Historically, the term graffiti referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient sepulchers or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Usage of the word has evolved to include any graphics applied to surfaces in a manner that constitutes vandalism.
-----Original Message----- From: mbravo@spb.ru Sent: January 22, 2008, 10:39AM
Small wonder that SPAM remains a problem when the world's most popular email client uses an attribution format that includes the full email address of the sender. All a spammer has to do is visit any public repository of email messages and harvest away.
The quick and lazy way is to just hit reply, quoting the sender's entire message below, and write your reply above. The more precise way is to quote specific lines from the original message and write your reply below each set of lines.
I'd suggest the second should be characterised as "written, edited and formatted for the benefit of the recipient rather than the convenience of the sender". A fairly popular signature that reflects one aspect of the obviousness of this is the following:
A: Yes. Q: Are you sure? A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?
Ironically, many who do take the trouble to format their message properly neglect to take the additional small step of removing extranous cruft. I can't count the number of times I've seen the above quoted in an email, let alone all the other variations of salutations, signatures, and disclaimers.
With Gmail... and by displaying email as threads (aka conversations) instead of just chronologically it makes dealing with a large volume of correspondence much easier.
That's a feature that most of have always taken for granted. Long-time Windows users, on the other hand, will no doubt consider such a feature as novel, given that historically, Outlook and Outlook express were incapable of such an ordinary function, and their users had probably never seen a threaded message list of email or newsgroup postings.
Maybe some current Outlook users or Exchange admins can chime in here, but it appears that Microsoft has, instead of making use of the `Message-Id` field, introduced a `Thread-Index` field (populated with an absurdly long number) to make up for things. It would be funny if it wasn't so absurd.
Either way, it seems many folks remain unaware of the concept of threading. I can't fathom how they slog through their email, but it's a common enough occurence on email lists to see people send a new message on a new topic by hitting their Reply button instead of bothering to type an email address. Unknown to them, the new message with its new subject line gets buried in an unrelated thread.
As a side note, the more recent versions of mutt can "break" or "join" threads. A welcome feature to add to all the other features to compensate for people using borked email clients, misconfigured servers, or a reliance on a poorly-written web applications to send their emails to the world.
IANABE, but bats have been known to eat flying insects on occasion. Seems to me that this kind of tinkering has been shown repeatedly to produce unintended consquences. In this case, I'd wager the end result would be something along the lines of less bats -> more mosquitos -> more mosquito problems -> more malaria. Or, from the malaria tinkerers perspective, more bats -> less malaria -> more ebola. Given that malaria is a greater problem, which approach would you use?
I can see it now...colonies of geeks will spring up all over that are only allowed to marry each other and can't use any computer technology developed after 1986.
You're thinking about the Windows command interpreter.
The default still-smells-like-DOS Windows command-line tools, among other things, could indeed be characterised as old technology. What you find on any *nix system is very different.
Hrmph. For the record, the BSDs work great with Thinkpads. And believe it or not, there's lots of BSD users, and lots of BSD users who use BSD exclusively on Thinkpads and elsewhere.
One thing I've noticed though, is that the Lenovo / IBM look is a very durable look. The nearly black, matte mottled surface doesn't show fingerprints, scratches or grime and the plastic is the same colour underneath the surface.
Generally, yes, but that's not entirely correct. The color/finish of the keys reflects light to the point of glare when using the built-in light thingy, and keyboard wear is more noticeable because the lettering is white against black. Moreover, lint, dust, dead skin, and in my case, dog hair and the ash from an occasional cigarette, are especially noticeable.
That said, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
As for the OP comment about being "ugly", well, my tastes are probably as refined as Steve Job's are (though I bought a Miele vacuum cleaner (for the dog hair) and not a Miele washer/dryer set), but to my mind, the Thinkpad is what a non-toy laptop should look like. In fact, if you ever see a girl sitting in a Starbucks using a Thinkpad like I did recently, you could almost call it "sexy".
Scrap the HMOs (who are in business to make money, not provide health care), scrap the insurance companies (middle men extracting their pound of flesh) and return to a system where you pay for services rendered with insurance for catastrophic coverage.
As a Candian living in the US, you're preaching to the already converted, but still bewildered and dismayed, if not appalled.
I'll add an interesting tidbit of information. Three out of four voters in the US is a member of the American Association of Retired Persons. Sounds perfectly reasonable, given that older folks tend to be the ones that vote, but problematic when you consider that AARP is fundamentally an insurance company.
Insurance companies are Really Big business. And if Warren Buffett's investment preferences are any indication, more profitable than ever. I don't see them going away any time soon despite the gradual awareness by the electorate that their healthcare system, when viewed in the context of the rest of the industrialised world, is an embarassment.
The problem also lies with legal immigration. As someone with experience in and published a thesis on control systems, I find it impossible to get a dream job without having at least a Greencard. The problem is applying for a Greencard will rob me of at least, at least 5K$ if not about 10K$ (all about the right lawyer, you see).
Don't kid yourself on the "right lawyer" approach. We're not talking about the courts system, but instead, with a giant, understaffed beauracracy overlayed with the politics of the day.
I went through 3 "super" lawyers[1] and spent far more than your $10K number in legal fees. Not one of them accomplished anything someone repeatedly standing in the (at the time) 15-hour lines in front of the INS building couldn't have done by filling out paperwork themselves, or with the help of a window clerk. The only advantage I can think of with respect to having a lawyer on retainer is that there's a phone number to call in case of Something Bad happening. That's a distinct possibility given the current immigration/security hysteria, and that at any time during the process it's likely you've bumped up against a technical violation of some sort. However, given that you're not allowed to leave the country (unless you obtain parole) during the process, that argument may be overstated.
As an additional note, political pressure similarly does little when it comes to such a large beauracracy. At one time, I succeeded in obtaining the involvement of both a senator's office and a local congressman into my case. Might have been impressive in other areas, but the letters and phone calls went over like a lead balloon.
You're right about the time frame, however. I don't know what the current standard is, but when I was applying it was something like a legally-mandated 2 (or possibly) 4 years. It took them 15 years.
------ 1. The first two remain unaware of the fact that I've replaced them, and the last (a firm specialising in immigration work for large corporations) still sends me info-type emails on immigration issues. None of them are aware of the fact that I've long since received my green card.
If a service is running on a machine connected to the Internet and that service is obviously not secured, then the only thing that can be assumed is that permission to use that service is implicitly granted, especially in absence of notices stating otherwise.
While the above may seem reasonable for HTTP requests, I doubt you can extend it to include any number of other network services. Does an improperly configured mail server invite relay abuse? Does an unsecured FTP server imply everyone's free to download whatever is on it, or offer consent for the public to upload stuff for temporary storage for later distribution to their buddies? How about the goofy Messenger Service on Windows systems that was enabled by default on Windows 2000 -- users are opting-in for spammer popups? Hell, the fact that the "open wireless" issue has been repeatedly discussed to death on Slashdot suggests there's no consensus even among the supposedly technically educated.
As for "notices", well, to extent they (or their absence) have any effect as a matter of law, I don't see how an IT department, even with the support of all the folks in legal, could possibly resolve all the issues with a simple "Let's attach warnings, notices, disclaimers, and click-through agreements for every network service". It's ridiculous enough to see legal boilerplate attached to the bottom of email messages addressed to public mailing lists, for example, but fitting similar language into network packets would suggest such an approach to be a dead end.
If there's a point to any of this it's that contract law, in general, is a complex beast, even when situations appear simple or straightforward to the layman. And given that these curious internet-related cases often involve other areas of law and involve situations that have never seen the inside of a courtroom, I doubt any of us, myself included, can do much better than a technically-uneducated judge. Doesn't mean that this or other decisions appear any less absurd.
please think twice about parotting the 'google is not evil' mantra, because I assure you - if you are over mid 30's, they will either not hire you OR fire you before you are about to vest. quite evil.
According to my calculations, Bram Moolenaar is "over mid 30's". And he works for Google. Go figure.
Might have something to do with abilities which, by contrast, include the ability to form coherent paragraphs uncluttered with bizarre abbreviations, inappropriate punctuation and random case.
People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.
Need not look any farther than the success Apple has found doing just that. Granted they're making their money off the sale of ipods, but people are only too happy to buy what's being offered.
For example- I pay $15/month to subscribe to Yahoo Music with my MP3 player, because it's just easier than stealing. The catch? I don't even keep my music if I stop paying. But I don't care! I'm paying for convenience.
Agreed. In my case, I pay only $9.95 per month. Admittedly, it's a different approach (cron jobs and scripting) with different benefits (wider and more varied offerings), but the "I don't care" sentiment and convenience factors are similar enough.
Seriously, though, the number of people downloading "content" without paying for it is staggering. Probably just as staggering as the number of people who wouldn't pay for it in any case.
This is just another attempt by some politicians to claim...
True, but that doesn't answer the underlying question to this effort, or efforts like this in the future, and that is "How can a parent parent in the internet age?"
Today, both parents work (often by necessity) and have little available time and energy, while kids generally have less supervision, more privacy, mobility, and loads of discretionary income. And that's in a Best Of scenario where single-parent households and troubled kids aren't the norm. If the internet is the equivalent of "everything in the street outside", then you're faced with a situation where that "outside" is now inside the kid's bedroom or in a similar private sphere.
Small wonder the focus is on external entities to fix the situation. Granted, there's an alarming if not misplaced trend to rely on schools, websites, or mall security guards to address the problems, but until all this gets more manageable for a parent, I'd suggest withholding the "It won't work" or "A really stupid idea" comments until one considers the lack of alternatives.
Sure, it's the responsibility of the parents. Sure, there's no substitute for good parenting. And yes, there's probably lots of good parents and thoughtful and educated children out there. But I'd wager there's a shitload of parents who don't know what to do, have failed in countless ways, and have nowhere to turn. That won't change any time soon, so society is left to deal with the problem collectively. And if voting issues are any indication, the welfare of kids (whether in the guise of education funding or nutty protection schemes), ranks up at the top with money and property issues. All have emotional content so simple cost vs. benefit analyses won't win the day for the folks at Myspace, or any politican proposing something similar.
Personally, I think all these Think of the Children efforts are going to fuck things up for the rest of us. Then again, I think similarly emotional efforts in the area of gun control, taxes and drug enforcement are going to fuck things up for the rest of us, to the extent they haven't already.
Paper is a renewable resource like rice or strawberries. It's grown on farms like any other crop. They aren't out there chopping down ancient redwoods for paper.
Some good points, but worth pointing out that that strawberries don't incur the environmental problems associated with paper production before they arrive on your plate. Strawberries may not be the greatest example here, but you get the point.
The other issue is that paper is recyclable. That's "recyclable" as in you can, for the most part, put it into your vegetable garden if you can't or don't reprocess it , not "recyclable" as in make something new out of some nasty shit we make too much of.
The notion that 'God' is an explanation for all the things that science and reason has not yet adequately explained is a common one, but rather out-dated.
Out-dated? Unless you mean something you're not saying, the above is complete rubbish. The religeous experience has been around since the dawn of man and is as much a part of life as eating and drinking and fucking and enjoying sunrises.
It is a mistake that has been made by Christians and non-Christians alike.
No, what is a mistake is the arrogant presumption that human existence requires nothing other than reason (and by extension, science) to satisfy what's innate. It's similarly arrogant to hold science to such a high regard that anything it can't explain will be explained (suspect at best, and laughable at worst), and if it can't, it's of no immediate consequence to anyone. No worries, mate, we'll figure it out and you'll see there are no paradoxes in the universe. Not to be dismissive, but the current state of most knowlege is still at the Poke It With a Stick and See What Happens stage, and offers few satisfactory answers or explanations to anyone. Unlike the few thousand years of philosophical thought that only fashionable Starbucks patrons or wiki-citing Slashdot posters could dismiss out of hand or reinterpret with absurd narrowness.
To put it another way, I don't believe in God in order to explain anything.
Since when did observation and rational thought (we are talking about the science and evolution here, right?) require anything resembling belief? Outside of republican politics in Iowa, hearing someone say they believe or don't believe in evolution, gravity or the second law of thermodynamics suggests to me they're either looking to shore up the foundations of their current religeon, or trying to erect on a new church on top. In case you haven't noticed, that kind of thing has also around since the dawn of man.
Depending on the how they define forensic work, a system administrator could be prosecuted for reading the log files...
To the extent administration is Daily Shit Everyone Does(TM), the above should be reworded with s/system administrator/anyone/, and should include Windows users who click past the "Show Files" warning when viewing the contents of the Program Files directory.
The issue (and the legislation being discussed) isn't the above, however. While the writer of the fine article does make use of unwarranted and exaggerated language like probing deep, the following section is most relevant:
Under pending legislation in South Carolina, digital forensic evidence gathered for use in a court in that state must be collected by a person with a PI license or through a PI licensed agency.
Seems to me this is probably a Legal Stuff(TM) issue only, and as far as that goes, it is an interesting development. But I fail to see how such legislation would preclude a user, administrator, or compsci professor from being able to testify as an expert witness (or otherwise), let alone interfere someone (not subject to a court order) using a computer.
Besides, W which when translated into Hebrew, one of the original languages of the bible, means U which is also the number 6. So even if the Pope had a computer, he wouldn't be using it on the interweb thing because he would in essence be paying homage by typing the number of the beast (www. 666.) every time he wanted to look at Asian porn.
And, sure enough, it wasn't long after affordable printing and widespread literacy that Roman Catholicism headed steeply into its ongoing decline.
Historical oversimplifications aside, didja know the Vatican has its own domain and an official website?
Make me wonder what OS the Pope uses, and whether it would be Holy (UNIX), catholic (BSD), or simply apostolic (Linux with different creeds). Windows, I'm guessing, would viewed as something for the Protestants, and the Gospel of Jobs is still deemed both apocryphal and cultish.
This would be for US residents that are re-entering the country.
I think you meant to say US citizens.
Foreign nationals can have legal residency in the US, but would normally be required to present a valid passport from their country of origin. Similarly, US citizens residing in other countries would be presenting a US passport.
Unless you're in a movie, in which case all bets are off.
I'm getting very tired of seeing this same myth trotted out again and again. The fact is that drivers in Linux are not hard to find or install because you don't have to find or install them. They're already there. And this goes for standard and and quite a wide range of exotic hardware.
True, but I think the OP meant to say Windows wins when it comes to being able to make use of weird-assed crap hardware that litters the shelves of most electronics retailers. That, and maybe Broadcom NICs.
Your network printing diatribe was fun reading. You could write something similar that describes how Windows users make hardware purchases, and their reliance on and willingness to install whatever is included on those manufacturer-provided CDs.
And by comparison, I've given up counting the posts that discuss these links. This is worse than a mailing list letting slip through a spam message, and seeing countless folks take the opportunity to offer as many off-topic comments.
Deleting a mailing list thread gone nuts is easy, but deleting Slashdot posts isn't an option. Put another way, it's easy to ignore AC posts, off-topic posts (they tend to get modded down fairly quickly), or posts that are disruptive by nature (they also tend to get modded down), but multiple meta posts that try to be helpful but end up repeating what others have already pointed out?
If you're so inclined, write an email to the powers that be. Post an Ask Slashdot article. Hell, take the dog for a walk. Just don't make the problem worse than it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Your professor friends don't consider graffiti to be art? That's like referring to Slashdot articles as electronic scribblings.
From the Wikipedia article
-----Original Message-----
From: mbravo@spb.ru
Sent: January 22, 2008, 10:39AM
Small wonder that SPAM remains a problem when the world's most popular email client uses an attribution format that includes the full email address of the sender. All a spammer has to do is visit any public repository of email messages and harvest away.
The quick and lazy way is to just hit reply, quoting the sender's entire message below, and write your reply above. The more precise way is to quote specific lines from the original message and write your reply below each set of lines.
I'd suggest the second should be characterised as "written, edited and formatted for the benefit of the recipient rather than the convenience of the sender". A fairly popular signature that reflects one aspect of the obviousness of this is the following:
A: Yes.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?
Ironically, many who do take the trouble to format their message properly neglect to take the additional small step of removing extranous cruft. I can't count the number of times I've seen the above quoted in an email, let alone all the other variations of salutations, signatures, and disclaimers.
With Gmail ... and by displaying email as threads (aka conversations) instead of just chronologically it makes dealing with a large volume of correspondence much easier.
That's a feature that most of have always taken for granted. Long-time Windows users, on the other hand, will no doubt consider such a feature as novel, given that historically, Outlook and Outlook express were incapable of such an ordinary function, and their users had probably never seen a threaded message list of email or newsgroup postings.
Maybe some current Outlook users or Exchange admins can chime in here, but it appears that Microsoft has, instead of making use of the `Message-Id` field, introduced a `Thread-Index` field (populated with an absurdly long number) to make up for things. It would be funny if it wasn't so absurd.
Either way, it seems many folks remain unaware of the concept of threading. I can't fathom how they slog through their email, but it's a common enough occurence on email lists to see people send a new message on a new topic by hitting their Reply button instead of bothering to type an email address. Unknown to them, the new message with its new subject line gets buried in an unrelated thread.
As a side note, the more recent versions of mutt can "break" or "join" threads. A welcome feature to add to all the other features to compensate for people using borked email clients, misconfigured servers, or a reliance on a poorly-written web applications to send their emails to the world.
Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul ...
Too late.
IANABE, but bats have been known to eat flying insects on occasion. Seems to me that this kind of tinkering has been shown repeatedly to produce unintended consquences. In this case, I'd wager the end result would be something along the lines of less bats -> more mosquitos -> more mosquito problems -> more malaria. Or, from the malaria tinkerers perspective, more bats -> less malaria -> more ebola. Given that malaria is a greater problem, which approach would you use?
I can see it now...colonies of geeks will spring up all over that are only allowed to marry each other and can't use any computer technology developed after 1986.
You're thinking about the Windows command interpreter.
The default still-smells-like-DOS Windows command-line tools, among other things, could indeed be characterised as old technology. What you find on any *nix system is very different.
very important, that one...
Head may be important, but if children are desired, he'll need fork.
Linux ... Linux ... Linux ... Linux ...
;-)
Hrmph. For the record, the BSDs work great with Thinkpads. And believe it or not, there's lots of BSD users, and lots of BSD users who use BSD exclusively on Thinkpads and elsewhere.
Did I mention BSD?
One thing I've noticed though, is that the Lenovo / IBM look is a very durable look. The nearly black, matte mottled surface doesn't show fingerprints, scratches or grime and the plastic is the same colour underneath the surface.
Generally, yes, but that's not entirely correct. The color/finish of the keys reflects light to the point of glare when using the built-in light thingy, and keyboard wear is more noticeable because the lettering is white against black. Moreover, lint, dust, dead skin, and in my case, dog hair and the ash from an occasional cigarette, are especially noticeable.
That said, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
As for the OP comment about being "ugly", well, my tastes are probably as refined as Steve Job's are (though I bought a Miele vacuum cleaner (for the dog hair) and not a Miele washer/dryer set), but to my mind, the Thinkpad is what a non-toy laptop should look like. In fact, if you ever see a girl sitting in a Starbucks using a Thinkpad like I did recently, you could almost call it "sexy".
Scrap the HMOs (who are in business to make money, not provide health care), scrap the insurance companies (middle men extracting their pound of flesh) and return to a system where you pay for services rendered with insurance for catastrophic coverage.
As a Candian living in the US, you're preaching to the already converted, but still bewildered and dismayed, if not appalled.
I'll add an interesting tidbit of information. Three out of four voters in the US is a member of the American Association of Retired Persons. Sounds perfectly reasonable, given that older folks tend to be the ones that vote, but problematic when you consider that AARP is fundamentally an insurance company.
Insurance companies are Really Big business. And if Warren Buffett's investment preferences are any indication, more profitable than ever. I don't see them going away any time soon despite the gradual awareness by the electorate that their healthcare system, when viewed in the context of the rest of the industrialised world, is an embarassment.
The problem also lies with legal immigration. As someone with experience in and published a thesis on control systems, I find it impossible to get a dream job without having at least a Greencard. The problem is applying for a Greencard will rob me of at least, at least 5K$ if not about 10K$ (all about the right lawyer, you see).
Don't kid yourself on the "right lawyer" approach. We're not talking about the courts system, but instead, with a giant, understaffed beauracracy overlayed with the politics of the day.
I went through 3 "super" lawyers[1] and spent far more than your $10K number in legal fees. Not one of them accomplished anything someone repeatedly standing in the (at the time) 15-hour lines in front of the INS building couldn't have done by filling out paperwork themselves, or with the help of a window clerk. The only advantage I can think of with respect to having a lawyer on retainer is that there's a phone number to call in case of Something Bad happening. That's a distinct possibility given the current immigration/security hysteria, and that at any time during the process it's likely you've bumped up against a technical violation of some sort. However, given that you're not allowed to leave the country (unless you obtain parole) during the process, that argument may be overstated.
As an additional note, political pressure similarly does little when it comes to such a large beauracracy. At one time, I succeeded in obtaining the involvement of both a senator's office and a local congressman into my case. Might have been impressive in other areas, but the letters and phone calls went over like a lead balloon.
You're right about the time frame, however. I don't know what the current standard is, but when I was applying it was something like a legally-mandated 2 (or possibly) 4 years. It took them 15 years.
------
1. The first two remain unaware of the fact that I've replaced them, and the last (a firm specialising in immigration work for large corporations) still sends me info-type emails on immigration issues. None of them are aware of the fact that I've long since received my green card.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
... do you waaaaaant ... to come back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?
Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya! Do you waaaaaant
If a service is running on a machine connected to the Internet and that service is obviously not secured, then the only thing that can be assumed is that permission to use that service is implicitly granted, especially in absence of notices stating otherwise.
While the above may seem reasonable for HTTP requests, I doubt you can extend it to include any number of other network services. Does an improperly configured mail server invite relay abuse? Does an unsecured FTP server imply everyone's free to download whatever is on it, or offer consent for the public to upload stuff for temporary storage for later distribution to their buddies? How about the goofy Messenger Service on Windows systems that was enabled by default on Windows 2000 -- users are opting-in for spammer popups? Hell, the fact that the "open wireless" issue has been repeatedly discussed to death on Slashdot suggests there's no consensus even among the supposedly technically educated.
As for "notices", well, to extent they (or their absence) have any effect as a matter of law, I don't see how an IT department, even with the support of all the folks in legal, could possibly resolve all the issues with a simple "Let's attach warnings, notices, disclaimers, and click-through agreements for every network service". It's ridiculous enough to see legal boilerplate attached to the bottom of email messages addressed to public mailing lists, for example, but fitting similar language into network packets would suggest such an approach to be a dead end.
If there's a point to any of this it's that contract law, in general, is a complex beast, even when situations appear simple or straightforward to the layman. And given that these curious internet-related cases often involve other areas of law and involve situations that have never seen the inside of a courtroom, I doubt any of us, myself included, can do much better than a technically-uneducated judge. Doesn't mean that this or other decisions appear any less absurd.
please think twice about parotting the 'google is not evil' mantra, because I assure you - if you are over mid 30's, they will either not hire you OR fire you before you are about to vest. quite evil.
According to my calculations, Bram Moolenaar is "over mid 30's". And he works for Google. Go figure.
Might have something to do with abilities which, by contrast, include the ability to form coherent paragraphs uncluttered with bizarre abbreviations, inappropriate punctuation and random case.
People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.
Need not look any farther than the success Apple has found doing just that. Granted they're making their money off the sale of ipods, but people are only too happy to buy what's being offered.
For example- I pay $15/month to subscribe to Yahoo Music with my MP3 player, because it's just easier than stealing. The catch? I don't even keep my music if I stop paying. But I don't care! I'm paying for convenience.
Agreed. In my case, I pay only $9.95 per month. Admittedly, it's a different approach (cron jobs and scripting) with different benefits (wider and more varied offerings), but the "I don't care" sentiment and convenience factors are similar enough.
Seriously, though, the number of people downloading "content" without paying for it is staggering. Probably just as staggering as the number of people who wouldn't pay for it in any case.
This is just another attempt by some politicians to claim ...
True, but that doesn't answer the underlying question to this effort, or efforts like this in the future, and that is "How can a parent parent in the internet age?"
Today, both parents work (often by necessity) and have little available time and energy, while kids generally have less supervision, more privacy, mobility, and loads of discretionary income. And that's in a Best Of scenario where single-parent households and troubled kids aren't the norm. If the internet is the equivalent of "everything in the street outside", then you're faced with a situation where that "outside" is now inside the kid's bedroom or in a similar private sphere.
Small wonder the focus is on external entities to fix the situation. Granted, there's an alarming if not misplaced trend to rely on schools, websites, or mall security guards to address the problems, but until all this gets more manageable for a parent, I'd suggest withholding the "It won't work" or "A really stupid idea" comments until one considers the lack of alternatives.
Sure, it's the responsibility of the parents. Sure, there's no substitute for good parenting. And yes, there's probably lots of good parents and thoughtful and educated children out there. But I'd wager there's a shitload of parents who don't know what to do, have failed in countless ways, and have nowhere to turn. That won't change any time soon, so society is left to deal with the problem collectively. And if voting issues are any indication, the welfare of kids (whether in the guise of education funding or nutty protection schemes), ranks up at the top with money and property issues. All have emotional content so simple cost vs. benefit analyses won't win the day for the folks at Myspace, or any politican proposing something similar.
Personally, I think all these Think of the Children efforts are going to fuck things up for the rest of us. Then again, I think similarly emotional efforts in the area of gun control, taxes and drug enforcement are going to fuck things up for the rest of us, to the extent they haven't already.
Paper is a renewable resource like rice or strawberries. It's grown on farms like any other crop. They aren't out there chopping down ancient redwoods for paper.
Some good points, but worth pointing out that that strawberries don't incur the environmental problems associated with paper production before they arrive on your plate. Strawberries may not be the greatest example here, but you get the point.
The other issue is that paper is recyclable. That's "recyclable" as in you can, for the most part, put it into your vegetable garden if you can't or don't reprocess it , not "recyclable" as in make something new out of some nasty shit we make too much of.
The notion that 'God' is an explanation for all the things that science and reason has not yet adequately explained is a common one, but rather out-dated.
Out-dated? Unless you mean something you're not saying, the above is complete rubbish. The religeous experience has been around since the dawn of man and is as much a part of life as eating and drinking and fucking and enjoying sunrises.
It is a mistake that has been made by Christians and non-Christians alike.
No, what is a mistake is the arrogant presumption that human existence requires nothing other than reason (and by extension, science) to satisfy what's innate. It's similarly arrogant to hold science to such a high regard that anything it can't explain will be explained (suspect at best, and laughable at worst), and if it can't, it's of no immediate consequence to anyone. No worries, mate, we'll figure it out and you'll see there are no paradoxes in the universe. Not to be dismissive, but the current state of most knowlege is still at the Poke It With a Stick and See What Happens stage, and offers few satisfactory answers or explanations to anyone. Unlike the few thousand years of philosophical thought that only fashionable Starbucks patrons or wiki-citing Slashdot posters could dismiss out of hand or reinterpret with absurd narrowness.
To put it another way, I don't believe in God in order to explain anything.
Since when did observation and rational thought (we are talking about the science and evolution here, right?) require anything resembling belief? Outside of republican politics in Iowa, hearing someone say they believe or don't believe in evolution, gravity or the second law of thermodynamics suggests to me they're either looking to shore up the foundations of their current religeon, or trying to erect on a new church on top. In case you haven't noticed, that kind of thing has also around since the dawn of man.
To the extent administration is Daily Shit Everyone Does(TM), the above should be reworded with s/system administrator/anyone/, and should include Windows users who click past the "Show Files" warning when viewing the contents of the Program Files directory.
The issue (and the legislation being discussed) isn't the above, however. While the writer of the fine article does make use of unwarranted and exaggerated language like probing deep, the following section is most relevant:Seems to me this is probably a Legal Stuff(TM) issue only, and as far as that goes, it is an interesting development. But I fail to see how such legislation would preclude a user, administrator, or compsci professor from being able to testify as an expert witness (or otherwise), let alone interfere someone (not subject to a court order) using a computer.
Besides, W which when translated into Hebrew, one of the original languages of the bible, means U which is also the number 6. So even if the Pope had a computer, he wouldn't be using it on the interweb thing because he would in essence be paying homage by typing the number of the beast (www. 666.) every time he wanted to look at Asian porn.
;-)
George (6) Walker (6) Bush,Jr (6)
Coincidence? I think not.
Don't worry, you'll have no trouble remembering the new address. It's b439:88fa:31d3:0507:613a:426c:99ba:02e2.
And to connect to Windows systems, you'll need too make regular and extensive use of sed with escaped escape characters to yield
\\\\b439-88fa-31d3-0507-613a-426c-99ba-02e2\\...
For anyone that hasn't used, for example, wakeonlan scripts, laugh. It's funny.
And, sure enough, it wasn't long after affordable printing and widespread literacy that Roman Catholicism headed steeply into its ongoing decline.
Historical oversimplifications aside, didja know the Vatican has its own domain and an official website?
Make me wonder what OS the Pope uses, and whether it would be Holy (UNIX), catholic (BSD), or simply apostolic (Linux with different creeds). Windows, I'm guessing, would viewed as something for the Protestants, and the Gospel of Jobs is still deemed both apocryphal and cultish.
This would be for US residents that are re-entering the country.
I think you meant to say US citizens.
Foreign nationals can have legal residency in the US, but would normally be required to present a valid passport from their country of origin. Similarly, US citizens residing in other countries would be presenting a US passport.
Unless you're in a movie, in which case all bets are off.
I'm getting very tired of seeing this same myth trotted out again and again. The fact is that drivers in Linux are not hard to find or install because you don't have to find or install them. They're already there. And this goes for standard and and quite a wide range of exotic hardware.
True, but I think the OP meant to say Windows wins when it comes to being able to make use of weird-assed crap hardware that litters the shelves of most electronics retailers. That, and maybe Broadcom NICs.
Your network printing diatribe was fun reading. You could write something similar that describes how Windows users make hardware purchases, and their reliance on and willingness to install whatever is included on those manufacturer-provided CDs.
So far, I've counted 4 myminicity accounts spamming slashdot: blah blah blah
And by comparison, I've given up counting the posts that discuss these links. This is worse than a mailing list letting slip through a spam message, and seeing countless folks take the opportunity to offer as many off-topic comments.
Deleting a mailing list thread gone nuts is easy, but deleting Slashdot posts isn't an option. Put another way, it's easy to ignore AC posts, off-topic posts (they tend to get modded down fairly quickly), or posts that are disruptive by nature (they also tend to get modded down), but multiple meta posts that try to be helpful but end up repeating what others have already pointed out?
If you're so inclined, write an email to the powers that be. Post an Ask Slashdot article. Hell, take the dog for a walk. Just don't make the problem worse than it is.