tjstork wrote, "If the people of Iran want to get rid of their government, they can do it themselves. If the left wants to lament the death of democracy in Iraq, they can spare me the tears. They had no problem advocating tyranny in Iraq."
In the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people. Period.
After the Kremlin exited Eastern Europe, the peoples of each nation in Eastern Europe rapidly established a genuine democracy and a free market. Except for Romania (where its people killed their dictator), there was no violence.
In Iran (and many other failed states), no external force is imposing the current brutal government on the Iranians. The folks running the government are Iranian. The president is Iranian. The secret police are Iranian. The thugs who will torture and kill democracy advocates are Iranian.
If the democracy advocates attempt to establish a genuine democracy in Iran, violence will occur. Why? A large percentage of the population supports the brutal government and will kill the democracy advocates.
Let us not merely condemn the Iranian government. We must condemn Iranian culture. Its product is the authoritarian state.
We should not intervene in the current crisis in Iran. If the overwhelming majority of Iranians (like the overwhelming majority of Poles) truly support democracy, human rights, and peace with Israel, then a liberal Western democracy will arise -- without any violence. Right now, the overwhelming majority clearly oppose the creation of a liberal Western democracy. The Iranians love a brutal Islamic theocracy.
The Iranians created this horrible society. It is none of our business unless they attempt to develop nuclear weapons. We in the West are morally justified in destroying the nuclear-weapons facilities.
Note that, 40 years ago, Vietnam suffered a worse fate (than the Iranians) at the hands of the Americans. They doused large areas of Vietnam with agent orange, poisoning both the land and the people. Yet, the Vietnamese do not channel their energies into seeking revenge (by, e. g., building a nuclear bomb) against the West. Rather, the Vietnamese are diligently modernizing their society. They will reach 1st-world status long before the Iranians.
Cultures are different. Vietnamese culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran. We should condemn Iranian culture and its people.
These investigative non-profit organizations (INPOs) must receive funding in order to even operate. To check whether bias has entered into any investigation by an INPO, it must disclose its funding sources.
The Internet and the natural expectation (by the typical American) of "free" news have destroyed the economic model of newspapers. Here, "newspapers" refers to both print material and online material.
We can expect a continued hollowing out of the investigative department of most newspapers.
There appear to be only 3 viable models for the future of newspapers. They are the following.
1. non-profit model. The newspaper operates like the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and receives donations and government funding. The danger in this model is that the ruling political party may withhold funding if a newspaper publishes a damaging story that ruins the career of a politician from that party.
2. public-service model. The newspaper is run as a public service by a non-profit organization or a for-profit business. The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is a good example of this model. The Christian Science church publishes the CSM as a public service. The CSM is quite good -- good enough for use by the Central Intelligence Agency to supplement its own political analyses of hotspots in the world.
3. endowment model. A rich person creates a billion-dollar fund. The interest payments from that fund then fund a particular newspaper.
Model #3 is the best. In it, external interference is minimal. Bias is least likely to enter into a story.
However, model #1 appears to be the one advocated by the AP. In effect, a newspapers' distributing the investigative stories of INPOs is equivalent to this model. The INPOs receive government funding and public donations. The INPOs then use the funds to do investigations, of which the results are fed to newspapers for distribution.
Curiously, Google management almost implemented model #2. There was talk of Google's buying a newspaper. It was likely the "New York Times".
All of this stuff is not merely idle talk for geeks on Slashdot on a Saturday afternoon. The fate of newspapers is vitally important to every Westerner. Newspapers have long served as the 4th branch of government. They are our eyes and ears in keeping us informed of the operation of our government. Without the in-depth investigative reports by newspapers, the voters would be ignorant. An ignorant public is the 1st step to the establishment of an authoritarian society.
According to a researcher at the University of California, solar power, wind power, and nuclear power have the following costs in 2006 and 2016. The first cost is for 2006. The second cost is projected for 2016.
1. solar power: more than 20 cents/kwh, 10 to 14 cents/kwh
2. wind power: 5 to 7 cents/kwh, 3 to 6 cents/kwh
3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh
Here, "wind power" refers to wind turbines on land. A wind turbine at sea would surely cost more than a land-based one.
In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.
We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".
The new anti-missile laser systems (AMLS) would be ideal for dealing with meteors. These systems were recently miniaturized to such an extent that several have been attached to commercial aircraft.
Unlike a missile, a meteor has a predictable path of flight. Given the speed at which a meteor enters the earth's atmosphere, the typical meteor is white hot and should be easily detected by the infrared detector in these laser systems. An AMLS, with some slight modification for tracking a meteor, could easily blast it out of the sky.
The suppression of human rights (including the free expression of thought via the Internet) is due entirely to Chinese culture. No foreign power is imposing the current brutal form of government on China. This government has existed for decades because a majority of Chinese support it. If the minority, who oppose the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), attempted the overthrow the government, then the rest of Chinese society will kill the minority.
When the overwhelming majority of people in a nation truly want democracy and human rights, the nation quickly and peacefully transforms into a liberal Western democracy. Case in point is Eastern Europe. Once the Kremlin ceased suppressing Eastern Europe, the Eastern Europeans peacefully and quickly transformed into liberal Western democracies. Except for Romania (where the dictator was killed), there was no bloodshed. There was no violence.
By contrast, in one day of 1989 June, about 1 million people gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand the creation of a Western democracy. 1 million people is only 0.1 % of the Chinese population.
In other words, in the late 1980s, the strength of support for democracy in Eastern Europe was 50 times the strength in China.
I admire the Eastern Europeans.
China is what it is due to how the Chinese people act and think. No foreign power is imposing the CCP on China. The Chinese people support the CCP.
This breakthrough is important because ultimately adult stem cells is the answer.
Though fetal stem cells (taken from aborted fetuses) may be useful for research, organs grown from them cause severe rejection in the recipient of the transplant.
The only way to overcome this rejection is to grow the organs from the adult stem cells taken from the recipient herself.
If the human gene of speech is what gives us sentience, then we should ponder the ethics of sticking the gene into any mammal.
Suppose that this mouse is actually now sentient. Do we commit a crime when we imprison it in a laboratory or mangle its body (for the sake of some test)?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a study indicating that "when the E.P.A.'s scientists counted these indirect effects, corn ethanol emitted more greenhouse gases than gasoline over a 30-year period."
Other types of biofuel may be better than corn, but they have their problems too. According to a shocking report by "Time Magazine", "if the world gets even 10% of its energy from these new kinds of crops, most tropical forests will probably disappear."
Not surprisingly, lobbyists for American agribusiness are angry as hell about the conclusions of the EPA study.
Really, the best way to partially fix this nonsense is to make Iowa (and its corn farmers) the last state to participate in both the Republican primary and the Democratic primary. Due to the importance of Iowa as the first state in the presidential primaries (including caucuses), Iowan agribusiness has a stranglehold on American politics, and its politicians do stupid things (like supporting corn-based ethanol) in order to cater to Iowa.
Also, has anyone noticed that no one has mentioned the #1 reason for the growing energy problem and its associated pollution problem? The #1 reason is overpopulation. If we reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 3% over 10 years but increased the population by 3% over the same period across all nations, then we effectively accomplished nothing.
Can anyone guess why overpopulation is never mentioned by American politicians? Could the concept of overpopulation be too closely tied to illegal immigration?
timeOday wrote, "And keep this story in mind the next time an "American" (they always turn out to be dual citizens) is arrested for spying in Iran or China".
timeOday is referring to Roxana Saberi. The Iranian government rarely acts appropriately, but in her case, it was 100% in the right in sentencing her to imprisonment.
If a dual national had done the same thing in the USA, then Washington would have sent her to prison.
In the case of Roxana Saberi, Tehran was right to act. Washington was wrong to complain.
The American people were wrong to support Saberi. She made no attempt to rescind her Iranian citizenship while simultaneously holding American citizenship. Indeed, she used her Iranian citizenship to her advantage to get a job with the Iranian government.
Americans should not waste resources -- time, money, or lives -- in supporting a person who willfully exhibits divided loyalties.
Back in April, according to a report by "The Register", Marc Tremblay began work at Microsoft. Tremblay was the lead architect of several processors at Sun Microsystems.
At Microsoft, Tremblay joined the Strategic Software/Silicon Architectures team, nicknamed "SiArch".
Today's news that Microsoft will set a wattage limit on netbooks running the starter edition of Windows 7 clearly shows why Microsoft has an SiArch team and why Microsoft hires "processor" guys and gals. Only a team packed with "processor" experts can do the kinds of studies that are needed to determine what is a reasonable wattage to impose on netbooks.
Why must Microsoft spend several million dollars on a SiArch team to pick a simple wattage? Microsoft is facing severe competition from Linux at the low end.
If Microsoft picked a wattage that is too low, then the netbook manufacturers could not build such a system and would rebel -- right back into the arms of Linux. Microsoft absolutely needed to pick a realistic number.
Until April of 2008, Linux owned the majority of the netbook market. Then, Microsoft submitted its Windows XP to that market and quickly seized 90% of it. Microsoft wants to keep that market share. So, if Microsoft wants to impose hardware restrictions on netbooks, Microsoft will ensure that those hardware restrictions are reasonable.
I forgot to add that trade -- i. e., economic trade -- is important for spreading those Western values. Trade facilitates the transfer of information from the West to brutal regimes and maximizes exposure of their citizens to Western ideas.
Compare China today to China before 1980. The difference is night and day. China is freer today because trade injected numerous Western ideas into the country.
For that same reason, the economic sanctions against Burma starve its people of Western ideas.
Trade and communications are the best weapons against tyrannical regimes.
Tyrannical regimes operate best by minimizing the exchange of information or reducing its accuracy. For example, Beijing often covers up both disasters like sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and brutality like torturing Tibetan monks. Chinese citizens who live in an area affected by SARS or witnessed the torture of Tibetans but who have access to non-Beijing-controlled communication systems can then use such systems to spread the truth to other citizens. An example of a communication system is Windows Live Messenger (WLM).
Also communication systems like WLM enable folks trapped in tyrannical regimes to communicate with the outside world. The ability to communicate with Europeans is an important mechanism for spreading Western values -- human rights, democracies, and simple compassion -- into brutal societies.
When people hear the word, "cannibalism", they tend to become squeamish. They tend to associate the act with a distant time and a distant place.
Well, "cannibalism" still occurs in "modern" times. The most infamous incidents of cannibalism occurred in China from 1966 until 1976. According to a report by the "New York Times" in 1993, "At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over 'counterrevolutionaries,' the documents report. Government-run cafeterias are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have served human flesh to employees.
'There are many varieties of cannibalism,' declares one report, 'and among them are these: killing someone and making a late dinner of it, slicing off the meat and having a big party, dividing up the flesh so each person takes a large chunk home to boil, roasting the liver and eating it for its medicinal properties, and so on.'
The documents suggest that at least 137 people, and probably hundreds more, were eaten in Guangxi Province in southern China in the late 1960's. In most cases, many people ate the flesh of one corpse, so the number of cannibals may have numbered in the thousands."
According to a report by "Time Magazine" in 2001, "The atrocities took many forms, according to documents. One report refers to 'eating people as an after-dinner snack . ..barbecuing people's livers . ..banqueting on human meat.' The same document matter-of-factly relates specific tales of depravity. 'On May 14, 1968,' it says, 'a group of 11, led by the Wei brothers, captured a man named Chen Guorong and killed him with a big knife before cutting out his liver. They shared the human meat with 20 participants.' The same month Wu Shufang, a teacher at the Wuxuan Middle School, was beaten to death; her liver was roasted and eaten. During 1968, 91 members of the Communist Party in Guangxi were expelled on charges that they were involved in cannibalism, but none was severely punished."
To this day, some of the cannibals still hold political power in the Chinese government.
Has anyone noticed that the entire desktop market is now owned by the x86 architecture? It killed SPARC, PowerPC, Precision Architecture (PA), MIPS, and Alpha. PowerPC and SPARC held out until the very end about 2 years ago. Even they were shoved out of the market.
I literally cannot buy a non-x86 desktop or laptop even if I paid $5000.
In the early 1970s, who could have guessed that the great-great-great-grandson of the 4004 would dominate 100% of the desktop market and a sizeable chunk of the rest of the computing market?
Absence of a boss whose primary concern is his own promotion.
Absence of a boss who threatens you with loss of employment if you refuse to work more than 40 hours per week.
Absence of a boss who demands that you echo the party line. You are expected to say, "Yes. The API implementation that I received from department XYZ is wonderful." just because the department is managed by the girlfriend of the CEO.
Allowing the market to determine which newspaper survives the harsh economic climate will create survivors who are likely economically strong. That observation is precisely how a free market works.
The survivors are determined solely by market demand -- by what the consumer wants to read. What does the typical consumer want to read? Go to the local supermarket and behold the intellect of the typical consumer. He wants to read stuff like the "National Enquirer" and "Star".
If the 4th branch of government becomes only tabloids, what will happen to our American society? Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The real insight is that Microsoft is also skipping Vista. The new Windows 7 has a built-in virtual machine that emulates Windows XP. Windows 7 does not emulate Vista.
Why? Likely, the number of Windows-XP users is substantially larger than the number of Vista users. Sheer profit motivates Microsoft management to pursue the larger market: Windows-XP users.
Though "memcpy()" is slightly faster than "memmove()", the latter is safer.
As Windows products are now (and have been) mainstream products used extensively in banks and other financial institutions, reliability and security (RS) have prime importance. The speed that "memcpy()" gets you is not worth the price of reduced RS.
...only if the BIOS chip is replaceable.
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
This idea of putting Linux itself into the BIOS is okay if and only if the chip containing the BIOS is replaceable. In other words, the chip should not be soldered to the board.
Linux is significantly more complex than a normal BIOS and surely contains bugs. Patches will be needed on a regular basis, and the BIOS chip will need to be replaced several times per year.
Still, this ability to switch rapidly between operating systems may obsolete the need for a virtual Windows XP within Windows 7. Just install Windows 7 in parallel with Windows XP and let the BIOS switch back and forth as often as you need to do so.
Current market conditions forced the European Union (EU) to act. Within the past 2 years, the x86 architecture finally killed its last 2 competitors on the desktop. IBM stopped selling workstations based on the PowerPC, and Sun Microsystems stopped selling workstations based on the SPARC. Nowadays, when we talk about desktops, personal computers or workstations, we are talking about the x86.
In this scenario, the EU must take care to ensure that Intel's only other serious competitor, AMD, be given a fair playing field in which to compete. The multi-billion-dollar (trilion-dollar?) computing market ranging from netbooks to tower-stations depends on getting the best processor bang for the Euro.
jollyreaper wrote, "Kirk goes from being a cadet on probation to being given command of the Enterprise."
Movies just reflect the norms of society. Intellectualism is not important in American society. Actually learning something in high school is "un-cool". Today's high-school graduates do not know enough English and mathematics to enter college. Many college administrators lament that colleges must waste money and time on teaching its students what they should have learned in high school.
So, the typical American viewing this movie will not likely perceive any problem with a "cadet on probabtion... being given command of the Enterprise".
This anti-intellectualism also appeared in movies of decades past. Gene Siskel, the late critic who worked with Robert Ebert in "Siskel and Ebert at the Movies", noted that Richard Gere in the movie, "American Gigolo", committed an act of violence (of which the details, I can no longer remember) in high school. The movie presented the violence as a cool and wonderful thing. Siskel utterly hated this presentation. That was 1980.
Nearly 30 years later, anti-intellectualism in American society -- and the movies -- has only increased.
About 4 years have elapsed after the last episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise". Since that episode, no new television shows nor full-screen movies have appeared.
So, there is now plenty of pent-up demand for something -- anything -- related to "Star Trek". The appearance of Leonard Nimoy in the new movie will only make it even more rewarding to view. The best part of all is that the "Star Trek" prequel, unlike the first "Star Wars" prequel, is not specifically targetting a 6-year-old audience.
So, the new movie will easily meet the revenue milestone of $200 million.
Netbooks are increasing in popularity because they meet an often overlooked need: merely access to the Internet without being forced to pay for a lot of features that most people do not need. Technology has advanced so fast and so much that the hardware at a price point of $1000 provides features that most customers do not need. Most customers just want to exchange e-mail notes, surf the Web, and do some simple word processing. These tasks do not require a 3 gigahertz 64-bit x86 chip, 320 gigabytes of hard drive, etc. 95% of the functionality in Windows Vista -- and later, Windows 7 -- will likely be unused and un-noticed by most customers. The typical computer laptop nowadays is complete overkill for the simple things for which most customers use computers.
Note that millions of Americans are still using dialup.
The value of trademarks is psychological. Most people attribute value, warmth, and comfort to a name. Consider the name, "Toyota". Immediately, it engenders feelings of "high quality", "reliability", "lots of bang for the buck".
A while ago, the same factory produced a Toyota Corolla and a Geo Prizm. Chevrolet sold the Geo Prizm. Even though it was nearly identical to the Corolla, customers preferred the Corolla, and it had higher resale value than the Prizm.
Trademarks are important because the name itself -- a string of characters -- has financial value.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the article titled "The Ugly Side of Truth".
After the Kremlin exited Eastern Europe, the peoples of each nation in Eastern Europe rapidly established a genuine democracy and a free market. Except for Romania (where its people killed their dictator), there was no violence.
In Iran (and many other failed states), no external force is imposing the current brutal government on the Iranians. The folks running the government are Iranian. The president is Iranian. The secret police are Iranian. The thugs who will torture and kill democracy advocates are Iranian.
If the democracy advocates attempt to establish a genuine democracy in Iran, violence will occur. Why? A large percentage of the population supports the brutal government and will kill the democracy advocates.
Let us not merely condemn the Iranian government. We must condemn Iranian culture. Its product is the authoritarian state.
We should not intervene in the current crisis in Iran. If the overwhelming majority of Iranians (like the overwhelming majority of Poles) truly support democracy, human rights, and peace with Israel, then a liberal Western democracy will arise -- without any violence. Right now, the overwhelming majority clearly oppose the creation of a liberal Western democracy. The Iranians love a brutal Islamic theocracy.
The Iranians created this horrible society. It is none of our business unless they attempt to develop nuclear weapons. We in the West are morally justified in destroying the nuclear-weapons facilities.
Note that, 40 years ago, Vietnam suffered a worse fate (than the Iranians) at the hands of the Americans. They doused large areas of Vietnam with agent orange, poisoning both the land and the people. Yet, the Vietnamese do not channel their energies into seeking revenge (by, e. g., building a nuclear bomb) against the West. Rather, the Vietnamese are diligently modernizing their society. They will reach 1st-world status long before the Iranians.
Cultures are different. Vietnamese culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran. We should condemn Iranian culture and its people.
The Internet and the natural expectation (by the typical American) of "free" news have destroyed the economic model of newspapers. Here, "newspapers" refers to both print material and online material. We can expect a continued hollowing out of the investigative department of most newspapers.
There appear to be only 3 viable models for the future of newspapers. They are the following.
1. non-profit model. The newspaper operates like the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and receives donations and government funding. The danger in this model is that the ruling political party may withhold funding if a newspaper publishes a damaging story that ruins the career of a politician from that party.
2. public-service model. The newspaper is run as a public service by a non-profit organization or a for-profit business. The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is a good example of this model. The Christian Science church publishes the CSM as a public service. The CSM is quite good -- good enough for use by the Central Intelligence Agency to supplement its own political analyses of hotspots in the world.
3. endowment model. A rich person creates a billion-dollar fund. The interest payments from that fund then fund a particular newspaper.
Model #3 is the best. In it, external interference is minimal. Bias is least likely to enter into a story.
However, model #1 appears to be the one advocated by the AP. In effect, a newspapers' distributing the investigative stories of INPOs is equivalent to this model. The INPOs receive government funding and public donations. The INPOs then use the funds to do investigations, of which the results are fed to newspapers for distribution.
Curiously, Google management almost implemented model #2. There was talk of Google's buying a newspaper. It was likely the "New York Times".
All of this stuff is not merely idle talk for geeks on Slashdot on a Saturday afternoon. The fate of newspapers is vitally important to every Westerner. Newspapers have long served as the 4th branch of government. They are our eyes and ears in keeping us informed of the operation of our government. Without the in-depth investigative reports by newspapers, the voters would be ignorant. An ignorant public is the 1st step to the establishment of an authoritarian society.
1. solar power: more than 20 cents/kwh, 10 to 14 cents/kwh
2. wind power: 5 to 7 cents/kwh, 3 to 6 cents/kwh
3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh
Here, "wind power" refers to wind turbines on land. A wind turbine at sea would surely cost more than a land-based one.
In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.
We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".
Unlike a missile, a meteor has a predictable path of flight. Given the speed at which a meteor enters the earth's atmosphere, the typical meteor is white hot and should be easily detected by the infrared detector in these laser systems. An AMLS, with some slight modification for tracking a meteor, could easily blast it out of the sky.
When the overwhelming majority of people in a nation truly want democracy and human rights, the nation quickly and peacefully transforms into a liberal Western democracy. Case in point is Eastern Europe. Once the Kremlin ceased suppressing Eastern Europe, the Eastern Europeans peacefully and quickly transformed into liberal Western democracies. Except for Romania (where the dictator was killed), there was no bloodshed. There was no violence.
In the late 1980s, what was the strength of desire for creating Western democracies in Eastern Europe? Consider Czechoslovakia. In one day of 1989 November, about 800,000 people gathered in Prague and rallied for the creation of a Western democracy. 800,000 people is about 5% of the population.
By contrast, in one day of 1989 June, about 1 million people gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand the creation of a Western democracy. 1 million people is only 0.1 % of the Chinese population.
In other words, in the late 1980s, the strength of support for democracy in Eastern Europe was 50 times the strength in China.
I admire the Eastern Europeans.
China is what it is due to how the Chinese people act and think. No foreign power is imposing the CCP on China. The Chinese people support the CCP.
Though fetal stem cells (taken from aborted fetuses) may be useful for research, organs grown from them cause severe rejection in the recipient of the transplant.
The only way to overcome this rejection is to grow the organs from the adult stem cells taken from the recipient herself.
Suppose that this mouse is actually now sentient. Do we commit a crime when we imprison it in a laboratory or mangle its body (for the sake of some test)?
When we create chimera, we are playing god.
Other types of biofuel may be better than corn, but they have their problems too. According to a shocking report by "Time Magazine", "if the world gets even 10% of its energy from these new kinds of crops, most tropical forests will probably disappear."
Not surprisingly, lobbyists for American agribusiness are angry as hell about the conclusions of the EPA study.
Really, the best way to partially fix this nonsense is to make Iowa (and its corn farmers) the last state to participate in both the Republican primary and the Democratic primary. Due to the importance of Iowa as the first state in the presidential primaries (including caucuses), Iowan agribusiness has a stranglehold on American politics, and its politicians do stupid things (like supporting corn-based ethanol) in order to cater to Iowa.
Also, has anyone noticed that no one has mentioned the #1 reason for the growing energy problem and its associated pollution problem? The #1 reason is overpopulation. If we reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 3% over 10 years but increased the population by 3% over the same period across all nations, then we effectively accomplished nothing.
Can anyone guess why overpopulation is never mentioned by American politicians? Could the concept of overpopulation be too closely tied to illegal immigration?
timeOday is referring to Roxana Saberi. The Iranian government rarely acts appropriately, but in her case, it was 100% in the right in sentencing her to imprisonment.
The American media understandably presented her as an innocent victim. American journalists simply did not know that Roxana Saberi had taken -- without authorization -- top-secret military documents authored and owned by the Iranian government. Those documents assessed the Iraq War.
If a dual national had done the same thing in the USA, then Washington would have sent her to prison.
In the case of Roxana Saberi, Tehran was right to act. Washington was wrong to complain.
The American people were wrong to support Saberi. She made no attempt to rescind her Iranian citizenship while simultaneously holding American citizenship. Indeed, she used her Iranian citizenship to her advantage to get a job with the Iranian government.
Americans should not waste resources -- time, money, or lives -- in supporting a person who willfully exhibits divided loyalties.
At Microsoft, Tremblay joined the Strategic Software/Silicon Architectures team, nicknamed "SiArch".
Today's news that Microsoft will set a wattage limit on netbooks running the starter edition of Windows 7 clearly shows why Microsoft has an SiArch team and why Microsoft hires "processor" guys and gals. Only a team packed with "processor" experts can do the kinds of studies that are needed to determine what is a reasonable wattage to impose on netbooks.
Why must Microsoft spend several million dollars on a SiArch team to pick a simple wattage? Microsoft is facing severe competition from Linux at the low end.
If Microsoft picked a wattage that is too low, then the netbook manufacturers could not build such a system and would rebel -- right back into the arms of Linux. Microsoft absolutely needed to pick a realistic number.
Until April of 2008, Linux owned the majority of the netbook market. Then, Microsoft submitted its Windows XP to that market and quickly seized 90% of it. Microsoft wants to keep that market share. So, if Microsoft wants to impose hardware restrictions on netbooks, Microsoft will ensure that those hardware restrictions are reasonable.
Compare China today to China before 1980. The difference is night and day. China is freer today because trade injected numerous Western ideas into the country.
For that same reason, the economic sanctions against Burma starve its people of Western ideas.
Trade and communications are the best weapons against tyrannical regimes.
Also communication systems like WLM enable folks trapped in tyrannical regimes to communicate with the outside world. The ability to communicate with Europeans is an important mechanism for spreading Western values -- human rights, democracies, and simple compassion -- into brutal societies.
Well, "cannibalism" still occurs in "modern" times. The most infamous incidents of cannibalism occurred in China from 1966 until 1976. According to a report by the "New York Times" in 1993, "At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over 'counterrevolutionaries,' the documents report. Government-run cafeterias are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have served human flesh to employees.
'There are many varieties of cannibalism,' declares one report, 'and among them are these: killing someone and making a late dinner of it, slicing off the meat and having a big party, dividing up the flesh so each person takes a large chunk home to boil, roasting the liver and eating it for its medicinal properties, and so on.'
The documents suggest that at least 137 people, and probably hundreds more, were eaten in Guangxi Province in southern China in the late 1960's. In most cases, many people ate the flesh of one corpse, so the number of cannibals may have numbered in the thousands."
According to a report by "Time Magazine" in 2001, "The atrocities took many forms, according to documents. One report refers to 'eating people as an after-dinner snack . . .barbecuing people's livers . . .banqueting on human meat.' The same document matter-of-factly relates specific tales of depravity. 'On May 14, 1968,' it says, 'a group of 11, led by the Wei brothers, captured a man named Chen Guorong and killed him with a big knife before cutting out his liver. They shared the human meat with 20 participants.' The same month Wu Shufang, a teacher at the Wuxuan Middle School, was beaten to death; her liver was roasted and eaten. During 1968, 91 members of the Communist Party in Guangxi were expelled on charges that they were involved in cannibalism, but none was severely punished."
To this day, some of the cannibals still hold political power in the Chinese government.
I literally cannot buy a non-x86 desktop or laptop even if I paid $5000.
In the early 1970s, who could have guessed that the great-great-great-grandson of the 4004 would dominate 100% of the desktop market and a sizeable chunk of the rest of the computing market?
The survivors are determined solely by market demand -- by what the consumer wants to read. What does the typical consumer want to read? Go to the local supermarket and behold the intellect of the typical consumer. He wants to read stuff like the "National Enquirer" and "Star".
If the 4th branch of government becomes only tabloids, what will happen to our American society? Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Why? Likely, the number of Windows-XP users is substantially larger than the number of Vista users. Sheer profit motivates Microsoft management to pursue the larger market: Windows-XP users.
As Windows products are now (and have been) mainstream products used extensively in banks and other financial institutions, reliability and security (RS) have prime importance. The speed that "memcpy()" gets you is not worth the price of reduced RS.
Linux is significantly more complex than a normal BIOS and surely contains bugs. Patches will be needed on a regular basis, and the BIOS chip will need to be replaced several times per year.
Still, this ability to switch rapidly between operating systems may obsolete the need for a virtual Windows XP within Windows 7. Just install Windows 7 in parallel with Windows XP and let the BIOS switch back and forth as often as you need to do so.
In this scenario, the EU must take care to ensure that Intel's only other serious competitor, AMD, be given a fair playing field in which to compete. The multi-billion-dollar (trilion-dollar?) computing market ranging from netbooks to tower-stations depends on getting the best processor bang for the Euro.
Movies just reflect the norms of society. Intellectualism is not important in American society. Actually learning something in high school is "un-cool". Today's high-school graduates do not know enough English and mathematics to enter college. Many college administrators lament that colleges must waste money and time on teaching its students what they should have learned in high school.
So, the typical American viewing this movie will not likely perceive any problem with a "cadet on probabtion ... being given command of the Enterprise".
This anti-intellectualism also appeared in movies of decades past. Gene Siskel, the late critic who worked with Robert Ebert in "Siskel and Ebert at the Movies", noted that Richard Gere in the movie, "American Gigolo", committed an act of violence (of which the details, I can no longer remember) in high school. The movie presented the violence as a cool and wonderful thing. Siskel utterly hated this presentation. That was 1980.
Nearly 30 years later, anti-intellectualism in American society -- and the movies -- has only increased.
So, there is now plenty of pent-up demand for something -- anything -- related to "Star Trek". The appearance of Leonard Nimoy in the new movie will only make it even more rewarding to view. The best part of all is that the "Star Trek" prequel, unlike the first "Star Wars" prequel, is not specifically targetting a 6-year-old audience.
So, the new movie will easily meet the revenue milestone of $200 million.
"Scott, beam me into the movie theater!"
Note that millions of Americans are still using dialup.
A while ago, the same factory produced a Toyota Corolla and a Geo Prizm. Chevrolet sold the Geo Prizm. Even though it was nearly identical to the Corolla, customers preferred the Corolla, and it had higher resale value than the Prizm.
Trademarks are important because the name itself -- a string of characters -- has financial value.