Yea, the only difference is that in OSS the steps are usually covered in about a third the time.
This hit the kernel-list dated 2004-06-09 21:02:57 . It is now 2004-06-14 09:41:12 in my neck of the woods, and it is patched. The last update mentioned on the article's page is yesterday. It would appear the patch was available in no more than 4 days. It takes more than four days for a lot of vendors just to look at the goddamn report. Then they spend the next week hoping it goes away on it's own. Then they ignore the follow ups. Two months later when the submitter has had enough, they go to FULL DISCLOSURE and the vendor gets pissed off and starts attacking the person who reported it for not giving them enough time to write a patch they haven't even started on. Then they spend another month making lousy excuses for why it's not a serious issue and half assed suggestions of what you can turn off to avoid the problem. Finally, after about four months of hand wringing, press releases, and general bullshit, you might get a patch. If you're lucky, it won't require you to start the process over again by introducing a brand new vulnerability. If you're lucky.
There's a huge difference here. The Linux folks jumped up and solved the problem. They didn't sit around pissing on their hands for months and making excuses like a lot of vendors do.
No, you're apparently just talking out of your ass. Otherwise, you'd realize that it's well known that the Baltimore area is a crime-riddled shithole at the wrong time of the day. Now, unless I missed something, there haven't really been any reports of terrorists wandering the streets of Baltimore with impunity. Solution? Monitor for fucking terrorists? Huh?
In addition, DHS - this mystical, magical ministry that just appeared the fuck out of nowhere with little oversight and a broad purpose - appears, by all accounts, to be the steering committee for this. Seems to me that a department tasked with securing the "homeland" against enemy attack shouldn't be handling inner city crime problems, now should it? Seems to me that the local police force should be, shouldn't it?
Again - how you can think the government being allowed to monitor its own people, especially when they give no good godamn reason to do so, is beyond me. You make a snide, idiotic comment about 1984 in your signature (as if allusion is suddenly illegitimate for this single novel). Allow me to apply one in return: any fanatical, ignorant adherance to government power creep in the name of "protecting" people from shadows on the wall will be ignored. Give me one good, solid, practical reason why I should support this initiative that I can't counter with a better solution or call bullshit on. One. It's not my place to say why it shouldn't be done, it's the supporters' place to say why it should be. One.
I think it was mentioned ONCE that this could be used to deter crime. The overwhelming focus was on vague statements about "terrorism" and "terrorist attacks". The justification given when people raised privacy concerns was, I quote: "We're at war."
Given that the focus is clearly on terrorism by admission of the people running this, and these mystical terrorists that have struck TWICE on our soil in the last fucking DECADE, and the big attack involved a bunch of SUICIDE attackers who can't be prosecuted no matter how much fucking evidence you gather, could you please explain how this is a good idea?
How can you POSSIBLY think that government monitoring it's own people is a good idea? The implication here, intentional or otherwise, is that they think their own goddamn citizens are the fucking enemy. Did I miss something here?
The problem isn't one network in one city. The problem is that one established network in one city legitamizes the practice of putting up surveillance camera's everywhere. In logic, it's called a slippery slope to assume that one bad thing must lead to others. In the government, it's just the established business of power creep, nothing particularly special or new.
Remember that temporary income tax that wasn't ever supposed to be more than 5% or so? Well, fuck me.. 75 years later and my paycheck is missing more than 24% of my money before I even see it.
Governments nibble when it comes to sucking up powers they aren't supposed to have, they don't take big bites. That way, they can dismiss detractors as delusional lunatics who are just pointing out their illegitimate "slippery slope" fallacy as evidence. This is established practice, and it was established long before the U.S. government came about.
You have to question how the government can abuse things before letting them have them because it's usually safe to assume that they WILL abuse them in those ways if you give them the power.
Beyond all that, the point is this: the governing body has no business watching everybody like a criminal. If they were only watching criminals, fine. But they're not. They're watching EVERYBODY which means they're treating EVERYBODY as a potential criminal. Add into that the fact that part of this guy's justification is "We're at war" (with who? You're own fucking citizens? Or, do you regularly let terrorists and enemy nationals march around Inner Harbor?) and you just have a bad mix starting up.
Cameras are a nuisance, but lets not forget this is predominantly a business district, not a residential area. What, precisely, would you expect to be doing that you need to even care that there is street surveillance?
This is a nonsensical argument, and I really wish people would stop using it. It's irrelevant what I'm doing until I'm actually committing a crime. You are effectively arguing that it is acceptable to treat everyone as criminals just in case they prove that they are, just because they happen to be around them. Everybody everywhere all the time is a POTENTIAL criminal. Therefore, if the justification to do this to these people at this time here is acceptable, then it is acceptable to do it to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
In addition, at least a portion of the "justification" was given as "We're at war", which suggests they merely want to watch people, not cut the crime rate.
The difference being that individual citizens and losers are the ones abusing the Intarweb. The government is not held to the same standards as citizens. It is expected to BEHAVE itself. This is not behaving. When citizens abuse the internet, they don't have an army and huge, intricate ministries to support their amoral behavior. This is stepping dangerously close to the precipice. This is the precursor to a certain police state. It's not a matter of IF it comes, it's a matter of WHEN it comes and whether or not people let it survive.
Like I said in another post: the suggestion here seems to be that they're at war with US, the people, since that's what the cameras will be watching.
What's amusing is that people just sit back and take this crap. "Oh, the ACLU is looking out for us". Y'know, it wouldn't take a big stretch of the imagination for the government to figure out a way to label the ACLU as a "terrorist oganization", as the term seems to be bandied about when anyone has an opposing viewpoint. It's not gotten that extreme yet, but over the last decade we've seen a gradual, but steadily worsening assault on basic civil liberties. First it was people losing their rights and liberties in favor of big corporations which was a minor, subtle attack. Now, we're seeing people, some of which are American citizens, being held incommunicado with no expecation to receive a fair trial, lawyer, or the "right" to ever even speak to their family again.
Bad things are happening. They're getting worse. It's not a matter of IF this is just another step towards a police state, it's a matter of how big the step is, and whether people fight it.
That's true. However, you do have a reasonable expectation that the government doesn't have its eyes on you every step you take. Monitoring and surveying your own people as a governing body is not the same as me seeing you walking toward me as another pedestrian.
The problem is the difference in motivation. What's the motivation here? It seems to be that this is necessary because "We're at war" as a quote in the article says. The suggestion, then, is that anybody in the area may well be an enemy. The only way to effectively utilize this tool in that context is to monitor EVERYONE in the area.
Now, here's a question for you: if they have reason to believe that there are "ter'rists" in the Inner Harbor area, why aren't they handling it with a law enforcement group like the FBI? If they have reason to believe ter'rists might try to come into Inner Harbor, why aren't they looking into the people who are trying to get in? If they don't have reason to believe either of these, why are they putting up the cameras anyway?
Something is seriously wrong here. There's no good reason to be putting these up, because the only purpose they're going to serve is to watch normal citizens.
The instant I see this being used to justify observing your own people, I call bullshit. At war with who? Ourselves? Have we ALWAYS been at war with ourselves? With eastasia?
No, I'm sorry. If that's you're justification, you haven't got justification. If you are basically saying that your are just as much at war with your own citizens as with the people you're supposedly really at war with, there's a serious problem. Tear them down (if they actually go up), throw the bums out who supported it. There are plenty of good reasons to do this sort of thing. This is not one of them.
I might remind everyone that the biggest problem with a dystopian society is that the people who live in it usually don't recognize it as such until it's way too late...
No shit, fuckstick? The difference being that, unlike the Linux world which is mainly comprised of dipshits like you, you cowardly little shit, the BSD world doesn't appear to be overrun by a bunch of pimply faced little shits who think they're so goddamn cool because they figured out how to use Linux with an X server and window manager installed and running for them right from the start.
You know what? I'm done. No more Linux. I'm sick of you stupid fucks that can't figure this simple point out:
Linux and it's related projects are not perfect.
I've fucking had it. I'm not contributing to help people learn Linux anymore, I'm not evangelizing it to my company or local organizations anymore, I'm not contributing on message boards or Usenet anymore - I'm done. I'm moving to BSD. I'm sick and tired of this pathetic attitude you penguin humping retards have. It has become brutally clear to me that Linux isn't about making a good system, it's about hating Microsoft, and if I want a good UNIX like system by people that actually WANT a good UNIX like system, not just a "it's not Windows so I'm so 1337" system, it's going to have to be a BSD.
Fuck you all, you're all idiots, and I'm switching to the BSDs permanently. I've had it with you numbskulls that would rather puff your chest in faux superiority to WIndows than continue to improve the system you have.
Hmmm... GNome 2.6... released about, what, 3 months ago? Maybe?
Hmmm... Win2k released in February of 2000....
Yes, good comparison. For your next trick, will you be comparing Sparc64s and the Intel 8008?
Ok, being serious: how the HELL can you compare Win2k to Gnome 2.6 with a straight face? That's totally irrelevant. Why don't you try comparing Gnome 1.2 to Win2k since they were released at almost the same time?
Try opening a directoy with 800+ files in it and moving them around. On my PIII 866mhz box, it can barely handle moving them one at a time. On my PIII 1.13 GHz box (same RAM in both, faster disks are in the Linux machine - ext3 fs: the default installed by the distro), WinXP (NTFS) still has trouble actually displaying the directory, but not as slow as Linux, and it can move the files around without any trouble.
Linux desktop bites. Gnome bites, KDE bites. The X Windows System NEEDS TO DIE.
See, the problem I have with Linux is that so many of these asshats want to compare it feature for feature against Windows. They'll sit there and trumpet it's (non-inherent) ability to be secure, it's ability to handle lots of processes as a server, etc. etc., but then when it comes to something like the desktop that Windows does very well, they'll get all pissy about the fact that, well, desktops on Linux are pretty shitty unless you invest an awful lot of tweak time.
Too bad the X Windows System, Gnome, and KDE all suck shit compared to the Windows GUI.
Windows XP, once you get rid of the playskool look, absolutely flies on comparable systems when compared to KDE or Gnome. The fact is that you're never really going to overcome that because Windows has so many performance hooks tying all the subsystems in Windows so closely together. Telling sign of doomsday for Linux desktop: Nautillus is a crufty file manager on top of the crufty Gnome which sits over the crufty X Windows System.
You can have it flexible, fast, stable... pick any two.
Heh heh... the "offtopic" mod indicates that somebody acknowledges "yes, you're right, my momma is a fat ass but it indeed was offtopic and should be discussed in another context".
I'm gonna make a career out of psychoanalyzing moderations on/.
I don't know why this was modded funny, it's not a joke, it's scary that some idiot actually thought up this text. If that thing were to pass today with that text, then yes, you could reasonably argue within the bounds of the law that the manufacture of the human brain - procreation/sex/whatever - is an illegal act and the brain is an illegal device. Any signatory would, technically speaking, instantly outlaw the the brains of every citizen in their nation and the process of ANY reproduction - sexual or otherwise - unless the resultant creature didn't have a brain powerful enough to handle the concept of decryption.
participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal.
Apparently procreation and thinking are not something WIPO is keen on, as the human brain is a "a system" of tissues "capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal".
I messed up, they're "Banquet" tv dinners. Suggesting they're dinners is a bit misleading... more like "barely edible snacks". They're dinky little 12.5 oz buggers with almost no nutritional value, no taste, and they look kind of like somebody sat on an airline meal.
That may be true. However, the worst part is that you weren't even smart enough to get that one. It's like you'd actually have to be smarter to say something stupid in response to the joke you didn't get.
I took an AP European History class in my senior year of High School. By the end of the year, we had concluded that the whole of European history could be summed up in two words:
Men
Farming
This is not entirely innacurate either. It would seem that the catalyst for every major social, economic, or political change revolved around men wanting sex, men being chauvinists, food, or any combination of those three things.
Unfortunately for the geeks, our profession has not embraced these driving mechanisms, or I'd get a hell of a lot more sex and I wouldn't be eaten these $1.00 frozen dinners from Swanson every night...
We don't WANT to keep them quiet for a while. We want IBM to go in for the kill and cut their tongue out to keep them quiet for GOOD. No more stall tactics, and definitely don't aid them in their stall tactics by giving them something to do. If they get even the faintest air of legitimacy again, rest assured some moron with more money than brains is going to pump funds into their hot air balloon to help reinflate it. I don't think I an take another year and a half of these stories every day like they were coming for awhile...
Of course, this neglects the fact that the users have to actively negate the ignorance of the company in the first place. You can't screw something up, tell someone else how to fix it, and then act like it's thier fault that it's still screwed up when they don't. You shouldn't have screwed it up in the first place. Being the first point of failure, you also become the first responsible party.
The proper way to dispense of a worn out American flag is to burn it, optionally cutting it into pieces first. The purpose is to reduce it to a non-flag state. i.e. - once it's ashes, it's not a flag anymore so the detritus can simply be disposed of.
I don't know where on earth you heard or saw that you should bury a flag, but that's probably the single most disrespectful suggestion for elimintating a flag that needs retired I think I've ever seen.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, the only difference is that in OSS the steps are usually covered in about a third the time.
This hit the kernel-list dated 2004-06-09 21:02:57 . It is now 2004-06-14 09:41:12 in my neck of the woods, and it is patched. The last update mentioned on the article's page is yesterday. It would appear the patch was available in no more than 4 days. It takes more than four days for a lot of vendors just to look at the goddamn report. Then they spend the next week hoping it goes away on it's own. Then they ignore the follow ups. Two months later when the submitter has had enough, they go to FULL DISCLOSURE and the vendor gets pissed off and starts attacking the person who reported it for not giving them enough time to write a patch they haven't even started on. Then they spend another month making lousy excuses for why it's not a serious issue and half assed suggestions of what you can turn off to avoid the problem. Finally, after about four months of hand wringing, press releases, and general bullshit, you might get a patch. If you're lucky, it won't require you to start the process over again by introducing a brand new vulnerability. If you're lucky.
There's a huge difference here. The Linux folks jumped up and solved the problem. They didn't sit around pissing on their hands for months and making excuses like a lot of vendors do.
No, you're apparently just talking out of your ass. Otherwise, you'd realize that it's well known that the Baltimore area is a crime-riddled shithole at the wrong time of the day. Now, unless I missed something, there haven't really been any reports of terrorists wandering the streets of Baltimore with impunity. Solution? Monitor for fucking terrorists? Huh?
In addition, DHS - this mystical, magical ministry that just appeared the fuck out of nowhere with little oversight and a broad purpose - appears, by all accounts, to be the steering committee for this. Seems to me that a department tasked with securing the "homeland" against enemy attack shouldn't be handling inner city crime problems, now should it? Seems to me that the local police force should be, shouldn't it?
Again - how you can think the government being allowed to monitor its own people, especially when they give no good godamn reason to do so, is beyond me. You make a snide, idiotic comment about 1984 in your signature (as if allusion is suddenly illegitimate for this single novel). Allow me to apply one in return: any fanatical, ignorant adherance to government power creep in the name of "protecting" people from shadows on the wall will be ignored. Give me one good, solid, practical reason why I should support this initiative that I can't counter with a better solution or call bullshit on. One. It's not my place to say why it shouldn't be done, it's the supporters' place to say why it should be. One.
WTF? Did you even read the goddamn article?
I think it was mentioned ONCE that this could be used to deter crime. The overwhelming focus was on vague statements about "terrorism" and "terrorist attacks". The justification given when people raised privacy concerns was, I quote: "We're at war."
Given that the focus is clearly on terrorism by admission of the people running this, and these mystical terrorists that have struck TWICE on our soil in the last fucking DECADE, and the big attack involved a bunch of SUICIDE attackers who can't be prosecuted no matter how much fucking evidence you gather, could you please explain how this is a good idea?
How can you POSSIBLY think that government monitoring it's own people is a good idea? The implication here, intentional or otherwise, is that they think their own goddamn citizens are the fucking enemy. Did I miss something here?
The problem isn't one network in one city. The problem is that one established network in one city legitamizes the practice of putting up surveillance camera's everywhere. In logic, it's called a slippery slope to assume that one bad thing must lead to others. In the government, it's just the established business of power creep, nothing particularly special or new.
Remember that temporary income tax that wasn't ever supposed to be more than 5% or so? Well, fuck me.. 75 years later and my paycheck is missing more than 24% of my money before I even see it.
Governments nibble when it comes to sucking up powers they aren't supposed to have, they don't take big bites. That way, they can dismiss detractors as delusional lunatics who are just pointing out their illegitimate "slippery slope" fallacy as evidence. This is established practice, and it was established long before the U.S. government came about.
You have to question how the government can abuse things before letting them have them because it's usually safe to assume that they WILL abuse them in those ways if you give them the power.
Beyond all that, the point is this: the governing body has no business watching everybody like a criminal. If they were only watching criminals, fine. But they're not. They're watching EVERYBODY which means they're treating EVERYBODY as a potential criminal. Add into that the fact that part of this guy's justification is "We're at war" (with who? You're own fucking citizens? Or, do you regularly let terrorists and enemy nationals march around Inner Harbor?) and you just have a bad mix starting up.
Cameras are a nuisance, but lets not forget this is predominantly a business district, not a residential area. What, precisely, would you expect to be doing that you need to even care that there is street surveillance?
This is a nonsensical argument, and I really wish people would stop using it. It's irrelevant what I'm doing until I'm actually committing a crime. You are effectively arguing that it is acceptable to treat everyone as criminals just in case they prove that they are, just because they happen to be around them. Everybody everywhere all the time is a POTENTIAL criminal. Therefore, if the justification to do this to these people at this time here is acceptable, then it is acceptable to do it to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
In addition, at least a portion of the "justification" was given as "We're at war", which suggests they merely want to watch people, not cut the crime rate.
The difference being that individual citizens and losers are the ones abusing the Intarweb. The government is not held to the same standards as citizens. It is expected to BEHAVE itself. This is not behaving. When citizens abuse the internet, they don't have an army and huge, intricate ministries to support their amoral behavior. This is stepping dangerously close to the precipice. This is the precursor to a certain police state. It's not a matter of IF it comes, it's a matter of WHEN it comes and whether or not people let it survive.
Like I said in another post: the suggestion here seems to be that they're at war with US, the people, since that's what the cameras will be watching.
What's amusing is that people just sit back and take this crap. "Oh, the ACLU is looking out for us". Y'know, it wouldn't take a big stretch of the imagination for the government to figure out a way to label the ACLU as a "terrorist oganization", as the term seems to be bandied about when anyone has an opposing viewpoint. It's not gotten that extreme yet, but over the last decade we've seen a gradual, but steadily worsening assault on basic civil liberties. First it was people losing their rights and liberties in favor of big corporations which was a minor, subtle attack. Now, we're seeing people, some of which are American citizens, being held incommunicado with no expecation to receive a fair trial, lawyer, or the "right" to ever even speak to their family again.
Bad things are happening. They're getting worse. It's not a matter of IF this is just another step towards a police state, it's a matter of how big the step is, and whether people fight it.
That's true. However, you do have a reasonable expectation that the government doesn't have its eyes on you every step you take. Monitoring and surveying your own people as a governing body is not the same as me seeing you walking toward me as another pedestrian.
The problem is the difference in motivation. What's the motivation here? It seems to be that this is necessary because "We're at war" as a quote in the article says. The suggestion, then, is that anybody in the area may well be an enemy. The only way to effectively utilize this tool in that context is to monitor EVERYONE in the area.
Now, here's a question for you: if they have reason to believe that there are "ter'rists" in the Inner Harbor area, why aren't they handling it with a law enforcement group like the FBI? If they have reason to believe ter'rists might try to come into Inner Harbor, why aren't they looking into the people who are trying to get in? If they don't have reason to believe either of these, why are they putting up the cameras anyway?
Something is seriously wrong here. There's no good reason to be putting these up, because the only purpose they're going to serve is to watch normal citizens.
Something is very, very wrong here...
"We're at war," Schrader said.
The instant I see this being used to justify observing your own people, I call bullshit. At war with who? Ourselves? Have we ALWAYS been at war with ourselves? With eastasia?
No, I'm sorry. If that's you're justification, you haven't got justification. If you are basically saying that your are just as much at war with your own citizens as with the people you're supposedly really at war with, there's a serious problem. Tear them down (if they actually go up), throw the bums out who supported it. There are plenty of good reasons to do this sort of thing. This is not one of them.
I might remind everyone that the biggest problem with a dystopian society is that the people who live in it usually don't recognize it as such until it's way too late...
I think their lawyers might be more effective.
At what, beating you up?
No shit, fuckstick? The difference being that, unlike the Linux world which is mainly comprised of dipshits like you, you cowardly little shit, the BSD world doesn't appear to be overrun by a bunch of pimply faced little shits who think they're so goddamn cool because they figured out how to use Linux with an X server and window manager installed and running for them right from the start.
You know what? I'm done. No more Linux. I'm sick of you stupid fucks that can't figure this simple point out:
Linux and it's related projects are not perfect.
I've fucking had it. I'm not contributing to help people learn Linux anymore, I'm not evangelizing it to my company or local organizations anymore, I'm not contributing on message boards or Usenet anymore - I'm done. I'm moving to BSD. I'm sick and tired of this pathetic attitude you penguin humping retards have. It has become brutally clear to me that Linux isn't about making a good system, it's about hating Microsoft, and if I want a good UNIX like system by people that actually WANT a good UNIX like system, not just a "it's not Windows so I'm so 1337" system, it's going to have to be a BSD.
Fuck you all, you're all idiots, and I'm switching to the BSDs permanently. I've had it with you numbskulls that would rather puff your chest in faux superiority to WIndows than continue to improve the system you have.
Hmmm... GNome 2.6... released about, what, 3 months ago? Maybe?
Hmmm... Win2k released in February of 2000....
Yes, good comparison. For your next trick, will you be comparing Sparc64s and the Intel 8008?
Ok, being serious: how the HELL can you compare Win2k to Gnome 2.6 with a straight face? That's totally irrelevant. Why don't you try comparing Gnome 1.2 to Win2k since they were released at almost the same time?
Try opening a directoy with 800+ files in it and moving them around. On my PIII 866mhz box, it can barely handle moving them one at a time. On my PIII 1.13 GHz box (same RAM in both, faster disks are in the Linux machine - ext3 fs: the default installed by the distro), WinXP (NTFS) still has trouble actually displaying the directory, but not as slow as Linux, and it can move the files around without any trouble.
Linux desktop bites. Gnome bites, KDE bites. The X Windows System NEEDS TO DIE.
See, the problem I have with Linux is that so many of these asshats want to compare it feature for feature against Windows. They'll sit there and trumpet it's (non-inherent) ability to be secure, it's ability to handle lots of processes as a server, etc. etc., but then when it comes to something like the desktop that Windows does very well, they'll get all pissy about the fact that, well, desktops on Linux are pretty shitty unless you invest an awful lot of tweak time.
Too bad the X Windows System, Gnome, and KDE all suck shit compared to the Windows GUI.
Windows XP, once you get rid of the playskool look, absolutely flies on comparable systems when compared to KDE or Gnome. The fact is that you're never really going to overcome that because Windows has so many performance hooks tying all the subsystems in Windows so closely together. Telling sign of doomsday for Linux desktop: Nautillus is a crufty file manager on top of the crufty Gnome which sits over the crufty X Windows System.
You can have it flexible, fast, stable... pick any two.
Heh heh... the "offtopic" mod indicates that somebody acknowledges "yes, you're right, my momma is a fat ass but it indeed was offtopic and should be discussed in another context".
I'm gonna make a career out of psychoanalyzing moderations on /.
Spend a lot of time hanging around secured naval bases taking measurements of the weaponry?
I don't know why this was modded funny, it's not a joke, it's scary that some idiot actually thought up this text. If that thing were to pass today with that text, then yes, you could reasonably argue within the bounds of the law that the manufacture of the human brain - procreation/sex/whatever - is an illegal act and the brain is an illegal device. Any signatory would, technically speaking, instantly outlaw the the brains of every citizen in their nation and the process of ANY reproduction - sexual or otherwise - unless the resultant creature didn't have a brain powerful enough to handle the concept of decryption.
participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal.
Apparently procreation and thinking are not something WIPO is keen on, as the human brain is a "a system" of tissues "capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal".
I messed up, they're "Banquet" tv dinners. Suggesting they're dinners is a bit misleading... more like "barely edible snacks". They're dinky little 12.5 oz buggers with almost no nutritional value, no taste, and they look kind of like somebody sat on an airline meal.
That may be true. However, the worst part is that you weren't even smart enough to get that one. It's like you'd actually have to be smarter to say something stupid in response to the joke you didn't get.
I took an AP European History class in my senior year of High School. By the end of the year, we had concluded that the whole of European history could be summed up in two words:
This is not entirely innacurate either. It would seem that the catalyst for every major social, economic, or political change revolved around men wanting sex, men being chauvinists, food, or any combination of those three things.
Unfortunately for the geeks, our profession has not embraced these driving mechanisms, or I'd get a hell of a lot more sex and I wouldn't be eaten these $1.00 frozen dinners from Swanson every night...
That would keep them quiet for a while.
We don't WANT to keep them quiet for a while. We want IBM to go in for the kill and cut their tongue out to keep them quiet for GOOD. No more stall tactics, and definitely don't aid them in their stall tactics by giving them something to do. If they get even the faintest air of legitimacy again, rest assured some moron with more money than brains is going to pump funds into their hot air balloon to help reinflate it. I don't think I an take another year and a half of these stories every day like they were coming for awhile...
Of course, this neglects the fact that the users have to actively negate the ignorance of the company in the first place. You can't screw something up, tell someone else how to fix it, and then act like it's thier fault that it's still screwed up when they don't. You shouldn't have screwed it up in the first place. Being the first point of failure, you also become the first responsible party.
Who the heck cares what anyone else thinks is the "proper" way to dispose of a worn out flag?
People other than you, apparently. Or, I'm sorry - are only the things you care about the things that matter?
Yes, you should get your facts straight.
The proper way to dispense of a worn out American flag is to burn it, optionally cutting it into pieces first. The purpose is to reduce it to a non-flag state. i.e. - once it's ashes, it's not a flag anymore so the detritus can simply be disposed of.
I don't know where on earth you heard or saw that you should bury a flag, but that's probably the single most disrespectful suggestion for elimintating a flag that needs retired I think I've ever seen.