The vast majority of Iraqis would like us to just leave - even if it means that we don't spend another dime on reconstruction and there is no western investment in the country.
Here's a blog http://cbftw.blogspot.com/ by a solder serving over there. He talks about what it's like to be there, and what he hears from Iraqis he talks to. The ones he mentions don't seem to be that unhappy with us. It might just be that he's reporting what he sees, not just what fits his preconceptions.
Going to Time Warner Cable only works if you have cable, and if your cable provider happens to be TWC. If both aren't true, it's a waste of time. Bell South is the main phone carrier in that area, so just about everybody who had DSL with AOL will be able to switch over.
Years ago I started picturing AOL as walking along holding a gun in each hand. Each gun is pointed toward one of its feet and at random intervals, they pull a trigger. I think they just pulled both at the same time.
So all of the actions you alluded to in your comment (password length, firewall rules, etc.) would be the job of IT (or IT Security) to enforce, whereas the the writing of the IT policies would be the responsibility of the HR department (with participation of IT technical resources from within or outside the HR department). This is usually the way it works for physical security in most large organizations.
As long as the enforcement department is only responsible for enforcing the policies as written, no problem. If they're made to take responsibility for breaches caused by an inadaquate policy, you have exactly the problem this article is talking about.
What if you wrap the cat in a piece of paper that has been formed to make a Moebius strip, butter the other side of the animal, then tie it together to another cat? I suspect this may be the way to create time travel or a perpetual motion machine.
It's probably been asked before, but this gave me an idea: take a long strip of bread, butter one side of it, twist it and connect the ends to make a mobius strip, then drop it. What happens?
I'd thought that if the page weren't straight up and down, you'd get lift on the leading edge, causing that edge to rise up, slowing the fall until it gets high enough to stall. When I RTFA, it said that the page's rotation was enough to change the direction from clean drop to a sideways motion. Go know.
...the implication is that a large part of the human race and much of its wealth (in the form of cities and associated means of production) will have to be relocated.
Maybe not. We can always learn from The Netherlands and build dikes. Then we can all learn what it's like to live in a polder.
Total biodiversity and bioproductivity may drop, or, quite possibly, increase.
There was an article a number of years ago in Scientific American about growing plants in terreriums with an increased CO2 content. The authors found that the plants used grew much faster and larger than normal. They suspected that this might bring the levels down to normal, but were carfull not to assert it. They couldn't be sure, as they'd kept the levels up, rather than seeing what the plant growth did to them. I wonder if that experiment ever got done and what the result was. If, as seems likely, the growth did bring down the levels, excess CO2 in the atmosphere might be just a temporary issue until the biosphere corrects it.
Alas, I have no cites. I only have information I've gathered here and there. If you prefer to discount my claim, I'll not be upset. As far as the labels and so on, I know they have to make a profit; the claims I've seen suggest that the profit margin isn't reasonable. Again, I can't prove it. If you have proof otherwise, post it and I'll learn from it.
Do you think the royalties earned by artists on musical works are too high? Are the artists being too -- there's that word again -- greedy?
Good question, and a good point. No, it's not the royalties paid to the artists that are too high, it's those claimed by the production companies as I understand it. I wouldn't mind the total royalties so much if more actually went to the artists, but most of it goes to the middle-men who create nothing but take their share off the top.
From the article: In a contest of greed versus theft, I suppose I chose greed as the morally superior position.
The RIAA is basing its position on the false dichotomy of either greed or theft. They can't seem to understand that it's possible to protect the artist's rights without draconion measures or royalties that would put a robber baron to shame. Isn't it a shame that Hilary Rosen didn't learn this until she'd left the RIAA and had no more influence over their thinking?
...and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.
Not only that, the rates they pay for their junk mail subsidizes regular mail. If it weren't for junk mail, first class postage would be considerably higher.
Now, maybe. When I was active, there was no 3rd edition and 2nd was just coming out near the end. I can still mix and match, but it's more of 1st edition, Dragon Tree Spellbook and my own imagination. The last, of course, is the most important.
The way I'd do it is just make opting in part of the Typical Install set. In the Custom, it's not automatically checked, making it look like it's not part of Typical, but it is because "of course you wanted to opt in."
If that were true, DND wouldn't have lasted long enough to get to 2nd Edition. It would have failed before the material had been gathered together into hardcover books. No, it's not unworkable, it just takes more work than most players today are willing to give it. They want everything handed to them on a silver platter, with no need to think, adapt, improvise or work at it. When I started, 1st Edition was all there was; no Unearthed Arcana, no MM2, no Spelljamming, no Oriental Adventures. Just the classic three volumes and maybe Fiend Folio if somebody had a copy. Lots of games, lots of fun, lots of gamers.
Looking at 2nd and 3rd, I can see how the power-gaming munchkins are taking over the game. Less and less need to role play, more hyper-powerfull classes, artifacts and monsters. Hell; they've even come up with a god that expects his clerics to use edged weapons, and guess who most clerics serve now, and why.
2nd vs. 3rd? Ha! When I GM (If I ever do again. No time, no local game but I was quite popular at one time.) I pull out First Edition and tell them that if it isn't in MY books, it doesn't exist in MY game. I'll play by newer rules if that's what the GM wants, as long as you'll play by mine in my world. I also love watching people try to bring all sorts of weird imaginary herbs (Usually mispronounced. For some reason these twits don't know the h is silent.) into my world and wonder why they've turned to dust. Then I tell them that if the herbs don't exist in the real world, they don't in mine. Why? Too many twit GMs create their own herbs with too much power and this is a way to keep things under control.
One of my friends was one of the playtesters for Greyhawk. He's been teaching it to Gifted Students during summers for over a quarter of a century. He uses an eclectic mixture of 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition rules, with characters built under each. His motto is, "I'm easy; I can kill anybody." I've never seen him go out to kill a character, nor hold back when it happens.
To give you an idea how wild his games can get, I once had a 4th level mage in his game with a bracer that could put up a Prismatic Wall. He couldn't advance while holding it, but once he took a crit in the head, put up the wall and staggered back. The entire party (except for one character who was lucky enough to be infront of mine.) went through the wall backwards. We had to take several piles of rubble back to town, then get somebody to cast mend followed by stone to flesh before we could try to raise dead. My character got several hundred accidental XP for trashing his own party.
My favorite: "My regular GM says the spell works like that..."
Re:Fixing fundamental design mistakes?
on
Linus Interviewed
·
· Score: 1
Some folks still think that *nix is inherently virus proof because anything a mere user runs couldn't touch the really important stuff in/bin.
What people need to realize is that permissions can always be changed; even if you set the immutable bit, you can still unset it. What properly designed and implemented permissions do is make it hard enough to do any damage that script kiddies won't be able to find cheat-sheets for virus writing. Only those that can work it out for themselves will be able to write viruses and there aren't many out there that are both able to do so and interested in putting in the effort. Not exactly security through obscurity, more like making it more effort than script kiddies will be willing to put into it.
Why, oh why, did they have to specifically aim this at all the apps I don't use?
For that matter, why does it want 500MB of disk space? Either it's going to try to index every word in every file or it's got a really inefficient storage method. Come to think of it, probably both.
The only cause most celebrities care about is their own public image. If the "cause" isn't well-known, there's no publicity worth garnering by backing it and they won't bother.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a blog http://cbftw.blogspot.com/ by a solder serving over there. He talks about what it's like to be there, and what he hears from Iraqis he talks to. The ones he mentions don't seem to be that unhappy with us. It might just be that he's reporting what he sees, not just what fits his preconceptions.
I can see it now:
"Get off my line!"
"Hey! How's your...modem..."
"Yeeehaaa! Yer mailbox is full!
Just what we need. Tech support by Leonard, Bubba, Billy Ray and the Coot. Redneck Rampage goes hi-tech.
Going to Time Warner Cable only works if you have cable, and if your cable provider happens to be TWC. If both aren't true, it's a waste of time. Bell South is the main phone carrier in that area, so just about everybody who had DSL with AOL will be able to switch over.
Years ago I started picturing AOL as walking along holding a gun in each hand. Each gun is pointed toward one of its feet and at random intervals, they pull a trigger. I think they just pulled both at the same time.
No, the giant brain wanted to use them to Rule The World, but the giant Pinky messed things up as he always does. Narf!
As long as the enforcement department is only responsible for enforcing the policies as written, no problem. If they're made to take responsibility for breaches caused by an inadaquate policy, you have exactly the problem this article is talking about.
It's probably been asked before, but this gave me an idea: take a long strip of bread, butter one side of it, twist it and connect the ends to make a mobius strip, then drop it. What happens?
I'd thought that if the page weren't straight up and down, you'd get lift on the leading edge, causing that edge to rise up, slowing the fall until it gets high enough to stall. When I RTFA, it said that the page's rotation was enough to change the direction from clean drop to a sideways motion. Go know.
Here's your leg back; it seems to have come off in my hand. I was being facetious.
Maybe not. We can always learn from The Netherlands and build dikes. Then we can all learn what it's like to live in a polder.
There was an article a number of years ago in Scientific American about growing plants in terreriums with an increased CO2 content. The authors found that the plants used grew much faster and larger than normal. They suspected that this might bring the levels down to normal, but were carfull not to assert it. They couldn't be sure, as they'd kept the levels up, rather than seeing what the plant growth did to them. I wonder if that experiment ever got done and what the result was. If, as seems likely, the growth did bring down the levels, excess CO2 in the atmosphere might be just a temporary issue until the biosphere corrects it.
Alas, I have no cites. I only have information I've gathered here and there. If you prefer to discount my claim, I'll not be upset. As far as the labels and so on, I know they have to make a profit; the claims I've seen suggest that the profit margin isn't reasonable. Again, I can't prove it. If you have proof otherwise, post it and I'll learn from it.
Good question, and a good point. No, it's not the royalties paid to the artists that are too high, it's those claimed by the production companies as I understand it. I wouldn't mind the total royalties so much if more actually went to the artists, but most of it goes to the middle-men who create nothing but take their share off the top.
The RIAA is basing its position on the false dichotomy of either greed or theft. They can't seem to understand that it's possible to protect the artist's rights without draconion measures or royalties that would put a robber baron to shame. Isn't it a shame that Hilary Rosen didn't learn this until she'd left the RIAA and had no more influence over their thinking?
So why doesn't he?
Not only that, the rates they pay for their junk mail subsidizes regular mail. If it weren't for junk mail, first class postage would be considerably higher.
Now, maybe. When I was active, there was no 3rd edition and 2nd was just coming out near the end. I can still mix and match, but it's more of 1st edition, Dragon Tree Spellbook and my own imagination. The last, of course, is the most important.
The way I'd do it is just make opting in part of the Typical Install set. In the Custom, it's not automatically checked, making it look like it's not part of Typical, but it is because "of course you wanted to opt in."
If that were true, DND wouldn't have lasted long enough to get to 2nd Edition. It would have failed before the material had been gathered together into hardcover books. No, it's not unworkable, it just takes more work than most players today are willing to give it. They want everything handed to them on a silver platter, with no need to think, adapt, improvise or work at it. When I started, 1st Edition was all there was; no Unearthed Arcana, no MM2, no Spelljamming, no Oriental Adventures. Just the classic three volumes and maybe Fiend Folio if somebody had a copy. Lots of games, lots of fun, lots of gamers.
Looking at 2nd and 3rd, I can see how the power-gaming munchkins are taking over the game. Less and less need to role play, more hyper-powerfull classes, artifacts and monsters. Hell; they've even come up with a god that expects his clerics to use edged weapons, and guess who most clerics serve now, and why.
2nd vs. 3rd? Ha! When I GM (If I ever do again. No time, no local game but I was quite popular at one time.) I pull out First Edition and tell them that if it isn't in MY books, it doesn't exist in MY game. I'll play by newer rules if that's what the GM wants, as long as you'll play by mine in my world. I also love watching people try to bring all sorts of weird imaginary herbs (Usually mispronounced. For some reason these twits don't know the h is silent.) into my world and wonder why they've turned to dust. Then I tell them that if the herbs don't exist in the real world, they don't in mine. Why? Too many twit GMs create their own herbs with too much power and this is a way to keep things under control.
To give you an idea how wild his games can get, I once had a 4th level mage in his game with a bracer that could put up a Prismatic Wall. He couldn't advance while holding it, but once he took a crit in the head, put up the wall and staggered back. The entire party (except for one character who was lucky enough to be infront of mine.) went through the wall backwards. We had to take several piles of rubble back to town, then get somebody to cast mend followed by stone to flesh before we could try to raise dead. My character got several hundred accidental XP for trashing his own party.
My favorite: "My regular GM says the spell works like that..."
What people need to realize is that permissions can always be changed; even if you set the immutable bit, you can still unset it. What properly designed and implemented permissions do is make it hard enough to do any damage that script kiddies won't be able to find cheat-sheets for virus writing. Only those that can work it out for themselves will be able to write viruses and there aren't many out there that are both able to do so and interested in putting in the effort. Not exactly security through obscurity, more like making it more effort than script kiddies will be willing to put into it.
For that matter, why does it want 500MB of disk space? Either it's going to try to index every word in every file or it's got a really inefficient storage method. Come to think of it, probably both.
The only cause most celebrities care about is their own public image. If the "cause" isn't well-known, there's no publicity worth garnering by backing it and they won't bother.