Nato at your side."
NATO in North Korea? LOL.
That's the funniest thing I've read in quite a while... yeah, Europeans will be just queueing up to send their troops to die in Korea so Bush can gain a few percent in the polls. Not.
Slashdot Mirror
"an anarchic methodology that assumes a consensus of anonymity can product accuracy"
I find it hardly surprising that the people who complain most about Wikipedia know so little about it.
Much as I dislike Microsoft, I don't see why people who are downloading pirate copies can really complain when the pirate copy is full of scumware... if people are willing to break one law to crack the software, why do you think they won't break more to install scumware on your computer?
"Nobody is demanding from those users to click the movie, the email-address containing the phishing address or opening a funny picture from an email."
Right. Blame the users rather than the programmers or designers who put such a retarded security hole into a movie file format... anything that lets files access the web without user intervention is inevitably going to be exploited.
I remember the days when a movie file was... a movie file. What kind of idiot lets people access the web or, worse, run Javascript, from a bloody movie?
"Like window seats? TERRORISM!"
No, it's more complicated than that.
If you like window seats, it's because you're planning to blow yourself up and blow a hole in the side of the plane, so you're a terrorist.
If you like aisle seats, it's because you're planning to hijack the plane, so you're a terrorist.
If you like any other kind of seats you're obviously mentally unbalanced, so you're a terrorist.
"So the jihadis zerg the airlines, and see who makes it through, and who doesn't"
Indeed, as has been pointed out numerous times, this kind of thing is far more onerous on the law-abiding than the terrorists, as so long as they can collect together a few dozen aspiring suicide bombers they can then see which ones _aren't_ given the gloved finger when they get on a plane. It only works if it's nearly 100% accurate at identifying potential terrorists so they can't find anyone who passes through.
Meanwhile, the one single most accurate identifying characteristic -- i.e. that all recent terrorist attacks of this kind have been committed by Muslims -- can't be used because it would be 'racist'. Far better to strip-search Italian grandmothers so we can pretend we're not 'discriminating'.
"I can envision a lot of people deciding they don't really wish to fly to the US anymore."
Welcome to several years ago: a heck of lot of people have already decided they don't want to visit America anymore.
I used to travel to America regularly before 9/11, but I've only been there twice since and both of those were short stops between planes when flying to and from Canada. Why go to a country that will treat me like crap at immigration, then potentially kidnap me and ship me to Cuba if some computer tells them I might be a terrist?
"It's a waste of time to send massive military invading forces into another country if they aren't allowed to actually wage war."
Blah, blah, blah, if only we'd nuked North Vietnam, we'd have won the war, blah, blah, blah.
How exactly would flattening a city in Iraq help? You're going to convince the Iraqis to love you by killing them and their relatives?
Is it really that hard to see that you can't win a fight against locals with AK-47s, RPGs and remotely-controlled bombs with F-16s? Ok, maybe you kill a handful of them, but then all their relatives have a blood-feud against you, and you kill a dozen innocent bystanders with the same bomb, which means that all _their_ relatives now have a blood-feud against you. The only way to 'win' a war when killing one of the guys on the other side turns a dozen more against you is to kill everyone in the country.
"Except, this is not, what Iraqis are doing. They are killing each other instead."
Yes, which is what they've wanted to do for decades. Are you claiming that this is somehow proof that Americans control Iraq? Because the Iraqis can happily kill each other at will?
"Meaningless sound-bite."
No, for sound-bites I prefer "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them."
That's from Martin van Creveld. Oh, but you probably don't even know who he is, do you?
"Somehow, I don't see any victory parades... Nor any territory held by them."
Insurgents don't win by 'holding territory', they win by forcing invaders to cower in their 'Green Zone' because they're too scared to come out and play, until they finally decide it would be a good idea to leave.
The whole problem in Iraq is that America thought they could win a 21st century war with 20th century tactics.
"I think occupations can create democracies, by holding a diverse group of people together long enough to develop a common identity."
We can't even 'create a common identity' in Northern Ireland, which Britain has occupied for centuries.
"It was done by some European powers, take India for example."
You mean the India we had to split up into two different countries when we pulled out, where perhaps a million or more people died in the violence before it stabilised (so many that no-one has accurate figures), and where the parts we created are now pointing nuclear missiles at each other?
Or were you talking about a different India that I wasn't previously aware of?
More to the point, most of the world _wants_ America to fail so they can rub your nose in it; they'd laugh at any suggestion that they should send their soldiers in to die in order clear up your mess.
In any case, the only way the mess is likely to be cleared up is by imposing another Saddam Hussein-like dictator on the country, making a mockery of Bush's 'freedom and democracy' crap; either way he ends up a laughing stock.
"..before we remove a significant fraction of the soldiers from Iraq, we will plan and implement a self-standing, well trained Iraqi police/armed force.."
Why would Iraqis want to fight for Americans against their own people? If you want them to get serious about running their own country, there's only one way to do so: tell them you're leaving in a few months and then they're on their own.
"It will also destroy what little credibility the US has left."
Bush has already destroyed most of America's credibility, and attempting to continue an occupation that's already lost will only destroy the rest. If you wanted to maintain some credibility in the world, you shouldn't have invaded a third-rate country that posed no threat to you, but did have a population who'd be eager to fight against an invader for as long as it took to kick them out.
So yes, American 'military power' will be a joke after you've been tossed out of both Iraq and Afghanistan by locals with AK-47s, but so what?
"Even if our cameras are watching us, at least there's no Patriot Act here ... yet."
The British government don't need it, because we don't have a constitution to protect us. That's why they can force ID cards on a public who don't want them and lock people up without charge.
Quite frankly I think it's absurd to see the British people sit back and watch TV while the government remove ancient protections against government abuse that our ancestors fought and died for. But hey, I no longer care, I'm getting out of here before Britain becomes a total-control, total-surveillance police state; when those who chose not to emigrate along with the 'paranoid' start complaining about the restrictions on their lives, I'll remind them that 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.'
The funny thing is, I strongly suspect that it's far more likely that these powers will be left in the hands of a neo-Nazi party like the BNP rather than a neo-communist party like Labour; Labour have done so much to screw the country up that support for extremists is growing rapidly.
Not to mention that many of the fans will boycott a Hobbit movie that isn't made with Jackson's blessing, even if he isn't directing it. I don't see how it makes any sense for New Line to make a movie without him.
Hint: the reason it's called '1080i' is because there are 1080 lines, not 576, and they're interlaced.
"I want the cowboy astronauts back. The boys that few Apollo 13 and duct-taped their space craft together and rode it home."
Or maybe not. The Apollo Guidance Computer software had at least one serious issue in flight: the early versions allowed you to run the launch setup program in space and that would reinitialise the Inertial Measurement Unit so it forgot where you were. I believe someone did that by mistake on Apollo 8, fortunately NASA were able to send them the data to load into the computer to tell it where they were and the mission continued without a problem. Later versions had a 'we're in space, don't run program 01' flag to ensure it didn't happen again.
I read an article a while back by a guy who was a motoring reviewer in the 60s and 70s. He talked about the time he had a new car on loan for review shortly before it was due to be sold to the public, and the brake pedal came off on the approach to a sharp bend at 140mph...
Apparently he didn't mention it in the review because the manufacturer told them they'd fix the bug before they shipped. Obviously they had a lot of faith in those days.
The 'man-rated' Saturn V was still coming close to a destructive breakup due to engine problems as late as Apollo 13. 'Man-rating' basically seems to be the NASA equivalent of 'NIH'... if they designed it it's 'man-rated', if someone else designed it, it's not.
Windows will eat your bookmarks if you get a blue screen or spontaneous reboot while running Firefox, if they're on a FAT32 partition. It sometimes eats them on NTFS.
This bug has been around for years, I don't know why something that serious hasn't been fixed yet (well, I'm assuming it hasn't been fixed, I haven't been hit by it since I switched from FAT32 to NTFS). I'm hoping they might have fixed the 'switch to a random font size' bug that has become really annoying lately.
"Years ago, before there were any, I was approached to develop a live online poker site. I declined, saying it will never work because you can't stop people from cheating."
I've read at least one plausible-sounding verifiable online poker system in the last few years: it may have been in one of Bruce Schneier's books. I seem to remember it involved letting each player 'shuffle' the deck and hand out cryptographic hashes of their 'shuffle' so the other players could reproduce the starting deck afterwards and verify the game went as it should.
However, I'm not sure how you could prevent collusion between the dealer and one of the players unless you set up the system so that no-one could know what the next cards would be until the player decided whether to take them or not. Otherwise they could at least tell the player what the next cards were so they'd know whether they'd be a better hand than they had before.
"It's established beyond doubt that it does do this - there's no belief required."
Except that 'global warming' has so many meanings to different people that it's pretty much impossible to make any objective statement using the term. It's almost certain that increased CO2 is warming the planet to some extent, so to people who use the term to mean 'the planet is warming because of CO2 emissions', then you're right. But to those who use the term to mean 'oh my God! The sky is falling! We're all going to die if we don't give control of global industry to the commies^H^H^H^H^H^Hgreenies!', that's only a belief (and a false one at that).
Great idea! And we should make it illegal to own a telephone without a license so people can't make crank calls!
A far better solution is to fix the operating system so it's much harder for idiots to screw it up. Not requiring root access to do anything useful on a Windows box would be a good start: OK, so Joe Sixpack would still download his 'nude Jessica Alba screensaver bot', but at least it would be easier to clean up afterwards.
"Besides gaining knowledge on a subject most people go to College & University to set themselves aside from the pack, to make themselves look more attractive to employers."
But almost everyone has a degree these days, so if you want to 'set yourself aside from the pack', you shouldn't be wasting your time at university.
"If they wanted to send more men to either warzone they could, but it would look bad in an election year."
Only by starting a draft, and it would take months to get 300lb teenagers out of their parents' basement and into a state where they're ready to charge screaming across the DMZ into North Korea.
Maybe you should read some of the things the US military has been saying about its own readiness after years of occupying Iraq. The troops are worn down, the equipment is worn down and recruitment standards have hit rock bottom as no sane person wants to join up to be sent to some godforsaken country to get their balls blown off for Bush.
"Should N. Korea hit the fan, not only will you have your own troops ready, you'll have the rest of Nato at your side."
NATO in North Korea? LOL.
That's the funniest thing I've read in quite a while... yeah, Europeans will be just queueing up to send their troops to die in Korea so Bush can gain a few percent in the polls. Not.