Its easy to disable. Just click on it and pick "never show me again" and it will just show you the little "pop-up killed" icon in the lower left hand corner like the old version.
We're already seeing the start of this in SP2 and I think NX and other DEP technologies are going to be a basic feature in all OSs. I wish AMD and Intel went out of their way to make Athlons and P4s with their NX technologies instead of just adding it to their next-gen chips.
Actually IE on an XP box running SP2 is pretty different. This may not be a formal version change but MS did catch up pretty well. Sure, I don't touch IE unless I have to, but the popup blocker, activex manager, extra nag screens, etc go a long way to fighting spyware and help make the web usable. Most people will never switch browsers and SP2 is for them.
I was playing with 1.0PR last night and found the firebird developers have already mimicked IE. The "info bar" which displays when something is blocked is blatantly "stolen" from IE. Not that I care or even think its wrong, but its interesting to see the browser war heat up again.
MS is catching up to FF while FF is picking what it likes from IE. I do like FF's policy of "looking a lot like IE" because it helps with mass-adoptation and frankly IE's interface and MS's usability are actually pretty good. Its a shame the code beneath isn't so hot.
Yes, tubes do make a noticable difference. Take a marshall amp and play a lick. Now take my digital modeling Line6, set it to the same marshall, and play a lick. Listen to a lot of tube amps, then listen to a lot of solid state amps.
There's a difference in the guitar world, especially when the the amp is in distortion. A much lesser effect exists on old tube amplifiers, radios, etc and if you have the money and ears to appreciate it, then more power to you.
I dont see why people have to get all up in arms defending digital audio when someone prefers something else. It gets a bit ridiculous when you consider all the variations that exist within the realms of analog and digital recording, producing, reproduction, etc.
The "audiophile" debate is fairly ridiculous because the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard once you go past typical consumer equipment. Can't we instead bitch about things we all notice like how certain sounds come out sounding like crap at any mp3 bitrate (think distortion heavy wall-of-guitar sounds like Yo La Tengo). Or how shitty near-black colors look with MPEG-2 video encoding? Or how I can't hear the damn dialogue on any Matrix DVD because of silly mastering? Or how Directv sometimes decides to encode stuff like crap two days out of the week? Is that better encoding equipment on strike? Or how about just Greedo shoots first.
I think this is the unspoken issue when it comes to big protectionist debate about IT.
Lots of IT people are terrrible. I mean just bad at what they do. They don't stay on top of changing tech and security issues. Scratch these guys and gals and you'll see an ex-whatever promoted to their IT department with no formal skills. I've seen this at a lot of companies, an HR guy is suddenly IT manager. Or lots of hires are certificate addicts (MCSE, etc) going for the new (well, old by now) gold rush.
There are some pretty ignorant and politically charged "essays" and I use that term loosely in this thread about all matters economics. At the end of the day, IT doesn't have the political clout the airlines or the unions do. So don't expect much in the ways of protectionism. On top of that the field is full of people who do such simple work that their jobs can be easily relocated. They don't have another IT job lined up because some of them have no real IT skills.
That said, I'm not sure what the future holds, but there has been a natural correction in the IT field. First off, very few people are going to tech "for the money." CS, IS, etc programs are smaller than they were during the boom. The available number of jobs are smaller and require a shitload more than just "office for dummies." Most work below college level doesn't exist or is just interships.
The correction is still going on and its hurting a lot of talented people, but that's the way job markets have always been. There is no guarantee to a position no matter how good you are, unless of course you know the right people. Its a shame IT people tend to be poor social networkers, eh?
so it doesnt require the CD. Yeah, I have mine - somewhere. Its not like I'm a heavy office user. Now ask your typical technophobe where her or his CD is. Especially for a computer thats a couple years old and everything came pre-installed.
Their Office Update implementation is even worse than you think. Lets say I have Office 2000 Small Business. Great, that disc won't work if the original install was Premium or any other version. Even Office 2000 SR-1 discs wont work with Office 2000. Come on, the binaries can't be that fucking different.
Officeupdate should be moved into windows update and MS should figure out a way to do these updates without a CD and still keep the download manageable. Heck, they dont even really do that, do they?
We spend all this time doing MS's work for them. Telling people about Automatic Updates, etc. Its only a matter of time before there is a new batch of Word and Excel based viruses (not to mention visio).
There are a lot of holes in Office. Lets see, the recent wordperfect converter expoit and the jpeg exploits are both buffer overruns. So even if you got the latest service pack after install (like I usually do) these two are just waiting to be abused and sadly people think automatic updates takes care of all this.
Whats the price when we remove cronyism from the energy/government relationship? Whats the price after we subtract the handouts to the middle eastern nations, including Israel? What's the price when we subtract health costs from a polluted environment? Whats the cost when we remove subsidization of energy?
I'm all for real costs, but lets face it, if anything on the market is misrepresented its oil. Not to mention oil prices are fickle depending on middle east politics, thus future "interventions" into the region and further support of the sadistic Saudi regime and incredible funding for Israel so they act as our watchdog in the area.
The larger issue isnt really about price its about what energy indepedence can give us. The main secondary effect will probably be price. Of course we're going to be using nuclear power probably forever, but at least we can get off the oil teat. Especially in regards to the automobile industry.
By default, software-enforced DEP only protects limited system binaries, regardless of the hardware-enforced DEP capabilities of the processor.
--
I'm guessing MS runs its own software NX because it knows what memory these system binaries should and shouldnt be using. So even if it worked for DCOM/RPC it probably wouldn't work with the SQL server hole.
Actually, you can enable software DEP for all programs. There's a button you can click on in system properties under advanced. Might be fun playing with to see if it breaks anything. Might be good to leave on if it doesnt.
>. Cos months later I got a phone call from my folks asking me how to get rid of those pr0n popups and stuff
They could be using FireFox. Or IE with activeX disabled and a pop-up blocker. Or IE with simply SP2 installed. Or Opera. Automatic updates turned on. And a copy of ad aware or spybot.
You might as well teach them about spyware and untrustworthy downloads. Regardless of their platform they will have to deal with it. If desktop Linux took off next year there would be all sorts of spyware for it. XPI apps. "Buddy" apps. All running in userland.
Best to teach them smart internet skills than just throwing them a new OS.
Here you go, these are laserdisc rips encoded for DVD burning. The torrents worked just a couple of weeks ago.
- Sound is English Dolby 2.0 Surround
- Audio Commentary - English Subtitles (the kind burned into the image for alien speak) - Chapters Selection (the 79 original LD markers) - Production Notes
The whole "open funding" philosophy seems to be crap compared to old fashioned "just hire a guy." Look at this laundry list of stuff they wanted:
So Treo developers, the challenge is up to you. A working Bluetooth driver is a driver that enables the use of a common Bluetooth SD card (Toshiba's, PalmOne's, or Socket's) in the Treo. However, Bluetooth would be useless without drivers written for certain applications. To win the bounty, this driver must enable the Treo to at minimum wirelessly sync to a desktop and exchange files through Bluetooth. The best part of Bluetooth on a Treo is the ability to use wireless bluetooth headsets. Therefore this driver must also enable the Treo to use a Bluetooth headset (added 6/17). Ideally a driver would sync files/hotsync, work with headsets, allow the Treo to be a bluetooth modem, and enable the use of Bluetooth GPS. Only the first two on that list are required.
Gee is that it? They should have gotten quotes from various developers and then forced the community to pay up, instead of having the community declare some arbitrary price and hope someone does something. Notice they just added the headset as a requirement on the 17th with no increase in bounty.
It wouldnt kill them to write a contract and solicit it for pricing. As for 3months? Well, what if we gave them a year? It seems that the problem is that this method is a pretty lousy way to solicit software development.
>Actually, we don't know that, since we never had any confirmation that the reactors they were actually using for weapons research were ever "sealed" to begin with.
They simply took advantage of the Bush admin's incompetence and focus on oil rich nations.
>Actually, most nations believed that the Iraqis still had WMDs
This stuff that has been debunked before the war even started. UN, Scott Ritter, Blix's reports, Saddam's son in law, etc. On top of it Powell using discredited info at the UN told the world this was a sham war. Cherry-picking reports with huge cavaets and presenting them to the public Cheney style does not a WMD threat make.
Please, tune into Fox News tonight and tomorrow for better talking points.
Yeah, there is proliferation going on for two main reasons:
The Bush admin is focused on the middle east region and only cares about WMD as pro-war propaganda.
Other nations realized the lessons of the Iraq war weren't "with us or against us" it was "countries who really have WMD survive and don't get invaded." Works for Israel, it will work for everyone else.
In other words, they aren't getting "tons of free stuff" and NK developed, broke its reactors seals, etc under the "cowboy diplomacy" of the Bush admnistration, not Clinton. There are solutions to problems and if you can keep UN inspectors in and nukes out by bribing someone with fuel oil than so be it. We are witnessing the "tough guy" alternative. Are you ready to be drafted to fight a couple more wars for "cowboy diplomacy?"
>they'll be more mushroom clouds over North Korea, and soon.
Wow, modding that up as funny is so clever. A full nuclear war on NK would kill millions of innocent civilians and NK would instantly launch all its conventional artillery (nearly aimed at Seoul) and decimate Seoul and if they do have long range missiles they could hit Tokyo too, with a nuke no less.
Hi-larious!
The whole "cowboy policeman of the world" the Bush administration likes to play is going to bite us in the ass if we start playing "tough guy" with nukes.
1. Lots of things can cause mushroom clouds. It may even be the case that NK is blowing up something (lots of TNT) to impress their own people and keep morale up while scaring everyone else. It may also be the case that they just detonated a nuke.
2. Why are we hearing about this today? Any large explosion can be detected through vibrations. You can't set off a nuke without the world knowing.
3. Clinton and the democrats safely contained these crazy dictators. I don't think the "war on terra" is going to scale up very well to nuclear war. That said I hope people would think twice before they vote for Bush again this year.
They are fantastic, but I've noticed that the quality drops during some of the movies. Seems that laserdisc has two methods of encoding, and the longer movies of the trilogy use the 'low-quality longer-time' method on the second side of the disc.
I believe Empire Strikes Back suffers from this pretty badly, but to be fair its not too easy to notice as LD quality isn't that high to begin with. Its definitely "good enough" to make me not want to buy the "new and improved" DVDs.
Honestly, I wouldnt have bought them anyway. Its hard enjoying what are essentially kid movies from when I was a kid. I would be much more interested in catching one of these movies at a midnight showing in a theater with a rowdy crowd than owning them on DVD. And Lucas makes it hard for me to get interested in his work again. Man, imagine an aging Picasso re-doing his classic realistic work into cubism because fame and fortune would let him.
Somewhere there's a Hollywood exec saying, "See what happens when we let artists own their own work?"
>Been reading here for years and I have never seen a hint of Republican
The GOP mainstays are piss-poor areas of the US where the chances of being a nerd with various gaming machines and enough free time to post on a webboard is pretty low.
Modern day Republicans are closely related to theocrats and the exteme right, thus having a very maginalized platform. Most of the genx/y types who frequent this site really don't see the logic in the GOP's current platform of driving the US back to the 30's both economically and socially.
What is "Republican" today? It gets redefined everytime Bush opens his mouth. The party of small government and fiscal responsbility is no more, thus "Republican" is a blind partisan defense of today's talking points.
Libertarianism gets a lot of play here, but its whatever you want to define it as. Very few bother with the US Libertarian party.
A lot of people would welcome well written conservative views, but like I wrote earlier they don't exist in the Republican world.
Lastly, the genx/y generation is skeptial, doessnt share dad's bigotry, doesn't share dad's religious views, etc thus you're going to get a lot of "crazy leftists" with "crazy" views like those held by the founders of the US, which the Republican seem to despise. Just read their 2004 convention platform: fuck gays, fuck the economy, fuck your complaints about the war, more PATRIOT ACT legislation, and blame Democrats for everything.
Perhaps, these views aren't popular for a reason? No conspiracy needed.
The L.C.D.doesn't have this equipment. Computers are sold with two speakers, if any, and very few people use them as a "multi-media" unit, prefering their superior home stereos.
A couple problems I see:
The computer is usually not even in the same room as the sound/entertainment system. The computer is a web/email/work machine that doubles as a gaming machine once in a while.
The computer doesn't come bundled with a really nice sound system and if offered, I doubt anyone who cared that much about sound would pay the premium knowing full well their home stereo blows it away, doesnt need reboots, etc.
The same question can be asked of computer game controllers. The consoles do a much better job of delivering games for the L.C.D. that an old fashioned keyboard is just fine for gamers. No need for some killer controller. Of course some would argue the keyboard is superior and that flight simulators need special controllers, but those are niche items. Just because they are niche items doesn't mean they are "dying."
Lastly, there are tons of 5.1 equipment for PCs for people who want them. This assumption that because it doesn't ship with the cheapest dell thus its "dying" is really pushing it.
Ownership bias is quite real. In other countries its very common to have a "liberal" paper and a "conservative" paper all of whom are open with their bias. At least here in the states the alternative weeklies don't shy away from the fact that they have a liberal bent, but Fox News and the Washington Times and others still play the "we're just newsmakers without an agenda" card. Which is highly disingenious and leads to more dangerous beliefs than "al gore invented the internet." How about the millions who believe Saddam had a hand in 9/11?
>it's not black and white, you just need to use your own brain
Agreed, but the lack of a formal registration system and dependence on volunteers is going to hurt this project as it becomes more complex and more popular. I don't think the "open wiki" model scales so well as A LOT of wiki articles are full of disinformation and bias. Granted, most aren't, but there is a strong US-centric bias and some of us who have corrected disinformation only to see it reappear because of the citation of false facts makes me, at least, give up on contributing.
That said, the best advice is the line you just gave: always be skeptical about your sources. I think this is a postmodern idea, as this whole debate focuses on the assumption that britanica et al are infailable when in reality they have to deal with the exact same problems the wiki people have to deal with.
>like when reading a newspaper.
I would go as far as saying that people don't use their brain with the media. How many Americans still believe between the fictional connection between Saddam and 9/11?
The problem here is cultural and wikipedia is the symptom. People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc). Wiki readers know they are getting into something they can't trust unlike old media. The real catch (the real issue) is that old media is just as untrustworthy, if not more so because of ownership bias and other factors.
I'll play devil's advocate. People say the same thing about anonymous remailers, proxies, etc. I understand there's a difference between spoof and anonymous but lets see:
Civil Disobedience.
Bond/Repo Men/Private investigators.
Complaing to people in power without revealing identity or giving off the "CALLER ID BLOCKED" message.
Getting around hairy social or legal situations in an ethical manner. Remember, legal does not equal correct. Illegal does not equal incorrect.
Road warriors "spoofing" their work phone numbers and not their cell numbers.
and of course the #1 reason:
Teenage girls calling boys they like, giggling, and hanging up.
>Firewall only filters incoming traffic, totally oblivious to outgoing. (2nd paragraph, last sentence)
Enable firewall. Start Apache, and I get a warning about the app opening a static listening port. Yes, it does not ask about every connection, which is a design decision based on usability. What percentage of users know foo.exe is? For average users this kind of functionality is overkill. To say it does "nothing" for worms and trojans is being pretty disigenious as a port must be accessible to be attacked.
>Popup blocking is WAAAAAYYYY too late
So they should just stop it? Wireless support in Linux is a PITA, should developers give up on that too? You are being illogical.
>Nope, broken. Strike three.
Whoever told you there wouldnt be driver issues after a major upgrade lied to you.
>Must we delineate MS's culpability for the glut of spyware in the first place?
If MS could forsee the spyware issue they would have kill it, as its THEIR asses on the line. Spyware/viruses/worms is making their OS unusable and SP2 is really the service pack that is going to keep people from switching to Apple, assuming it works.
Slashdot Mirror
Its easy to disable. Just click on it and pick "never show me again" and it will just show you the little "pop-up killed" icon in the lower left hand corner like the old version.
We're already seeing the start of this in SP2 and I think NX and other DEP technologies are going to be a basic feature in all OSs. I wish AMD and Intel went out of their way to make Athlons and P4s with their NX technologies instead of just adding it to their next-gen chips.
My previous post of DEP is here.
>Microsoft state no more development on IE
Actually IE on an XP box running SP2 is pretty different. This may not be a formal version change but MS did catch up pretty well. Sure, I don't touch IE unless I have to, but the popup blocker, activex manager, extra nag screens, etc go a long way to fighting spyware and help make the web usable. Most people will never switch browsers and SP2 is for them.
I was playing with 1.0PR last night and found the firebird developers have already mimicked IE. The "info bar" which displays when something is blocked is blatantly "stolen" from IE. Not that I care or even think its wrong, but its interesting to see the browser war heat up again.
MS is catching up to FF while FF is picking what it likes from IE. I do like FF's policy of "looking a lot like IE" because it helps with mass-adoptation and frankly IE's interface and MS's usability are actually pretty good. Its a shame the code beneath isn't so hot.
Yes, tubes do make a noticable difference. Take a marshall amp and play a lick. Now take my digital modeling Line6, set it to the same marshall, and play a lick. Listen to a lot of tube amps, then listen to a lot of solid state amps.
There's a difference in the guitar world, especially when the the amp is in distortion. A much lesser effect exists on old tube amplifiers, radios, etc and if you have the money and ears to appreciate it, then more power to you.
I dont see why people have to get all up in arms defending digital audio when someone prefers something else. It gets a bit ridiculous when you consider all the variations that exist within the realms of analog and digital recording, producing, reproduction, etc.
The "audiophile" debate is fairly ridiculous because the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard once you go past typical consumer equipment. Can't we instead bitch about things we all notice like how certain sounds come out sounding like crap at any mp3 bitrate (think distortion heavy wall-of-guitar sounds like Yo La Tengo). Or how shitty near-black colors look with MPEG-2 video encoding? Or how I can't hear the damn dialogue on any Matrix DVD because of silly mastering? Or how Directv sometimes decides to encode stuff like crap two days out of the week? Is that better encoding equipment on strike? Or how about just Greedo shoots first.
I think this is the unspoken issue when it comes to big protectionist debate about IT.
Lots of IT people are terrrible. I mean just bad at what they do. They don't stay on top of changing tech and security issues. Scratch these guys and gals and you'll see an ex-whatever promoted to their IT department with no formal skills. I've seen this at a lot of companies, an HR guy is suddenly IT manager. Or lots of hires are certificate addicts (MCSE, etc) going for the new (well, old by now) gold rush.
There are some pretty ignorant and politically charged "essays" and I use that term loosely in this thread about all matters economics. At the end of the day, IT doesn't have the political clout the airlines or the unions do. So don't expect much in the ways of protectionism. On top of that the field is full of people who do such simple work that their jobs can be easily relocated. They don't have another IT job lined up because some of them have no real IT skills.
That said, I'm not sure what the future holds, but there has been a natural correction in the IT field. First off, very few people are going to tech "for the money." CS, IS, etc programs are smaller than they were during the boom. The available number of jobs are smaller and require a shitload more than just "office for dummies." Most work below college level doesn't exist or is just interships.
The correction is still going on and its hurting a lot of talented people, but that's the way job markets have always been. There is no guarantee to a position no matter how good you are, unless of course you know the right people. Its a shame IT people tend to be poor social networkers, eh?
so it doesnt require the CD. Yeah, I have mine - somewhere. Its not like I'm a heavy office user. Now ask your typical technophobe where her or his CD is. Especially for a computer thats a couple years old and everything came pre-installed.
Their Office Update implementation is even worse than you think. Lets say I have Office 2000 Small Business. Great, that disc won't work if the original install was Premium or any other version. Even Office 2000 SR-1 discs wont work with Office 2000. Come on, the binaries can't be that fucking different.
Officeupdate should be moved into windows update and MS should figure out a way to do these updates without a CD and still keep the download manageable. Heck, they dont even really do that, do they?
We spend all this time doing MS's work for them. Telling people about Automatic Updates, etc. Its only a matter of time before there is a new batch of Word and Excel based viruses (not to mention visio).
There are a lot of holes in Office. Lets see, the recent wordperfect converter expoit and the jpeg exploits are both buffer overruns. So even if you got the latest service pack after install (like I usually do) these two are just waiting to be abused and sadly people think automatic updates takes care of all this.
Whats the price when we remove cronyism from the energy/government relationship? Whats the price after we subtract the handouts to the middle eastern nations, including Israel? What's the price when we subtract health costs from a polluted environment? Whats the cost when we remove subsidization of energy?
I'm all for real costs, but lets face it, if anything on the market is misrepresented its oil. Not to mention oil prices are fickle depending on middle east politics, thus future "interventions" into the region and further support of the sadistic Saudi regime and incredible funding for Israel so they act as our watchdog in the area.
The larger issue isnt really about price its about what energy indepedence can give us. The main secondary effect will probably be price. Of course we're going to be using nuclear power probably forever, but at least we can get off the oil teat. Especially in regards to the automobile industry.
From MS:
By default, software-enforced DEP only protects limited system binaries, regardless of the hardware-enforced DEP capabilities of the processor.
--
I'm guessing MS runs its own software NX because it knows what memory these system binaries should and shouldnt be using. So even if it worked for DCOM/RPC it probably wouldn't work with the SQL server hole.
Hardware DEP is a whole different story.
Short and sweet thread on DEP here.
Actually, you can enable software DEP for all programs. There's a button you can click on in system properties under advanced. Might be fun playing with to see if it breaks anything. Might be good to leave on if it doesnt.
Why are you changing their OS?
>. Cos months later I got a phone call from my folks asking me how to get rid of those pr0n popups and stuff
They could be using FireFox. Or IE with activeX disabled and a pop-up blocker. Or IE with simply SP2 installed. Or Opera. Automatic updates turned on. And a copy of ad aware or spybot.
You might as well teach them about spyware and untrustworthy downloads. Regardless of their platform they will have to deal with it. If desktop Linux took off next year there would be all sorts of spyware for it. XPI apps. "Buddy" apps. All running in userland.
Best to teach them smart internet skills than just throwing them a new OS.
It wouldnt kill them to write a contract and solicit it for pricing. As for 3months? Well, what if we gave them a year? It seems that the problem is that this method is a pretty lousy way to solicit software development.
Youre post was so rife with disinformation I had to reply.
>The many thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ites gassed during Bush I and Clinton
The gassing of the Kurds happened in 1988, before Gulf War I and Clinton. Also, remember 1988, Saddam was friend and lover of all things US! I have photos of Rumsfeld shaking his hand if you want one.
>Actually, we don't know that, since we never had any confirmation that the reactors they were actually using for weapons research were ever "sealed" to begin with.
Its common accepted fact that those were REAL UN seals, sealing REAL URANIUM.
>The notion that they developed such a program in three years is laughable.
They escalated to a controlled threat under clinton to launching test missiles over Japan under Bush, while laughing at the US. You tell me whose foreign policy made more sense. They can hit Alaska and possibly California now.
They simply took advantage of the Bush admin's incompetence and focus on oil rich nations.
>Actually, most nations believed that the Iraqis still had WMDs
This stuff that has been debunked before the war even started. UN, Scott Ritter, Blix's reports, Saddam's son in law, etc. On top of it Powell using discredited info at the UN told the world this was a sham war. Cherry-picking reports with huge cavaets and presenting them to the public Cheney style does not a WMD threat make.
Please, tune into Fox News tonight and tomorrow for better talking points.
>"implemented cosmetic measures which allowed these crazy dictators to build up the weapons technology and arsenal's their unveiling now."
NK broke the reactor seals under Bush.
NK lauched long range missiles under Bush.
Rumors of NK's nuclear program growing in the past three years were under Bush of course.
Saddam disarmed under Bush I and Clinton. Saddam's own son-in-law told Newsweek they had no WMD anymore and the UN agreed that the "threat" Bush played up was a seriously distorting the facts. After the invasion, guess who was right?
Yeah, there is proliferation going on for two main reasons:
The Bush admin is focused on the middle east region and only cares about WMD as pro-war propaganda.
Other nations realized the lessons of the Iraq war weren't "with us or against us" it was "countries who really have WMD survive and don't get invaded." Works for Israel, it will work for everyone else.
>Do you want to keep sending these guys money and stuff?
Sanctions on Iraq.
Sanctions on N Korea.
Details of Fuel Oil program for NK.
In other words, they aren't getting "tons of free stuff" and NK developed, broke its reactors seals, etc under the "cowboy diplomacy" of the Bush admnistration, not Clinton. There are solutions to problems and if you can keep UN inspectors in and nukes out by bribing someone with fuel oil than so be it. We are witnessing the "tough guy" alternative. Are you ready to be drafted to fight a couple more wars for "cowboy diplomacy?"
>they'll be more mushroom clouds over North Korea, and soon.
Wow, modding that up as funny is so clever. A full nuclear war on NK would kill millions of innocent civilians and NK would instantly launch all its conventional artillery (nearly aimed at Seoul) and decimate Seoul and if they do have long range missiles they could hit Tokyo too, with a nuke no less.
Hi-larious!
The whole "cowboy policeman of the world" the Bush administration likes to play is going to bite us in the ass if we start playing "tough guy" with nukes.
A couple thoughts:
1. Lots of things can cause mushroom clouds. It may even be the case that NK is blowing up something (lots of TNT) to impress their own people and keep morale up while scaring everyone else. It may also be the case that they just detonated a nuke.
2. Why are we hearing about this today? Any large explosion can be detected through vibrations. You can't set off a nuke without the world knowing.
3. Clinton and the democrats safely contained these crazy dictators. I don't think the "war on terra" is going to scale up very well to nuclear war. That said I hope people would think twice before they vote for Bush again this year.
So when's the wedding and who's the lucky gal?
They are fantastic, but I've noticed that the quality drops during some of the movies. Seems that laserdisc has two methods of encoding, and the longer movies of the trilogy use the 'low-quality longer-time' method on the second side of the disc.
I believe Empire Strikes Back suffers from this pretty badly, but to be fair its not too easy to notice as LD quality isn't that high to begin with. Its definitely "good enough" to make me not want to buy the "new and improved" DVDs.
Honestly, I wouldnt have bought them anyway. Its hard enjoying what are essentially kid movies from when I was a kid. I would be much more interested in catching one of these movies at a midnight showing in a theater with a rowdy crowd than owning them on DVD. And Lucas makes it hard for me to get interested in his work again. Man, imagine an aging Picasso re-doing his classic realistic work into cubism because fame and fortune would let him.
Somewhere there's a Hollywood exec saying, "See what happens when we let artists own their own work?"
>Been reading here for years and I have never seen a hint of Republican
The GOP mainstays are piss-poor areas of the US where the chances of being a nerd with various gaming machines and enough free time to post on a webboard is pretty low.
Modern day Republicans are closely related to theocrats and the exteme right, thus having a very maginalized platform. Most of the genx/y types who frequent this site really don't see the logic in the GOP's current platform of driving the US back to the 30's both economically and socially.
What is "Republican" today? It gets redefined everytime Bush opens his mouth. The party of small government and fiscal responsbility is no more, thus "Republican" is a blind partisan defense of today's talking points.
Libertarianism gets a lot of play here, but its whatever you want to define it as. Very few bother with the US Libertarian party.
A lot of people would welcome well written conservative views, but like I wrote earlier they don't exist in the Republican world.
Lastly, the genx/y generation is skeptial, doessnt share dad's bigotry, doesn't share dad's religious views, etc thus you're going to get a lot of "crazy leftists" with "crazy" views like those held by the founders of the US, which the Republican seem to despise. Just read their 2004 convention platform: fuck gays, fuck the economy, fuck your complaints about the war, more PATRIOT ACT legislation, and blame Democrats for everything.
Perhaps, these views aren't popular for a reason? No conspiracy needed.
Looks fixable to me.
The L.C.D .doesn't have this equipment. Computers are sold with two speakers, if any, and very few people use them as a "multi-media" unit, prefering their superior home stereos.
A couple problems I see:
The computer is usually not even in the same room as the sound/entertainment system. The computer is a web/email/work machine that doubles as a gaming machine once in a while.
The computer doesn't come bundled with a really nice sound system and if offered, I doubt anyone who cared that much about sound would pay the premium knowing full well their home stereo blows it away, doesnt need reboots, etc.
The same question can be asked of computer game controllers. The consoles do a much better job of delivering games for the L.C.D. that an old fashioned keyboard is just fine for gamers. No need for some killer controller. Of course some would argue the keyboard is superior and that flight simulators need special controllers, but those are niche items. Just because they are niche items doesn't mean they are "dying."
Lastly, there are tons of 5.1 equipment for PCs for people who want them. This assumption that because it doesn't ship with the cheapest dell thus its "dying" is really pushing it.
> There is no liberal or conservative media...it's a myth.
Oh really?
Pray tell, why are Rupert Murdoch's, Mellon Scaifes's, and Rev Moon's papers/media are so far to the right they make Bob Dole blush?
Ownership bias is quite real. In other countries its very common to have a "liberal" paper and a "conservative" paper all of whom are open with their bias. At least here in the states the alternative weeklies don't shy away from the fact that they have a liberal bent, but Fox News and the Washington Times and others still play the "we're just newsmakers without an agenda" card. Which is highly disingenious and leads to more dangerous beliefs than "al gore invented the internet." How about the millions who believe Saddam had a hand in 9/11?
>it's not black and white, you just need to use your own brain
Agreed, but the lack of a formal registration system and dependence on volunteers is going to hurt this project as it becomes more complex and more popular. I don't think the "open wiki" model scales so well as A LOT of wiki articles are full of disinformation and bias. Granted, most aren't, but there is a strong US-centric bias and some of us who have corrected disinformation only to see it reappear because of the citation of false facts makes me, at least, give up on contributing.
That said, the best advice is the line you just gave: always be skeptical about your sources. I think this is a postmodern idea, as this whole debate focuses on the assumption that britanica et al are infailable when in reality they have to deal with the exact same problems the wiki people have to deal with.
>like when reading a newspaper.
I would go as far as saying that people don't use their brain with the media. How many Americans still believe between the fictional connection between Saddam and 9/11?
The problem here is cultural and wikipedia is the symptom. People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc). Wiki readers know they are getting into something they can't trust unlike old media. The real catch (the real issue) is that old media is just as untrustworthy, if not more so because of ownership bias and other factors.
> I can think of no legitimate uses for it.
I'll play devil's advocate. People say the same thing about anonymous remailers, proxies, etc. I understand there's a difference between spoof and anonymous but lets see:
Civil Disobedience.
Bond/Repo Men/Private investigators.
Complaing to people in power without revealing identity or giving off the "CALLER ID BLOCKED" message.
Getting around hairy social or legal situations in an ethical manner. Remember, legal does not equal correct. Illegal does not equal incorrect.
Road warriors "spoofing" their work phone numbers and not their cell numbers.
and of course the #1 reason:
Teenage girls calling boys they like, giggling, and hanging up.
>Firewall only filters incoming traffic, totally oblivious to outgoing. (2nd paragraph, last sentence)
Enable firewall. Start Apache, and I get a warning about the app opening a static listening port. Yes, it does not ask about every connection, which is a design decision based on usability. What percentage of users know foo.exe is? For average users this kind of functionality is overkill. To say it does "nothing" for worms and trojans is being pretty disigenious as a port must be accessible to be attacked.
>Popup blocking is WAAAAAYYYY too late
So they should just stop it? Wireless support in Linux is a PITA, should developers give up on that too? You are being illogical.
>Nope, broken. Strike three.
Whoever told you there wouldnt be driver issues after a major upgrade lied to you.
>Must we delineate MS's culpability for the glut of spyware in the first place?
If MS could forsee the spyware issue they would have kill it, as its THEIR asses on the line. Spyware/viruses/worms is making their OS unusable and SP2 is really the service pack that is going to keep people from switching to Apple, assuming it works.