I'd rather say it has more to do with the sleazy tactics of the parent company (which is what the comment about discouragement is alluding to)... and that the company isn't doing its part to make sure the patches aren't fucking legitimate (this is Mafia Wars, so I use that term loosely) users in the ass with a big rubber dick. Ironically, the game itself is actually designed to do just that.:)
You make an excellent point, even if it comes off a little snarky.:)
"And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." (Matt 6:40)
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." (Luke 6:35)
"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea though he be a stranger, or a sojourner, that he may live with thee." (Lev. 25:35)
None of that precludes punishment for success, but it does lay the boundaries for what and how success can be attained, as well as how you view success and treat your fellow man once you are successful. (Rich young ruler, etc... good parables.)
It's his philosophy. Sort of like people who only drive Fords or eat at one place (only much deeper-seated). Stallman's not about to "compromise" (for lack of a better term) his principles that he bases his life and work on. If that is a bother to those in the community, there exist alternatives to simply following something you don't believe in. I admire Stallman for not compromising his principles. I do not disparage people who criticize Stallman's views (unless it's a bunch of fanboi tripe). His philosophy sometimes conflicts with other models, or even other ways of doing business, but like all visionary folks, sometimes that's not such a bad thing in the long run.
While that is indeed true (megachurches are obscenely wealthy), for every megachurch, there exist tons of poor churches (inner-city, rural, etc.) that do not have two nickels to rub together, much less money to have TV equipment and fancy light-shows. Yet they provide a necessary and valuable service to their community through outreach, soup-kitchens, etc. The megachurches are simply monuments to a pastor or denomination's ego. It's funny how the megachurches are missing the point of the Christian principle of helping those in need, and the shunning of personal wealth and overt consumption. (but that's for another thread...)
So I propose the same tax system we have for Income tax (federal at least). If the church brings in over a certain amount, their tax rate is X. For those churches that scrape by in poor neighborhoods, let them get their money back after filing. Of course, like income tax on individuals, this is ripe for abuse, but since we have IRS auditors, that shouldn't be too much of a problem to audit churches. (Of course we'd need to reform that whole private books thing...) I cite the recent Senate inquiries into Kenneth Copeland's monstrous ministry, one that REALLY seems to be a church based around the mission to make the Copeland's rich. (He, and the ministry, refused to release financial records to the feds... even though most of his contemporaries did so without incident.) The whole lot of the "name it-claim it" denomination are nothing more than modern day Pharisees. (but that's for another thread too..heh.)
OR, we could simply get property taxes from them... and mega-churches would be, by their very location/size, on the hook for more taxes than the 1st Street Missionary Baptist Temple that sits next to a vacant lot full of rubble in a distressed part of the city (hypothetical, but representative of many small neighborhood churches.)
I prefer the latter, myself. Taxing donations seems like it could be ripe for taxing ALL non-profits, and though some are scams, the legitimate ones who do good in their respective communities (including churches) would take a revenue hit they can ill afford even in good times, much less in the current craptacular economic situation.:)
While I agree news is turning into crap these days, it is still cyclical. "Yellow Journalism" is not new, and we can remember back as far as the Spanish-American War ("Remember the Maine!" and the rest of that quote being "to Hell with Spain!") that news was manufactured with great success. There was a period where news became unemotional and almost robotic, with Murrow, Cronkite, and others like them taking emotion (or at least most of it) from reporting. But as the pendulum swings (and we have more and more outlets competing for the same sets of eyes/ears), we return to sensationalist news and fearmongering that has always been just below (or right on top of) the surface of our news diet. Just look at the amount of "Celebrity Gossip" shows and such that exist today. It sells... Which is a shame.
We've always had idiots, and LOTS of them, but with the advent of Twitter and high-speed internet, they're no longer someone else's problem.:) It's like replacing the bulb in a dingy basement. Sometimes it is best just to leave the bulb burnt out.:-)
Still a lot safer than that reddest of cities, Dallas, in that reddest of states, Texas.
Citations, please... I'd venture to say, you've not been to Dallas (perhaps not recently), but since it's in a "red" state, some folks consider it automagically worse off than the "blue" states, by their very nature. Must be all the guns, right? (I live in Dallas, btw, and do NOT feel that it is less safe than Detroit or Seattle... I'm a little confused, did you mean Detroit or Seattle in that pronouncement?) I've been to NYC, though... meh. It has a faint smell of, I don't know what... old perhaps? I can't put my finger on it... (Let's not even talk about the smells coming from Jersey...)
That being said... I still often wonder why we aren't scrutinizing Olbermann and the like, because I've attempted a time or two to fact-check his (and Maddow's) assertions, and quite frankly, I've come up short in many ways, because of the subtle way he (like Glenn Beck and his pals) phrases things and paints the background information for you. I can't quite nail down the particulars, at least not the last time I tried. Heck, Maddow cited a movie as proof Republicans were union-busters (nice segue, but it didn't prove her point, and it made her look stupid, IMHO.) She has a knack for sarcasm that few men have, and I guess that appeals to some people, but it's not quite got the bite she thinks it does (that's just me of course.)
I blame the corporatizing (is that even a word?) of the news. This lends itself to many an also-ran to counter the opposition's previous also-ran, and it frankly stinks on both sides. We are quick to smack the right-wing side because they happen to hold the highest # of eyeballs in the ratings race (at the moment), but it's both sides squeezing the life out of actual debate and reasoned thought. Our politicians wage soundbite wars over issues that really have no bearing on the day-to-day life of Americans, but it sells newspapers/commercial time. The politicians are no better than the pundits in regards to manipulating the discourse to favor fast quotes and "for the children" or "remember 9/11" style quips and proclamations.
We need to turn them off... ALL of them... and start watching our news more carefully (that is letting go of CNN/FoxNews/and the network goons.) If we ignore them, they will get louder for a time, but they also will have to figure out why we left... and let's give them something to think about for a change. Because remember, even though some of us love Keith and Rachel, they're attached to a corporate entity that wants to fuck our internet in the ass(metaphorically, and sometimes literally), and wants to take our fair-use rights and flush them like yesterday's goulash. They _are_ the enemy. We need to remember that "they" isn't a political side, but ALL corporatist morons in the media...
What THEY do with their email back to me is THEIR business. The email that leaves MY machine is open. If they want it encrypted, then they can ask me and I will. But if not, it's not worth the effort. Learn to read.
I actually enjoyed the latest film as well. I reserve my hatred for what Michael Baysplosion has done to Transformers. The funny thing is, most of the "Terminator 1 and 2" purists are either unintentionally (or intentionally) whitewashing the plot holes from the first two films (3 was a plothole in itself... heh), and the Spielberg sized plot holes in Terminator:Salvation were about as acceptable as any in a rather complex universe (with time travel, reboots, etc.) The first two films contradicted one another (I don't care how you squint, the T1000 going back in time was a bit of a stretch). Even if you buy into the plausibility that the events of the first film are the catalyst for the 2nd, it stands to reason the future being altered enough that "the machines didn't get John/Sarah" wasn't a hindrance to the future development of Skynet (after the end of 2, we thought it was a whole new ballgame.. or so we were led to believe), and it actually _enhanced_ the time portal, if you believe T2's premise of the returning terminators.
Perhaps I'm over-analyzing, but shit, that's how nerds do it... particularly sci-fi nerds.:-) (I mean, I've been having an ongoing discussion at lunch regarding fast v. slow zombies...) For the record, I think any turned undead (i.e. not rising from the graves) can be fast, depending upon the circumstances they had in life (i.e. Roseanne Barr is not going to suddenly be Carl Lewis when she gets bitten...) Yes, this sort of nonsense makes for great conversation over a microwave burrito.:) And yes, I'm aware George Romero believes all zombies to be slow, shambling, husks... I just don't agree with him 100%.
I didn't say I didn't give a fuck about privacy. I applaud the defenders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I said *I* didn't care if people read MY emails. I didn't say *I* didn't care if PEOPLE read ALL emails, now did I? Learn to read and stop making assumptions. Context is important.
I think the author is confusing the "endpoints" with the "pipes" (for lack of a better analogy). The endpoints (websites, stores, blogs, etc.) NEVER have to be neutral, and by their very nature can exclude anyone and everyone (if they so choose.) The pipes ( bandwidth providers) can (and should) be neutral because to get to the endpoint of my choosing, I should not be hampered by one Pipe's desire for me to head to a different endpoint on the internet. It'd be like having a special 4-lane highway for red cars, and all other cars have to use a 2-lane gravel former logging road to get to town.
I don't think the key here is "reading" emails from snooping and that sort of thing... It's more along the lines of the 4th Amendment's protection of being "secure in one's papers." I don't use PGP (I don't give a fuck if people read what I send in email, but that's just me), but I can see where something can go VERY wrong for someone when Law Enforcement simply doesn't abide by the Constitutional Liberty we're all supposedly "guaranteed" (these days that guarantee's pretty fucking nebulous, I admit.... thank you expansive, invasive, pervasive Fedgov.) And the courts complicity in the matter makes it much harder to provide an adequate defense of whatever charge prompted law enforcement to ass-rape a particular person's 4th Amendment protections in the first place.
That's not to say I am endorsing everyone encrypt everything so they can hide their nefarious dealings from law enforcement because one judge has no concept of the 4th Amendment, but I am saying that these sorts of weird nibbles at the fringes of things we do as citizens on a daily basis really makes me think it's more indicative of the greater (and MUCH more worrisome) erosion of personal liberty in the "post 9/11 world" (I contend that it has been going on for many decades, thanks to the War on Drugs, and such... but most people like to use 9/11 as their tipping point... as long as they realize it's something that should bother them greatly, I don't nitpick.) I am not pleased that the Fedgov is grasping at power like a giant scoop, eroding the foundations of liberty we enjoyed (at least at one time), while simultaneously bankrupting us so our country basically feels strapped to the hood of the car careening off the cliff.)
If people just remember this judge's "unique" concept isn't as isolated or erroneous as it may seem, and we might just get something positive from the whole thing... Then I remember most citizens of the United States are collective knuckle-dragging morons, and I fear for the future of the Great Experiment...
It's a bit late, but I should point out that the Patriot Act has not been repealed, the warrantless wiretaps are defended (to the point of absurdity) by the current administration, Guantanamo is still open, Afghanistan is now his problem and he is treating it just like Shrub treated Iraq for years, and he's mucking with "stimulus" that does not, cannot, and will not do anything to help the economy, which is still sliding...(the bulk of the "stimulus" is coming 2010... nice "quick turnaround" there...) And the "Open and Transparent" government promised on many a platform during the election has not even come CLOSE to materializing.
So, If you believe those to be "okay", and not "more of the same" from the one-party system we are under (left, right, give me a break... there IS no more delineation), then you ARE part of the problem, just like I've said in other threads...
I criticized Shrub, and I am criticizing Obama... not for stupid reasons like "birth certificate" or his religious/non-religious ties, but SPECIFIC things that he said he would do and HAS NOT DONE. (yet he has time to go on 22 fundraisers in only 11 months in office... contrast that with shrub's 6 his first year.) The funny thing is, the people who see the problems for what they are now ARE labeled as "nuts" "birthers" and other nonsense by the media and left-wing apologists (there IS a left/right wing on TV... but for the life of me I can't figure out why...) When Obama fixes all those problems (and stops benefiting from Shrub's expansion of executive powers)... I'll believe he's "different". Right now, his "change" is merely a name on the door. I do NOT support the expansion of the Federal Government, and no sane American should either. Still, nothing has changed, and the government is STILL fucking us in the ass and raping the Constitution. If you can't see that, you're the hypocrite, or at the very least, a blind follower of Saint Obama.
I believe VERY strongly the government is NEVER the answer to our problems, and more government means less freedom. I have for many years, but until recently, there haven't been enough people like me pissed off enough to even get a minor blurb in the press. (Ross Perot did NOT count as a viable third party candidate...) The Repubs and the Dems are doing their damnedest to make fucking sure we don't have a viable alternative. Groening was right... "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" is about all we're going to get until we WAKE THE FUCK UP and realize the "two" party system has failed us. We need another party that remembers what the Constitution means, and remembers that Freedom, above all else, is the reason we wake up in the morning. There's a line in the sand... and unfortunately for the Obama supporters, Barak's STILL on the wrong side of it. Shout louder, because he can't hear you sitting behind the stacks of money...
No, what he's saying is that most critcism of his ideas have been, and unfortunately continue to be of the knee-jerk "love it or leave it" crowd who consider any critical assessment of the current government situation in the US to be unpatriotic and slander. That should shock you as much as it does me. The ACTA treaty shenanigans simply illustrate quite clearly we the people are no longer the boss. It's been that way for decades, but we're getting the bitter pill of the results of that coup only in the last decade or so. It was slow, deliberate, insidious, and illegal... yet we're stuck at the moment. If that's not frustrating to you, you're part of the problem.
I'd say so.:) Not sure why I was modded flamebait. It's pretty fucking obvious what Murdoch and company are doing to the world's discourse. On the right side we've FoxNews... and on the left side, we've got Keith "I used to be a sports announcer" Olbermann and Rachel Maddow providing many time as their "proof", movie clips. (I shit you not... they justified a certain senator's "union busting" ideology with a clip from a MOVIE.... is that insane or what?) There's no more room for intelligent discourse these days. I blame 24hr news as a profit-making venture. You have to attract the eyes and ears, and what better way than with shrill controversy or stirring up the same with hyperbole and playing fast and loose with the facts.
Still, there must be some Murdochites still lurking about on slashdot.:) I'm a libertarian... I hate both sides of this corporate shitstorm equally.
I'd venture to say he's trying to create a groundswell of idiots to help get some restrictions put on how things are disseminated (at least in the US)... but I don't know if he's just doing this to be a prick. Sometimes we mistake prick-ness for shrewd behavior.:-) Regardless of his motives, I hope at some point a popular tech-savvy person will verbally smack him down in the public space...
I understand your point, but I think in terms of how things actually play out on the world stage, the policy of making it much more costly for the enemy to engage us is the appropriate response. The problem is, we don't do that effectively (as a nation). The "you kill 1 of us, we kill 10 of you" mantra is all bluster in terms of our policy, and I think that's why we see the results being less than optimal (i.e. the talk doesn't match the actions.) If a purely economic solution was even remotely possible to solve these situations, I'd be the first to back it (I am not a chickenhawk warmonger...) but I see futility in just about every piecemeal approach we've taken even in the last decade, and it's getting both embarrassing and frustrating.
In a perfect world, I would back the obvious logical approach to these sorts of modern conflicts, but these days, it just doesn't work (sort of like talking the talk, but not walking the walk... which has been our policy since the end of WW2.)
Perhaps division isn't the right word, and your gun analogy isn't even close to how Sony operates (or any large conglomerate does for that matter). Comparing Sony to Microsoft doesn't illustrate effectively how the company's laid out. (Sony music is partially owned by Bertlesmann (sp?) so you KNOW where that rootkit came from initially). Sony makes devices to copy music, yet their music division actively tries to prevent that. They make DVD writers, but they have a movie arm that tries to prevent copying of DVD movies. that's different than MSFT (mostly in scale, but also on hierarchy), but even if it were just a larger version of MSFT, you can't say (with a straight face) the Windows division has control and say over how the keys get laid out on the hardware side of MSFT... which is what you're implying with the rootkit. You're implying that because the banner of "Sony" covers both, SCEA had something to do with compromising your windows box. That is absurd.
Yes, buying a PS3 can "enable" Sony music (indirectly) to root windows computers still, but the same holds true for buying a MSFT mouse "enabling" MSFT to ass-rape you with a shitty OS. Life's too short to worry about this sort of thing, which is why I stopped using Windows years ago. But you can have the company be dead to you, no argument from me. What I take issue with is the blanket statement trying to connect two wildly different things (and disparate parts of the company) as a reason to hate an entity. It undermines your position, IMHO.
What I work on is something I am not at liberty to discuss either (go figure), but 10 devices, yes, is no big deal even in Visual Basic. But like I said, YMMV, and for our purposes, LV fits the bill nicely. And has (at least for the company I work for) for decades. I didn't choose LV, rather I inherited lots of LV apps for controlling the myriad of internally built and COTS devices we use every day for analysis and data collection.
When it fails to solve the data flow dependency, then timing of data copying operations becomes arbitrary with respect to the sequence of block/sub-vi invocation
I can see where that'd be frustrating (happens to me too from time to time... context switching language paradigms isn't as quick as it used to be for me...) But there are a myriad of ways to make sure that doesn't happen in LV... (some more intuitive than others) but I admit they're esoteric depending upon how you handle your optimization (LV's parallel execution can frustrate from time to time without a nudge here or there...)
In this case, merely moving one block or sub-vi can change the actual data flow in the vi, without changing the diagam's implied data flow at all
That's because (I suspect) LV diagrams are not meant to be "WYSIWYG" in terms of how they're laid out. LV doesn't respect where you put things on the diagram, so you're basically free to make it do loop-de-loops without any consideration for most folks' left to right top to bottom (or vice versa) way of reading things. The Dataflow paradigm can feel like it's getting in the way, and even if you use references or locals, judicious planning can prevent the parallelism in LV from making your diagram do something it wasn't meant to do. (like anything else, it takes practice and I can assure you I am no expert at it.) Relying solely on how it is laid out on the diagram would be a nice feature, but I figure it'd overly restrict how you could use certain constructs and it most likely would feel less intuitive if you had to worry about the placement of indicators and controls. I can remember triggering two digitizers and thinking LV's parallelism would handle the triggers in such a way as to work the collection at the same time simply by putting the flow of each on top of the other. I was wrong heheh. That was a head-scratcher, but thank God for GPIB analyzers.:)
I agree LV isn't perfect, but I contend it has a place even in large-scale work in DAQ and analysis/communication. In your case it wasn't the best choice, and from the sound of it, it really wasn't.:) I wish I could go into detail w/r/t some of your criticisms, but it would reveal too much about what I do and I cannot do that for obvious reasons. I think it would be an interesting discussion.. because I am always looking for new ways to solve problems.
Suffice to say, like C or C++, LV gives an engineer enough rope to hang himself. But if you're diligent, keep your design clean and follow the Dataflow paradigm (not to a level of absurdity that would choke the life out of your design), LV can fit the bill nicely. Always? No. No language is a one-size-fits-all solution to any problem. I pretty much loathe other types of graphical programming and did for many years even when I started using LV in earnest for development. (I actually suffered through HPVee..)
Wrong division of Sony. SCEA isn't in the business of root-kitting PCs, since that's the other division. It's like blaming Microsoft Windows division for a shitty mouse. This sounds like a tempest in a teapot, since we've seen the same issue with Nintendo recently and somehow, some way, I'm sure there's going to be a class-action suit for that as well. This is nowhere CLOSE to the RRoD that plagues Microsoft to this day, or the infamous "Fall update" that bricked supposedly "thousands" of 360's...
But it's fashionable to bash Sony because they're "Teh suck" right now.
Having used LabVIEW for about 15 years now, I can safely say that it ain't all that bad. The diagrams are intuitive, and for what it does, it does well. Doing a Diff is as simple as using the "compare" tool in LV itself. (It even circles the differences for you...) It doesn't replace python for my text manipulation and other quick turnaround code, and LV CERTAINLY doesn't replace C for the good stuff. (I prefer Vi, but I can use emacs just as well..) It pays not to be pigeon-holed.:)
Is it perfect? Far from it.:) It's got its quirks (what language doesn't?) But for rapid complex data analysis, I've not found much that'll beat it on speed (you could always spend the day writing Matlab, I suppose...)
Version management requires a separate tool (we use Clearcase here), and if you're having trouble reading code diagrams, perhaps you need more instruction on how LabVIEW works. I have no trouble reading other people's VIs, understanding the inputs and outputs, and the logic flow. The data-flow paradigm is easy to dismiss as junk, but once you get a handle on it.. it is as intuitive as breathing when you're writing a VI to control a device (or 10).:) it just sounds like you don't like LabVIEW because it's graphical (I had the same prejudice when I started using it), but taking the time to master it means you can write just about anything with it... and that's the mark of a good language.
You forgot the different freakin' cables Nintendo uses to charge their portable devices. Between the revisions, the cable connectors CHANGED, but the voltage did not. Why? I can't really figure that out. The PSP-Go isn't for current PSP owners. It's for iPod Touch and other users who don't already HAVE a PSP. The marketing has been lackluster (what else do we expect from Sony's marketing?) but the key isn't whether or not all the PSP owners are going to get a Go. It's whether NEW people get a Go.
You can still play UMD games on the PSP, and there are still PSP 3000's (and many used ones) in the pipe. I think people are missing the point. Will I buy one? No, I have a PSP already. But people pissing on the PSPGo are missing the other companies who are doing worse in the way of "feature robbing" (Apple/Nintendo, etc) and getting not only a free pass, but unmitigated praise. Must be the "blame Sony" generation... like the last few have been "Blame Sega" (rightly or wrongly, Sony and Sega deserve criticism, but not the vitriol from the anti-fanboys we see now...)
I own a PS3... love the thing. They have made mistakes, but no one is mistake free this generation. (Or last generation... or the generation before that...)
When IE and Windows Media Player were doing these kinds of things in Windows 9x, everyone howled, yet at least Windows Media Player doesn't embed itself in the startup registry where everyday users can't remove it. iTunes does.
Nah, that's just for Moviemaker. And WMP DRM libraries...:)
While I admit everything's conjecture when discussing these issues (I have a launch 20GB, and it still works... I am however on my 4th 360), we have to put it in perspective. From the article, it appears this issue affected 60GB PS3's mostly (or nearly all, no one's that specific). Unlike the 360 (which ALL models were at one time affected), a bad batch of a certain model (or a bad model) isn't indicative of a generally failed hardware design like it is on the 360. The 360 wasn't simply "poorly soldered". It was poorly designed. I think if we admit that, we can continue with the discussion sans fanboyism.:) I know... 99% of the comments will be superbly anti-Sony and the rebuttals will be scathingly anti-Microsoft... but this is slashdot after all.:) I am not decrying the 360's game selection, its online component, its color choices, or anything of the sort. I am simply acknowledging (as others in the industry have already done, including former Microsoft folks) that the 360 was rushed and the design suffered, and rather than fix the design flaw, Microsoft chose to fix it in "post" and take the hit, rather than not beat Sony out of the gate this generation.
I can safely say that Sony did do a fairly good job this hardware cycle and Microsoft might want to license someone else to design their boxes next go round. (Toshiba perhaps? *grin*)
I think the "big net" to subpoena these commenters' identities is a bit disturbing. If I call someone a flaming douche online, it's my opinion. The line separating opinion from slander/libel is becoming blurred because of overt Political Correctness and otherwise rational people being whiny "victims" if it means spanking someone (legally). Like a schoolyard fight trying to get the last "lick" in.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather say it has more to do with the sleazy tactics of the parent company (which is what the comment about discouragement is alluding to)... and that the company isn't doing its part to make sure the patches aren't fucking legitimate (this is Mafia Wars, so I use that term loosely) users in the ass with a big rubber dick. Ironically, the game itself is actually designed to do just that. :)
You make an excellent point, even if it comes off a little snarky. :)
"And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." (Matt 6:40)
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." (Luke 6:35)
"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea though he be a stranger, or a sojourner, that he may live with thee." (Lev. 25:35)
None of that precludes punishment for success, but it does lay the boundaries for what and how success can be attained, as well as how you view success and treat your fellow man once you are successful. (Rich young ruler, etc... good parables.)
It's his philosophy. Sort of like people who only drive Fords or eat at one place (only much deeper-seated). Stallman's not about to "compromise" (for lack of a better term) his principles that he bases his life and work on. If that is a bother to those in the community, there exist alternatives to simply following something you don't believe in. I admire Stallman for not compromising his principles. I do not disparage people who criticize Stallman's views (unless it's a bunch of fanboi tripe). His philosophy sometimes conflicts with other models, or even other ways of doing business, but like all visionary folks, sometimes that's not such a bad thing in the long run.
While that is indeed true (megachurches are obscenely wealthy), for every megachurch, there exist tons of poor churches (inner-city, rural, etc.) that do not have two nickels to rub together, much less money to have TV equipment and fancy light-shows. Yet they provide a necessary and valuable service to their community through outreach, soup-kitchens, etc. The megachurches are simply monuments to a pastor or denomination's ego. It's funny how the megachurches are missing the point of the Christian principle of helping those in need, and the shunning of personal wealth and overt consumption. (but that's for another thread...)
:)
So I propose the same tax system we have for Income tax (federal at least). If the church brings in over a certain amount, their tax rate is X. For those churches that scrape by in poor neighborhoods, let them get their money back after filing. Of course, like income tax on individuals, this is ripe for abuse, but since we have IRS auditors, that shouldn't be too much of a problem to audit churches. (Of course we'd need to reform that whole private books thing...) I cite the recent Senate inquiries into Kenneth Copeland's monstrous ministry, one that REALLY seems to be a church based around the mission to make the Copeland's rich. (He, and the ministry, refused to release financial records to the feds... even though most of his contemporaries did so without incident.) The whole lot of the "name it-claim it" denomination are nothing more than modern day Pharisees. (but that's for another thread too..heh.)
OR, we could simply get property taxes from them... and mega-churches would be, by their very location/size, on the hook for more taxes than the 1st Street Missionary Baptist Temple that sits next to a vacant lot full of rubble in a distressed part of the city (hypothetical, but representative of many small neighborhood churches.)
I prefer the latter, myself. Taxing donations seems like it could be ripe for taxing ALL non-profits, and though some are scams, the legitimate ones who do good in their respective communities (including churches) would take a revenue hit they can ill afford even in good times, much less in the current craptacular economic situation.
While I agree news is turning into crap these days, it is still cyclical. "Yellow Journalism" is not new, and we can remember back as far as the Spanish-American War ("Remember the Maine!" and the rest of that quote being "to Hell with Spain!") that news was manufactured with great success. There was a period where news became unemotional and almost robotic, with Murrow, Cronkite, and others like them taking emotion (or at least most of it) from reporting. But as the pendulum swings (and we have more and more outlets competing for the same sets of eyes/ears), we return to sensationalist news and fearmongering that has always been just below (or right on top of) the surface of our news diet. Just look at the amount of "Celebrity Gossip" shows and such that exist today. It sells... Which is a shame.
:) It's like replacing the bulb in a dingy basement. Sometimes it is best just to leave the bulb burnt out. :-)
We've always had idiots, and LOTS of them, but with the advent of Twitter and high-speed internet, they're no longer someone else's problem.
Still a lot safer than that reddest of cities, Dallas, in that reddest of states, Texas.
Citations, please... I'd venture to say, you've not been to Dallas (perhaps not recently), but since it's in a "red" state, some folks consider it automagically worse off than the "blue" states, by their very nature. Must be all the guns, right? (I live in Dallas, btw, and do NOT feel that it is less safe than Detroit or Seattle... I'm a little confused, did you mean Detroit or Seattle in that pronouncement?) I've been to NYC, though... meh. It has a faint smell of, I don't know what... old perhaps? I can't put my finger on it... (Let's not even talk about the smells coming from Jersey...)
That being said... I still often wonder why we aren't scrutinizing Olbermann and the like, because I've attempted a time or two to fact-check his (and Maddow's) assertions, and quite frankly, I've come up short in many ways, because of the subtle way he (like Glenn Beck and his pals) phrases things and paints the background information for you. I can't quite nail down the particulars, at least not the last time I tried. Heck, Maddow cited a movie as proof Republicans were union-busters (nice segue, but it didn't prove her point, and it made her look stupid, IMHO.) She has a knack for sarcasm that few men have, and I guess that appeals to some people, but it's not quite got the bite she thinks it does (that's just me of course.)
I blame the corporatizing (is that even a word?) of the news. This lends itself to many an also-ran to counter the opposition's previous also-ran, and it frankly stinks on both sides. We are quick to smack the right-wing side because they happen to hold the highest # of eyeballs in the ratings race (at the moment), but it's both sides squeezing the life out of actual debate and reasoned thought. Our politicians wage soundbite wars over issues that really have no bearing on the day-to-day life of Americans, but it sells newspapers/commercial time. The politicians are no better than the pundits in regards to manipulating the discourse to favor fast quotes and "for the children" or "remember 9/11" style quips and proclamations.
We need to turn them off... ALL of them... and start watching our news more carefully (that is letting go of CNN/FoxNews/and the network goons.) If we ignore them, they will get louder for a time, but they also will have to figure out why we left... and let's give them something to think about for a change. Because remember, even though some of us love Keith and Rachel, they're attached to a corporate entity that wants to fuck our internet in the ass(metaphorically, and sometimes literally), and wants to take our fair-use rights and flush them like yesterday's goulash. They _are_ the enemy. We need to remember that "they" isn't a political side, but ALL corporatist morons in the media...
What THEY do with their email back to me is THEIR business. The email that leaves MY machine is open. If they want it encrypted, then they can ask me and I will. But if not, it's not worth the effort. Learn to read.
It's pretty simple, really.
I actually enjoyed the latest film as well. I reserve my hatred for what Michael Baysplosion has done to Transformers. The funny thing is, most of the "Terminator 1 and 2" purists are either unintentionally (or intentionally) whitewashing the plot holes from the first two films (3 was a plothole in itself... heh), and the Spielberg sized plot holes in Terminator:Salvation were about as acceptable as any in a rather complex universe (with time travel, reboots, etc.) The first two films contradicted one another (I don't care how you squint, the T1000 going back in time was a bit of a stretch). Even if you buy into the plausibility that the events of the first film are the catalyst for the 2nd, it stands to reason the future being altered enough that "the machines didn't get John/Sarah" wasn't a hindrance to the future development of Skynet (after the end of 2, we thought it was a whole new ballgame.. or so we were led to believe), and it actually _enhanced_ the time portal, if you believe T2's premise of the returning terminators.
:-) (I mean, I've been having an ongoing discussion at lunch regarding fast v. slow zombies...) For the record, I think any turned undead (i.e. not rising from the graves) can be fast, depending upon the circumstances they had in life (i.e. Roseanne Barr is not going to suddenly be Carl Lewis when she gets bitten...) Yes, this sort of nonsense makes for great conversation over a microwave burrito. :) And yes, I'm aware George Romero believes all zombies to be slow, shambling, husks... I just don't agree with him 100%.
Perhaps I'm over-analyzing, but shit, that's how nerds do it... particularly sci-fi nerds.
I didn't say I didn't give a fuck about privacy. I applaud the defenders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I said *I* didn't care if people read MY emails. I didn't say *I* didn't care if PEOPLE read ALL emails, now did I? Learn to read and stop making assumptions. Context is important.
I think the author is confusing the "endpoints" with the "pipes" (for lack of a better analogy). The endpoints (websites, stores, blogs, etc.) NEVER have to be neutral, and by their very nature can exclude anyone and everyone (if they so choose.) The pipes ( bandwidth providers) can (and should) be neutral because to get to the endpoint of my choosing, I should not be hampered by one Pipe's desire for me to head to a different endpoint on the internet. It'd be like having a special 4-lane highway for red cars, and all other cars have to use a 2-lane gravel former logging road to get to town.
I don't think the key here is "reading" emails from snooping and that sort of thing... It's more along the lines of the 4th Amendment's protection of being "secure in one's papers." I don't use PGP (I don't give a fuck if people read what I send in email, but that's just me), but I can see where something can go VERY wrong for someone when Law Enforcement simply doesn't abide by the Constitutional Liberty we're all supposedly "guaranteed" (these days that guarantee's pretty fucking nebulous, I admit.... thank you expansive, invasive, pervasive Fedgov.) And the courts complicity in the matter makes it much harder to provide an adequate defense of whatever charge prompted law enforcement to ass-rape a particular person's 4th Amendment protections in the first place.
That's not to say I am endorsing everyone encrypt everything so they can hide their nefarious dealings from law enforcement because one judge has no concept of the 4th Amendment, but I am saying that these sorts of weird nibbles at the fringes of things we do as citizens on a daily basis really makes me think it's more indicative of the greater (and MUCH more worrisome) erosion of personal liberty in the "post 9/11 world" (I contend that it has been going on for many decades, thanks to the War on Drugs, and such... but most people like to use 9/11 as their tipping point... as long as they realize it's something that should bother them greatly, I don't nitpick.) I am not pleased that the Fedgov is grasping at power like a giant scoop, eroding the foundations of liberty we enjoyed (at least at one time), while simultaneously bankrupting us so our country basically feels strapped to the hood of the car careening off the cliff.)
If people just remember this judge's "unique" concept isn't as isolated or erroneous as it may seem, and we might just get something positive from the whole thing... Then I remember most citizens of the United States are collective knuckle-dragging morons, and I fear for the future of the Great Experiment...
It's a bit late, but I should point out that the Patriot Act has not been repealed, the warrantless wiretaps are defended (to the point of absurdity) by the current administration, Guantanamo is still open, Afghanistan is now his problem and he is treating it just like Shrub treated Iraq for years, and he's mucking with "stimulus" that does not, cannot, and will not do anything to help the economy, which is still sliding ...(the bulk of the "stimulus" is coming 2010... nice "quick turnaround" there...) And the "Open and Transparent" government promised on many a platform during the election has not even come CLOSE to materializing.
So, If you believe those to be "okay", and not "more of the same" from the one-party system we are under (left, right, give me a break... there IS no more delineation), then you ARE part of the problem, just like I've said in other threads...
I criticized Shrub, and I am criticizing Obama... not for stupid reasons like "birth certificate" or his religious/non-religious ties, but SPECIFIC things that he said he would do and HAS NOT DONE. (yet he has time to go on 22 fundraisers in only 11 months in office... contrast that with shrub's 6 his first year.) The funny thing is, the people who see the problems for what they are now ARE labeled as "nuts" "birthers" and other nonsense by the media and left-wing apologists (there IS a left/right wing on TV... but for the life of me I can't figure out why...) When Obama fixes all those problems (and stops benefiting from Shrub's expansion of executive powers)... I'll believe he's "different". Right now, his "change" is merely a name on the door. I do NOT support the expansion of the Federal Government, and no sane American should either. Still, nothing has changed, and the government is STILL fucking us in the ass and raping the Constitution. If you can't see that, you're the hypocrite, or at the very least, a blind follower of Saint Obama.
I believe VERY strongly the government is NEVER the answer to our problems, and more government means less freedom. I have for many years, but until recently, there haven't been enough people like me pissed off enough to even get a minor blurb in the press. (Ross Perot did NOT count as a viable third party candidate...) The Repubs and the Dems are doing their damnedest to make fucking sure we don't have a viable alternative. Groening was right... "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" is about all we're going to get until we WAKE THE FUCK UP and realize the "two" party system has failed us. We need another party that remembers what the Constitution means, and remembers that Freedom, above all else, is the reason we wake up in the morning. There's a line in the sand... and unfortunately for the Obama supporters, Barak's STILL on the wrong side of it. Shout louder, because he can't hear you sitting behind the stacks of money...
What'll be REALLY fun is when they require glass for your Vespa. :)
No, what he's saying is that most critcism of his ideas have been, and unfortunately continue to be of the knee-jerk "love it or leave it" crowd who consider any critical assessment of the current government situation in the US to be unpatriotic and slander. That should shock you as much as it does me. The ACTA treaty shenanigans simply illustrate quite clearly we the people are no longer the boss. It's been that way for decades, but we're getting the bitter pill of the results of that coup only in the last decade or so. It was slow, deliberate, insidious, and illegal... yet we're stuck at the moment. If that's not frustrating to you, you're part of the problem.
I'd say so. :) Not sure why I was modded flamebait. It's pretty fucking obvious what Murdoch and company are doing to the world's discourse. On the right side we've FoxNews... and on the left side, we've got Keith "I used to be a sports announcer" Olbermann and Rachel Maddow providing many time as their "proof", movie clips. (I shit you not... they justified a certain senator's "union busting" ideology with a clip from a MOVIE.... is that insane or what?) There's no more room for intelligent discourse these days. I blame 24hr news as a profit-making venture. You have to attract the eyes and ears, and what better way than with shrill controversy or stirring up the same with hyperbole and playing fast and loose with the facts.
:) I'm a libertarian... I hate both sides of this corporate shitstorm equally.
Still, there must be some Murdochites still lurking about on slashdot.
I'd venture to say he's trying to create a groundswell of idiots to help get some restrictions put on how things are disseminated (at least in the US)... but I don't know if he's just doing this to be a prick. Sometimes we mistake prick-ness for shrewd behavior. :-) Regardless of his motives, I hope at some point a popular tech-savvy person will verbally smack him down in the public space...
I understand your point, but I think in terms of how things actually play out on the world stage, the policy of making it much more costly for the enemy to engage us is the appropriate response. The problem is, we don't do that effectively (as a nation). The "you kill 1 of us, we kill 10 of you" mantra is all bluster in terms of our policy, and I think that's why we see the results being less than optimal (i.e. the talk doesn't match the actions.) If a purely economic solution was even remotely possible to solve these situations, I'd be the first to back it (I am not a chickenhawk warmonger...) but I see futility in just about every piecemeal approach we've taken even in the last decade, and it's getting both embarrassing and frustrating.
In a perfect world, I would back the obvious logical approach to these sorts of modern conflicts, but these days, it just doesn't work (sort of like talking the talk, but not walking the walk... which has been our policy since the end of WW2.)
Perhaps division isn't the right word, and your gun analogy isn't even close to how Sony operates (or any large conglomerate does for that matter). Comparing Sony to Microsoft doesn't illustrate effectively how the company's laid out. (Sony music is partially owned by Bertlesmann (sp?) so you KNOW where that rootkit came from initially). Sony makes devices to copy music, yet their music division actively tries to prevent that. They make DVD writers, but they have a movie arm that tries to prevent copying of DVD movies. that's different than MSFT (mostly in scale, but also on hierarchy), but even if it were just a larger version of MSFT, you can't say (with a straight face) the Windows division has control and say over how the keys get laid out on the hardware side of MSFT... which is what you're implying with the rootkit. You're implying that because the banner of "Sony" covers both, SCEA had something to do with compromising your windows box. That is absurd.
Yes, buying a PS3 can "enable" Sony music (indirectly) to root windows computers still, but the same holds true for buying a MSFT mouse "enabling" MSFT to ass-rape you with a shitty OS. Life's too short to worry about this sort of thing, which is why I stopped using Windows years ago. But you can have the company be dead to you, no argument from me. What I take issue with is the blanket statement trying to connect two wildly different things (and disparate parts of the company) as a reason to hate an entity. It undermines your position, IMHO.
I can see where that'd be frustrating (happens to me too from time to time... context switching language paradigms isn't as quick as it used to be for me...) But there are a myriad of ways to make sure that doesn't happen in LV... (some more intuitive than others) but I admit they're esoteric depending upon how you handle your optimization (LV's parallel execution can frustrate from time to time without a nudge here or there...)
That's because (I suspect) LV diagrams are not meant to be "WYSIWYG" in terms of how they're laid out. LV doesn't respect where you put things on the diagram, so you're basically free to make it do loop-de-loops without any consideration for most folks' left to right top to bottom (or vice versa) way of reading things. The Dataflow paradigm can feel like it's getting in the way, and even if you use references or locals, judicious planning can prevent the parallelism in LV from making your diagram do something it wasn't meant to do. (like anything else, it takes practice and I can assure you I am no expert at it.) Relying solely on how it is laid out on the diagram would be a nice feature, but I figure it'd overly restrict how you could use certain constructs and it most likely would feel less intuitive if you had to worry about the placement of indicators and controls. I can remember triggering two digitizers and thinking LV's parallelism would handle the triggers in such a way as to work the collection at the same time simply by putting the flow of each on top of the other. I was wrong heheh. That was a head-scratcher, but thank God for GPIB analyzers. :)
:) I wish I could go into detail w/r/t some of your criticisms, but it would reveal too much about what I do and I cannot do that for obvious reasons. I think it would be an interesting discussion.. because I am always looking for new ways to solve problems.
I agree LV isn't perfect, but I contend it has a place even in large-scale work in DAQ and analysis/communication. In your case it wasn't the best choice, and from the sound of it, it really wasn't.
Suffice to say, like C or C++, LV gives an engineer enough rope to hang himself. But if you're diligent, keep your design clean and follow the Dataflow paradigm (not to a level of absurdity that would choke the life out of your design), LV can fit the bill nicely. Always? No. No language is a one-size-fits-all solution to any problem. I pretty much loathe other types of graphical programming and did for many years even when I started using LV in earnest for development. (I actually suffered through HPVee..)
Wrong division of Sony. SCEA isn't in the business of root-kitting PCs, since that's the other division. It's like blaming Microsoft Windows division for a shitty mouse. This sounds like a tempest in a teapot, since we've seen the same issue with Nintendo recently and somehow, some way, I'm sure there's going to be a class-action suit for that as well. This is nowhere CLOSE to the RRoD that plagues Microsoft to this day, or the infamous "Fall update" that bricked supposedly "thousands" of 360's...
But it's fashionable to bash Sony because they're "Teh suck" right now.
Having used LabVIEW for about 15 years now, I can safely say that it ain't all that bad. The diagrams are intuitive, and for what it does, it does well. Doing a Diff is as simple as using the "compare" tool in LV itself. (It even circles the differences for you...) It doesn't replace python for my text manipulation and other quick turnaround code, and LV CERTAINLY doesn't replace C for the good stuff. (I prefer Vi, but I can use emacs just as well..) It pays not to be pigeon-holed. :)
:) It's got its quirks (what language doesn't?) But for rapid complex data analysis, I've not found much that'll beat it on speed (you could always spend the day writing Matlab, I suppose...)
:) it just sounds like you don't like LabVIEW because it's graphical (I had the same prejudice when I started using it), but taking the time to master it means you can write just about anything with it... and that's the mark of a good language.
Is it perfect? Far from it.
Version management requires a separate tool (we use Clearcase here), and if you're having trouble reading code diagrams, perhaps you need more instruction on how LabVIEW works. I have no trouble reading other people's VIs, understanding the inputs and outputs, and the logic flow. The data-flow paradigm is easy to dismiss as junk, but once you get a handle on it.. it is as intuitive as breathing when you're writing a VI to control a device (or 10).
You forgot the different freakin' cables Nintendo uses to charge their portable devices. Between the revisions, the cable connectors CHANGED, but the voltage did not. Why? I can't really figure that out. The PSP-Go isn't for current PSP owners. It's for iPod Touch and other users who don't already HAVE a PSP. The marketing has been lackluster (what else do we expect from Sony's marketing?) but the key isn't whether or not all the PSP owners are going to get a Go. It's whether NEW people get a Go.
You can still play UMD games on the PSP, and there are still PSP 3000's (and many used ones) in the pipe. I think people are missing the point. Will I buy one? No, I have a PSP already. But people pissing on the PSPGo are missing the other companies who are doing worse in the way of "feature robbing" (Apple/Nintendo, etc) and getting not only a free pass, but unmitigated praise. Must be the "blame Sony" generation... like the last few have been "Blame Sega" (rightly or wrongly, Sony and Sega deserve criticism, but not the vitriol from the anti-fanboys we see now...)
I own a PS3... love the thing. They have made mistakes, but no one is mistake free this generation. (Or last generation... or the generation before that...)
Nah, that's just for Moviemaker. And WMP DRM libraries... :)
While I admit everything's conjecture when discussing these issues (I have a launch 20GB, and it still works... I am however on my 4th 360), we have to put it in perspective. From the article, it appears this issue affected 60GB PS3's mostly (or nearly all, no one's that specific). Unlike the 360 (which ALL models were at one time affected), a bad batch of a certain model (or a bad model) isn't indicative of a generally failed hardware design like it is on the 360. The 360 wasn't simply "poorly soldered". It was poorly designed. I think if we admit that, we can continue with the discussion sans fanboyism. :) I know... 99% of the comments will be superbly anti-Sony and the rebuttals will be scathingly anti-Microsoft... but this is slashdot after all. :) I am not decrying the 360's game selection, its online component, its color choices, or anything of the sort. I am simply acknowledging (as others in the industry have already done, including former Microsoft folks) that the 360 was rushed and the design suffered, and rather than fix the design flaw, Microsoft chose to fix it in "post" and take the hit, rather than not beat Sony out of the gate this generation.
I can safely say that Sony did do a fairly good job this hardware cycle and Microsoft might want to license someone else to design their boxes next go round. (Toshiba perhaps? *grin*)
I think the "big net" to subpoena these commenters' identities is a bit disturbing. If I call someone a flaming douche online, it's my opinion. The line separating opinion from slander/libel is becoming blurred because of overt Political Correctness and otherwise rational people being whiny "victims" if it means spanking someone (legally). Like a schoolyard fight trying to get the last "lick" in. :)