I'm Russian and in Russia writing in cursive is considered a basic skill. And almost everyone use it for handwriting (because it's nice and flowing), even though it's not very similar to printed letters.
I always wonder why cursive is so unpopular in the USA. Is it a cultural thing?
"As for human rights organizations supporting Chechens: you can hardly expect anyone to cry over the Chechen assaults on the theater"
Yet that's exactly what these 'human rights' groups did. I distinctly remember them lamenting about horrible SWAT forces shooting all of the poor helpless sleeping terrorists.
"when most of the dead were caused by the Russians gassing the theater in the first place and the assault was a direct result of the Russian invasion."
You have it all backwards. Chechnya proclaimed independency in the early 90-s, after displacing several hundred thousand Russians - living in Chechnya became unbearable for them (there were cases when Chechen bands shot and raped whole families without any reaction from police).
PLEASE NOTE: Chechnya was a de-facto independent state at this moment, Kremlin had zero power there. So such niceties as public executions according to Sharia law became commonplace in Chechnya.
And after 3 years of this independence Chechens attempted to invade Ingushetia (a neighbor region). That's how the Second Chechen War began. But this time Kremlin did not stop when Chechens tried to play the same trick with capturing hostages.
So I fail to see how Moscow can be called an 'aggressor' and how Chechens 'have the right to resist'. They were given independence, and they forfeited it by their own actions.
I bet you knew nothing about it, right? That's because a lot of conflicts have a much deeper story then CNN tells you.
"Anyone who opposes a dictator harms him simply by breathing."
Kadyrov is not an idiot. He's a shrewd politician and won't do anything without clear advantage for him.
And there are lot of people opposing Kadyrov now. He hasn't got absolute power and if you think he can just come and shoot everyone he doesn't like then you're stupid.
Also, so called "human rights groups" like "Memorial" have almost no power and influence in Russia, they are gnats. And that's because they've managed to thoroughly alienate themselves by supporting almost exclusively only Chechens during the war in Chechnya and other events (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis ).
"On to more funny stuff. In Russia, "in the interests of informational security", it is illegal to "research, develop, sell or use encryption measures, as well as protected storage devices" without a license; as well as import them (all quotes are translations of the actual law)."
It's more complex than that... The current laws apply only to private entrepreneurs and legal persons, they don't apply to private persons. However, creating a software which uses cryptography (SSL for example) can be interpreted as violation of licensing rules (you must be licensed to work with crypto).
Chechnya is a bit like Iraq - it's a mix of different clans (they are called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teip ), warring with each other. Some of these clans are pure savages - there were documented cases when people were kidnapped and enslaved by them (even in the USSR). Kadyrov is only a leader of a very authoritative clan, but he's definitely not the single power center there.
I don't think he ordered to kill her. Why should he? Cynically, nothing Natalia Estemirova could have done would be able to harm Kadyrov. He's got backing right in Kremlin. Probably, he'd be able to get away even if he was caught eating babies.
So it's all much more complex than you think (I have relatives from Checnhya and know a bit about situation there).
Brain is not an absolute self-modifying learning machine - it can't turn into a Transformer, it just can rewire itself to a certain degree. And we can simulate this. Of course not by actual microchip rewiring, but by using appropriate data structures for simulation.
"I've NEVER seen it where sound never worked thanks to ALSA."
I've seen it. For example, ALSA continuously tries to turn off sound output for the front panel of my desktop. ALSA can't autodetect my Bluetooth headset, etc.
And Lennart is usually right. He uncovered and helped to fix a horde of bugs in ALSA, which were long unnoticed since people accepted that sound in Linux "just doesn't work"(tm).
PulseAudio works just fine for me - I can plug in my bluetooth handset in the middle of a call and transfer sound to it, for example. Try that in ALSO or OSS.
Newsflash: ESD, OSSv4 (on Linux?) and ALSA break sound too!
Even worse, ALSA is a complete mess when it comes to simple volume control. Never mind advanced features like 3D sound positioning. How about integration with Bluetooth? Forget it, it's not gonna work with plain ALSA.
If PulseAudio doesn't work for you, then file bugs. PulseAudio is not ideal, of course.
There are such systems - "Chaum's Visual Electronic Voting", for example. They also have a nice property - you can't use your receipt as a proof that you voted 'the right way'.
"Just so we're all clear, to you, something can only be called religion if it involves the belief in an invisible sky daddy?"
No. But every religion has a sky daddy.
"You're probably right about this, and I'll even go so far as to say that for some (most?) things there may not be an answer beyond "well, that's just how the universe functions." But to simply spout off that answer and move on, without even _thinking_ about it, is really no different than saying "because the invisible sky daddy said so."
Same for religion. Only the answer is: "God did it" and/or "The ways of God are inscrutable". Feel better?
"Religion doesn't always equate to the belief in an invisible sky daddy, sometimes it's just philosophy by another name."
Show me a religion without god[s] (or god-like entities) and I will agree with you. Note: Buddhism does not count.
"Science can only answer the how, it cannot answer the why."
And the question 'why' is meaningless. Anyway, religion can not answer this question as well. Or more exactly, it answers it: 'Because the Big Daddy in the sky said so!"
Wiki: "An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim."
"It's really sad how ignorant of theology people are today. Sigh. I _bet_ _you_ _can't_ _even_ _name_ the school of thought that you're advocating."
That's an ad-hominem to me.
"And unsurprising about the intolerance shown, too. Ignorance and bigotry go together like peanut butter and jelly."
I'm intolerant of religion, yep. So what? I'm about that intolerant of homeopathy, antivaccinationists and other lunacies.
You can persuade me to change my mind using good arguments: show me that something works and I'll gladly admit I was wrong. It happened - I changed my stance on global warming when I first started to work with real climate scientists, for example.
The thing is, I have not yet seen good arguments from modern theologists. At all.
"A great deal of science and many scientists engage in unfounded theorising and even many "heros" (wtf) of science hold ridiculous unfounded theories on the mechanics and purpose of life and the universe that are so far removed from the "real world" one could only call them immature religious ideas."
So? Humans are not infallible, they can hold several conflicting ideas perfectly fine.
Science method itself, however, works just fine even though humans can be corrupted. That's because science has an anchor in the real world, which can't be made to 'lie'.
Religion is a thing in itself: "The Earth was created in six days". - God
There's no way to check if this is true, no way to know how it was done, no way to make sure that this passage was not inserted as a joke by a scribe writing his master's words. No nothing, you just have to accept it.
You might try to rationalize it by saying that 'day' is a metaphor, that it is a 'Galactic Day', etc. But that's exactly the intellectual masturbating I wrote about - it gives us no new answers at all.
And don't get me started on 'morality' in religion and 'the other questions'.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm Russian and in Russia writing in cursive is considered a basic skill. And almost everyone use it for handwriting (because it's nice and flowing), even though it's not very similar to printed letters.
I always wonder why cursive is so unpopular in the USA. Is it a cultural thing?
More likely industrial espionage which IS a theft.
'Personal enemy' that's a bit strong.
"As for human rights organizations supporting Chechens: you can hardly expect anyone to cry over the Chechen assaults on the theater"
Yet that's exactly what these 'human rights' groups did. I distinctly remember them lamenting about horrible SWAT forces shooting all of the poor helpless sleeping terrorists.
"when most of the dead were caused by the Russians gassing the theater in the first place and the assault was a direct result of the Russian invasion."
You have it all backwards. Chechnya proclaimed independency in the early 90-s, after displacing several hundred thousand Russians - living in Chechnya became unbearable for them (there were cases when Chechen bands shot and raped whole families without any reaction from police).
Then Dudaev openly attacked Russian forces, which caused the First Chechen War. It was ended when Basaev captured a hospital and threatened to kill everyone ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budyonnovsk_hospital_hostage_crisis ). Moscow was forced to sign http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khasav-Yurt_Accord giving a de-facto independence to Chechnya as a result of this.
PLEASE NOTE: Chechnya was a de-facto independent state at this moment, Kremlin had zero power there. So such niceties as public executions according to Sharia law became commonplace in Chechnya.
And after 3 years of this independence Chechens attempted to invade Ingushetia (a neighbor region). That's how the Second Chechen War began. But this time Kremlin did not stop when Chechens tried to play the same trick with capturing hostages.
So I fail to see how Moscow can be called an 'aggressor' and how Chechens 'have the right to resist'. They were given independence, and they forfeited it by their own actions.
I bet you knew nothing about it, right? That's because a lot of conflicts have a much deeper story then CNN tells you.
"Anyone who opposes a dictator harms him simply by breathing."
Kadyrov is not an idiot. He's a shrewd politician and won't do anything without clear advantage for him.
And there are lot of people opposing Kadyrov now. He hasn't got absolute power and if you think he can just come and shoot everyone he doesn't like then you're stupid.
Also, so called "human rights groups" like "Memorial" have almost no power and influence in Russia, they are gnats. And that's because they've managed to thoroughly alienate themselves by supporting almost exclusively only Chechens during the war in Chechnya and other events (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis ).
"On to more funny stuff. In Russia, "in the interests of informational security", it is illegal to "research, develop, sell or use encryption measures, as well as protected storage devices" without a license; as well as import them (all quotes are translations of the actual law)."
It's more complex than that... The current laws apply only to private entrepreneurs and legal persons, they don't apply to private persons. However, creating a software which uses cryptography (SSL for example) can be interpreted as violation of licensing rules (you must be licensed to work with crypto).
I don't think it was government who killed her.
Chechnya is a bit like Iraq - it's a mix of different clans (they are called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teip ), warring with each other. Some of these clans are pure savages - there were documented cases when people were kidnapped and enslaved by them (even in the USSR). Kadyrov is only a leader of a very authoritative clan, but he's definitely not the single power center there.
I don't think he ordered to kill her. Why should he? Cynically, nothing Natalia Estemirova could have done would be able to harm Kadyrov. He's got backing right in Kremlin. Probably, he'd be able to get away even if he was caught eating babies.
So it's all much more complex than you think (I have relatives from Checnhya and know a bit about situation there).
Brain is not an absolute self-modifying learning machine - it can't turn into a Transformer, it just can rewire itself to a certain degree. And we can simulate this. Of course not by actual microchip rewiring, but by using appropriate data structures for simulation.
"I've NEVER seen it where sound never worked thanks to ALSA."
I've seen it. For example, ALSA continuously tries to turn off sound output for the front panel of my desktop. ALSA can't autodetect my Bluetooth headset, etc.
And Lennart is usually right. He uncovered and helped to fix a horde of bugs in ALSA, which were long unnoticed since people accepted that sound in Linux "just doesn't work"(tm).
PulseAudio works just fine for me - I can plug in my bluetooth handset in the middle of a call and transfer sound to it, for example. Try that in ALSO or OSS.
Newsflash: ESD, OSSv4 (on Linux?) and ALSA break sound too!
Even worse, ALSA is a complete mess when it comes to simple volume control. Never mind advanced features like 3D sound positioning. How about integration with Bluetooth? Forget it, it's not gonna work with plain ALSA.
If PulseAudio doesn't work for you, then file bugs. PulseAudio is not ideal, of course.
It works.
And right now it's the only project that tries to make sense out of the complete f***ing mess with sound APIs on Linux.
There are such systems - "Chaum's Visual Electronic Voting", for example. They also have a nice property - you can't use your receipt as a proof that you voted 'the right way'.
Nope. PulseAudio is NOT necessary to trigger this flaw. Read the exploit source code.
PS: I hate PulseAudio bashing.
So leave a description of DVD format, carved in titanium near your discs.
It would work fine, if you include Java/.NET specific disassemblers.
In fact, you can already compress Java JARs about ten times by using pack200 algorithm (it works essentially the same way).
Android now allows native code execution.
"He used ancient text and Einstein's theory of relative to show that 6 days = 15billion years."
Crap. There's no way to accelerate time on Earth using special or sane solutions of general relativity.
I.e. it's possible to make 6 days on Earth seem like 1000000000 years for an observer at infinity. Just accelerate the Earth.
The only way to get 6 days = 14 billion years is to count time using a watch on a _very_ fast-moving object.
I know COBOL. However, I would consider coding in it only if terrorists catch me and made me code in it at gunpoint.
"Just so we're all clear, to you, something can only be called religion if it involves the belief in an invisible sky daddy?"
No. But every religion has a sky daddy.
"You're probably right about this, and I'll even go so far as to say that for some (most?) things there may not be an answer beyond "well, that's just how the universe functions." But to simply spout off that answer and move on, without even _thinking_ about it, is really no different than saying "because the invisible sky daddy said so."
Same for religion. Only the answer is: "God did it" and/or "The ways of God are inscrutable". Feel better?
Nope. This whole book is just about as 'masturbatory' as any other religious literature.
No new ideas, only new lame excuses.
There are NO arguments in favor of Intelligent Design. Only lame excuses. There is not A SINGLE PREDICTION by ID 'theory' that has come true.
"Religion doesn't always equate to the belief in an invisible sky daddy, sometimes it's just philosophy by another name."
Show me a religion without god[s] (or god-like entities) and I will agree with you. Note: Buddhism does not count.
"Science can only answer the how, it cannot answer the why."
And the question 'why' is meaningless. Anyway, religion can not answer this question as well. Or more exactly, it answers it: 'Because the Big Daddy in the sky said so!"
Wiki:
"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim."
It foots the bill perfectly.
There are many different methods to 'brute force' a password :)
"It's really sad how ignorant of theology people are today. Sigh. I _bet_ _you_ _can't_ _even_ _name_ the school of thought that you're advocating."
That's an ad-hominem to me.
"And unsurprising about the intolerance shown, too. Ignorance and bigotry go together like peanut butter and jelly."
I'm intolerant of religion, yep. So what? I'm about that intolerant of homeopathy, antivaccinationists and other lunacies.
You can persuade me to change my mind using good arguments: show me that something works and I'll gladly admit I was wrong. It happened - I changed my stance on global warming when I first started to work with real climate scientists, for example.
The thing is, I have not yet seen good arguments from modern theologists. At all.
"A great deal of science and many scientists engage in unfounded theorising and even many "heros" (wtf) of science hold ridiculous unfounded theories on the mechanics and purpose of life and the universe that are so far removed from the "real world" one could only call them immature religious ideas."
So? Humans are not infallible, they can hold several conflicting ideas perfectly fine.
Science method itself, however, works just fine even though humans can be corrupted. That's because science has an anchor in the real world, which can't be made to 'lie'.
Religion is a thing in itself:
"The Earth was created in six days". - God
There's no way to check if this is true, no way to know how it was done, no way to make sure that this passage was not inserted as a joke by a scribe writing his master's words. No nothing, you just have to accept it.
You might try to rationalize it by saying that 'day' is a metaphor, that it is a 'Galactic Day', etc. But that's exactly the intellectual masturbating I wrote about - it gives us no new answers at all.
And don't get me started on 'morality' in religion and 'the other questions'.