kpdf will gladly load the entire 100 meg pdf into memory, uncompressed, if it can find the space for it.
You probably know this, but there's a setting for KPDF to adjust this. Of course I'm coming from the opposite direction in that I always set it to "Aggressive" because I want it to load the entire thing into my copious RAM.
Anyway, while I'm posting, I might as well mention that KDE 4 is nearing release and in a staggering lack of bloating, is actually looking faster and more memory efficient than its predecessor. I tend to oscillate between Gnome and KDE with bouts of CLI when I know what I want to be doing and wont be distracted by browsing (like now). KDE 4 will probably put me into another KDE-phase and if it's as good as it's looking in the Beta, I'll likely put it on as standard for the family's desktop.
Yeah - I bought my dad a new laptop this year and ordered it with xp.
I think the whole world is doing what you're doing. I'd thought that it was just snobby techies like myself that were turning their noses up at Vista, but it looks like this is a real market force. I saw this a couple of days ago (second paragraph) and laughed like crazy. "Downgrade to Windows XP for £40.00 extra." Priceless (and I bet it's popular too)!
We're in agreement. I had simply thought it worth emphasizing that the "them" is not government but the incumbents, as I'm increasingly seeing people forget that the public can contest control of the institution and see government itself as a them. However, re-reading your post, I see that you actually wrote "a government" rather than "government" which I misread. Apologies!
I guess one of the reasons that so many people here are so readily suspicious of bribery (other than Microsoft's dubious business history, or course), is that to many of us here, we don't think it is in Nigeria's interests to replace Linux on these laptops. A very good case can be made that children will learn IT skills more successfully on the Linux system due to a number of factors, but the configurability and openess of the platform being a major part of it, along with a massive existing resource detailing how it works, a supportive (even evangelical) community and not to mention the way a Linux box segues so naturally into a development platform with the wide range of easily available and installable languages, compilers, web-servers, et al. Fostering a native IT community / business is one of the goals of the OLPC program after all. And these same qualities, though not taken advantage of by all, mean that those who do take advantage of it can share the benefits with the rest of their community. This is particularly important when adapting a system to a new culture and / or language. In the long term, we can also all see that the interests of a country are better served by a free and self-maintainable software basis, than a closed proprietary one which, we should remember, gets superseded every few years.
There is also the issue of networking, as one of the in-built features of the existing configuration is that the laptops should very, very easily configure themselves as a mesh network which is hugely useful in an environment where bandwidth is scarce or erratic or both. The idea is that one person gets the driver / package / whatever and then it can quickly be shared around the community or with others. I think we all have an idea how fiddly this could get with XP (or Vista). Which reminds me - the user restrictions are another advantage in Linux which will have a greater effect in this sort of environment where the laptops are more likely passed around and frequently meddled with by people who have yet to learn the do's and don'ts. I've said enough to make my point, but I can't stop thinking of advantages. The lack of all the serial numbers and authentication will likewise be a big plus where people may often want to just stick in a standard install disc and get an "as new" system.
Most of us agree, even if we prefer Windows, that Linux is a serious competitor technically to Windows and that the main thing preventing it having a big market share is that it doesn't already have a big market share (I'm sure you understand what I mean). So the question arises for us, in an environment where it could suddenly have that big market share and eliminate its biggest weakness, and in an environment where it has some large advantages over its rival, would the government of Nigeria suddenly declare they wanted to spend a large amount of money on replacing it with something else?
It doesn't have to be bribery and corruption, but I think you can see why many people who understand the relative merits of the two systems, it seems a very probably explanation.
(And tangentially, to forestall those who think bribery is no different to marketing, it is bribery because it is directing gain to a few decision makers to create a worse deal for the many, many others who will be affected by that decision).
You can't expect a government to trust you if you don't trust them. It's the same dynamic in any relationship.
Is this a useful way of looking at things? The government is not a "them" distinct from "us." It's an organisational structure, an institution, that can be occupied by any group. The "us" and "them" so far as there is one, is between the general population of the country and a much smaller cabal of rich, organised groups. It is best to conceptualize Government as the turf to be fought over, rather than concede it to be something distinct from us. To do that is to accept the incumbent cabals as perpetual and to denigrate the public's role to merely a brake on its excesses.
Ya, because actually addressing the comments brought up by the ISO and resolving them is Evil!!! It may actually get approved! And who needs more than ONE standard?
Well just to clarify the situation, Gnome developers are actually implementing OOXML (reference) and I believe that this is counter-productive to the Free Software movement's success. OOXML is very much a proprietary format and will remain so. One company will always have the power to disadvantage others as regards its implementation. Furthermore, from a technical standpoint, it has extremely serious flaws that would take a lot to resolve. It's not even close to being the "superb standard" that Miguel de Icaza has called it. It is so far from being such, that I feel I have good grounds for suspicion. I don't like just repeating what I hear, so I have taken some time to actually look at OOXML and try to understand it. I have also worked as a professional software engineer for just over a decade now, so I feel I have a reasonable grounding to at least understand the principles involved. OOXML is awful. No-one involved in free software should be advocating effort be squandered on this when the staggeringly more efficient approach for the industry is for Microsoft to implement the well-documented and more genuinely open ODF. This, incidentally, is actually done. (reference).
In short, the only reason I can see for advocating OOXML (and it is advocacy, not merely "resolving issues") is personal gain, presumably financial. Misguided is possible, but we're talking heavily misguided here.
Regarding:
Right, because a non-MS employee has seen the source code, and MS actively HELPING Mono so that they can sue them later.
I can only imagine the hysteria here when.Net 3.5 comes with the source code.. I guess its not just MS that likes to FUD..
It is perfectly plausible that MS would help their opponents into a legally vulnerable position. But keep in mind that Mono is largely the pet project of Novell, which has recently signed secretive agreements with Microsoft to use their patents without legal risk. As Microsoft seems very in bed with Novell, it seems very believable that the intent could be to sue everyone except Novell. Patents could be the way to do this (unfortunately for the USA). But I think the big motivation behind Mono in the immediate future is to help the take off of Silverlight. Adobe scares Microsoft. Silverlight is intended to be a Flash killer. For that they need Mono to get it onto other platforms. If they did manage to lever Silverlight into being the de facto standard however, I would expect the old games of shifting implementations could begin again. Mono is built on sand and nothing more. I don't think that would actually happen so long as Silverlight is still engagaged in a struggle with its rivals - Microsoft would be hurting themselves by hurting Mono. But I wouldn't bet money on this. And regardless of anything else, any success of Mono will be at the expense of truly free and open source solutions which would benefit from wider use and developer interest.
I don't think I'm spreading FUD. I certainly hope not. I've laid out some of my reasons for why I'm making the statements I am. Microsoft have a very great deal of money and have historically have demonstrated a very great capacity for deceit and betrayal. I believe that I'm right to be wary and to advocate some measure of preventative strategy.
Many things are possible. But if this were true, it could easily be in the form of a promise of future reward in an easily disguised form - a nice, highly paid job at Microsoft with good conditions and juicy benefits or severance deals. How would that ever be proved in the long run?
I think the best policy, as it usually is, is to extend as little authority to people on the basis of their position as possible and judge every action and utterance on its own merits regardless of whether it comes from on-high or from the lowliest of the low. An over-exaggerated respect for authority is one of humanity's biggest failings. But that said, when someone repeatedly demonstrates behaviour that suggestes that are a shill, it's wise to keep a close eye one whatever else they might be up to.
For all I know, they offered him a better job outside Microsoft for a nice thirty pieces of silver collectible at some future date. Every time I read his name, it's in connection with something I see as damaging to Linux and the Free Software movement. And surely nobody can describe OOXML in these terms without some sort of bias?
Gnome is GPL, isn't it? Doesn't that make it inherently possible for people to sideline this person no matter his current position, before we risk serious damage? In terms of patents, introduction of copyrighted code, or perhaps other issues, presumably someone in his position acting deliberately, could cause some nasty legal wrangles. And actions so far give reason for distrust, do they not?
Is this going to be another case of people taking a scientific discovery in one area and attributing everything in that area to it? Saying that a region of the brain is responsible for optimism (which is not what the article says) is ignoring all our personal experience and psychological research that shows we ourselves can change our way of thinking to be more optimistic through experience and practice.
Besides, what the researchers discovered is that when asked to think about positive events in the future, this area of the brain showed activity. That's a long way from saying that this area of the brain is pumping out optimism.
It is. Though happily I work in an environment where I was able to get our SuSE installation replaced with Debian. And I did that in response to their Microsoft deal. It's a small thing, but I did it and I liked that I did it.
Frustration is understandable, but targeted disgust can be more therapeutic. Instead of "dammit" try saying "treacherous judases who have just signed their own death warrant and thank fuck they're just a pissant little distro that nobody really gave a shit and whose only notable achievement is this sudden managing to replace the Linux world's apathy toward them in one stroke, albeit with dislike."
Yep, saying that is much more therapeutic. Especially at the top of a thread on an international tech news forum.;)
To people with families, threatening to torture and ruin the lives of your loved ones is more effective than the pain of bamboo splints under the fingernails. It can also be done without leaving evidence.
I'm sorry you're disappointed at the lack of super-secret torture techniques, but if there's anyone you deeply care about or love, you might want to consider how you would respond to a government agent saying admit to a crime or they'll have the crap kicked out of them, lose their job and home, maybe be locked in a cell for years.
Even if that does not strike you as wrong to do to someone, you can at least see that in this case it has led to faulty confessions and mistakes.
Well that was fascinating. Extracted the text from both PDFs and ran diff on the resulting text files. The big thing that was
removed seemed to be the following passage. Seems pretty unpleasant.
Nevertheless, on December 27, Templeton--who up until this point was not
involved in the investigation--conducted a polygraph examination of Higazy. Templeton began
the test by asking Higazy background questions on subjects such as Higazy's scholarship,
homeland, family in Egypt, brother in upstate New York, and girlfriend. He also asked Higazy
whether he had anything to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001. The first round of testing
allegedly suggested that Higazy's answers to the questions relating to the September 11 attacks
were deceptive. As the second series of questioning was ending, Higazy requested that
Templeton stop. He testified that he began "feeling intense pain in my arm. I remember hearing
my heartbeat in my head and I just couldn't breathe. I said, 'Sir, sir, please, stop. It hurts. Please
stop. Please take it off.'" Templeton unhooked the polygraph, and according to Higazy, called
Higazy a baby and told him that a nine-year-old could tolerate this pain. Templeton left the room
to get Higazy water, and upon his return, Higazy asked whether anybody else had ever suffered
physical pain during the polygraph, to which Templeton replied: "[i]t never happened to anyone
who told the truth."
Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate,
and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother "live in scrutiny"
and would "make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell." Templeton later admitted
that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: "that they had a security service, that
their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country
where they don't advise people of their rights, they don't - yeah, probably about torture, sure."
Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in
danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am
screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is
going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I'm screwed and my family's in danger. And
Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than
this device is not mine."
Higazy explained why he feared for his family:
The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is --they're
suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam's security force--as they
later on were called his henchmen--a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in
Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My
mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When
the word 'torture' comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just
press on one of these knuckles. I couldn't imagine them doing anything to my sister.
And Higazy added:
[L]et's just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or
they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same
token, some people who actually could be --might try to get to them and somebody
might actually make a connection. I wasn't going to risk that. I wasn't going to risk that,
so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that's
convincing? And I said okay.
There are other changes in there, though much smaller. I haven't gone through it exhaustively. The above seemed to be the big thing. Threats against the suspects family...
The only other thing that leapt out at me from a brief skim was the comment that they didn't believe a polygraph would be useful because "if he was a member of Al Quaeda, he could pass it." I find that comment fascinating, too.
#2 - Infiltrate. Once the value of open source is seen, have people who are dedicated to it, and who have contributed to it be seen as valuable. Get them into influential positions.
Likewise, you make valid points about how much upper management in big business is largely informed by who you know and emulating the powerful. However, I (politely) disagree that the following is a workable strategy:
Impress, infiltrate, overthrow
Leaving aside that there are many very nice and sincere people who simply like to wear suits and plenty of incompetents who wear combats and t-shirts, those who breaking suit prejudice amongst those who hold it cannot realistically be achieved by first conforming to the prejudice. The only workable approach is to demonstrate value whilst not conforming. To do otherwise is to sign over the value one possesses to the cause of suit-prejudice, i.e. if someone who contributes as much to free software as Richard Stallman is commonly seen wearing an expensive suit and dazzlingly coiffured hair, it simply goes to reinforce the idea that suit=competence. If he does not, his value contributes to the idea that not-wearing-suit can also equal competence. Someone who wore a suit for twenty years to become CEO and then suddenly started turning up in beach shorts and sandles, would not be seen as "overthrowing" anything. People don't work like that, no more than the Pope could suddenly reveal he's a muslim infiltrator and declare that Catholicism is now a branch of Sunnism. If you want to overcome prejudice, then the first rule is to stand by what you are.
Alternately, he is undoing a system that sets too much store by clothing and labels by showing people that a hugely influential and intelligent person can get where they are and change things without having to conform to other people's expectations. In that, he is trying to bring about another social change he believes is for the better. And I agree with him. Confusing the cost of someone's clothing with the value of what they're saying is a problem in our society.
Well, one of the benefits of role playing is adjusting the rules to suit a particular style. I just wish they incorporated more interesting choices for low levels, or even an optional playing style.
There's several books that offer alternate rules. Also there's rules for creating higher level characters if your players already know how the game works. I usually start my players off at level 7+ unless there's a story reason to be level 1...
There's also Iron Heroes which is an alternative players handbook with different character classes and rules tweaks to provide much greater variability at low levels. It's a very, very good system and broadly compatible with general D&D. Very much worth a look and available as a cheap PDF.
I agree to some extent, but then any words used inappropriately are a mistake. Someone who drops words like ratiocination into a sentence for the sake of it is as bad or worse, than someone who similarly wishes to merely portray an image of themselves. But the notion that a word is inherently bad in and of itself is difficult to support. You can say that the word cunt has a harsh sound on the ear and therefore inherently has greater potential for connoting aggression than a word like boobies... but it's stretching it to say that there's anything more than that which makes cunt intrinsically an obscene word. What it does lack is the stifling, clinicality of other terms such as vagina which protect them against the sex=obscenity value-system many people have. But I, like many others, do not share that sex=obscenity value-system and do not consider cunt, fuck, cock and all their ilk to be necessarily bad. As far as I am concerned, growing up in an environment where these words are commonplace, I have come to resent other people telling me how I may or may not speak. Though I was quite jokey (and glib) in my nearby post in tracing the transformation of these words into "obscenities," I was serious when I stated that it has its origins in class prejudice (and still does, today). For any individual or section of society to thumb its nose at another and look down on them for talking differently, is rank and disgusting to me. Now I have a very good vocabulary and like Humpty Dumpty, when I use a word, it means exactly what I intend it to mean, no more or less. So in this post and in working conversations, the fucks are few and far between for they are not needed, but I have no problem with them and they colour my speech often enough.
What is reprehensible is the introduction of wildcard symbols into obvious swear words, as in f**k or c*nt. These are far worse to me because they clearly convey to the reader that regardless of any obscenity-blindness on their part, the word is intended to convey an offence. The meaning is not at all concealed and the obscenity angle is emphasized. Far better to use the word itself in the appropriate context.
The word is not the issue for me. The meaning is. To say you fucked someone sounds negative and souless to me. But to say you really fucking love someone... well, that's just great.:)
If I could say "fucking insensitive cunt" at school, I would be soooo happy...
I'll take a guess that you're american, seeing as at the schools here in the UK, it's only the word 'insensitive' that gets omitted. And as I understand it, the USA does not like the French due to opposition to the Iraq invasion, cheese-jealousy, etc. Hence 'freedom fries' and so forth. (Stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this). So if you wish to say fucking and cunt, you can justify it as resisting French oppression. You see both Fuck and Cunt are genuine English words with a long history and weren't always considered vulgar. This all changed with the Norman invasion of England, when the French speaking invaders turned everything upside down and the language of the court and nobility became French (the Lingua Franca, if you'll forgive me). Not only did the sycophantic nobility of England use French, but the aspiring well-to-do also put on airs and graces and adopted french. And the use of English words became looked down on and a sign that one was lower class. Indeed, the word vulgar is actually just Latin for common. The entire prejudice against these words is, essentially, a class thing.
As a country with a good solid founding in patriotism and Francophobia, I believe that you should embrace such words and I encourage you to boldy explain such to your tutors, denouncing them as French-loving sycophants if they disagree; and declare that all americans should be proud of their cunts and generous with their fucks. If you are criticised for use of either of these words, the correct response is not sorry, but "WHY DO YOU HATE CHAUCER?"
So good luck with the fucking and the cunt. I'm afraid I'm not much good on the insensitive, but I don't let that stop me.
Slashdot Mirror
You probably know this, but there's a setting for KPDF to adjust this. Of course I'm coming from the opposite direction in that I always set it to "Aggressive" because I want it to load the entire thing into my copious RAM.
Anyway, while I'm posting, I might as well mention that KDE 4 is nearing release and in a staggering lack of bloating, is actually looking faster and more memory efficient than its predecessor. I tend to oscillate between Gnome and KDE with bouts of CLI when I know what I want to be doing and wont be distracted by browsing (like now). KDE 4 will probably put me into another KDE-phase and if it's as good as it's looking in the Beta, I'll likely put it on as standard for the family's desktop.
I think the whole world is doing what you're doing. I'd thought that it was just snobby techies like myself that were turning their noses up at Vista, but it looks like this is a real market force. I saw this a couple of days ago (second paragraph) and laughed like crazy. "Downgrade to Windows XP for £40.00 extra." Priceless (and I bet it's popular too)!
We're in agreement. I had simply thought it worth emphasizing that the "them" is not government but the incumbents, as I'm increasingly seeing people forget that the public can contest control of the institution and see government itself as a them. However, re-reading your post, I see that you actually wrote "a government" rather than "government" which I misread. Apologies!
-H.
I guess one of the reasons that so many people here are so readily suspicious of bribery (other than Microsoft's dubious business history, or course), is that to many of us here, we don't think it is in Nigeria's interests to replace Linux on these laptops. A very good case can be made that children will learn IT skills more successfully on the Linux system due to a number of factors, but the configurability and openess of the platform being a major part of it, along with a massive existing resource detailing how it works, a supportive (even evangelical) community and not to mention the way a Linux box segues so naturally into a development platform with the wide range of easily available and installable languages, compilers, web-servers, et al. Fostering a native IT community / business is one of the goals of the OLPC program after all. And these same qualities, though not taken advantage of by all, mean that those who do take advantage of it can share the benefits with the rest of their community. This is particularly important when adapting a system to a new culture and / or language. In the long term, we can also all see that the interests of a country are better served by a free and self-maintainable software basis, than a closed proprietary one which, we should remember, gets superseded every few years.
There is also the issue of networking, as one of the in-built features of the existing configuration is that the laptops should very, very easily configure themselves as a mesh network which is hugely useful in an environment where bandwidth is scarce or erratic or both. The idea is that one person gets the driver / package / whatever and then it can quickly be shared around the community or with others. I think we all have an idea how fiddly this could get with XP (or Vista). Which reminds me - the user restrictions are another advantage in Linux which will have a greater effect in this sort of environment where the laptops are more likely passed around and frequently meddled with by people who have yet to learn the do's and don'ts. I've said enough to make my point, but I can't stop thinking of advantages. The lack of all the serial numbers and authentication will likewise be a big plus where people may often want to just stick in a standard install disc and get an "as new" system.
Most of us agree, even if we prefer Windows, that Linux is a serious competitor technically to Windows and that the main thing preventing it having a big market share is that it doesn't already have a big market share (I'm sure you understand what I mean). So the question arises for us, in an environment where it could suddenly have that big market share and eliminate its biggest weakness, and in an environment where it has some large advantages over its rival, would the government of Nigeria suddenly declare they wanted to spend a large amount of money on replacing it with something else?
It doesn't have to be bribery and corruption, but I think you can see why many people who understand the relative merits of the two systems, it seems a very probably explanation.
(And tangentially, to forestall those who think bribery is no different to marketing, it is bribery because it is directing gain to a few decision makers to create a worse deal for the many, many others who will be affected by that decision).
Is this a useful way of looking at things? The government is not a "them" distinct from "us." It's an organisational structure, an institution, that can be occupied by any group. The "us" and "them" so far as there is one, is between the general population of the country and a much smaller cabal of rich, organised groups. It is best to conceptualize Government as the turf to be fought over, rather than concede it to be something distinct from us. To do that is to accept the incumbent cabals as perpetual and to denigrate the public's role to merely a brake on its excesses.
Well just to clarify the situation, Gnome developers are actually implementing OOXML (reference) and I believe that this is counter-productive to the Free Software movement's success. OOXML is very much a proprietary format and will remain so. One company will always have the power to disadvantage others as regards its implementation. Furthermore, from a technical standpoint, it has extremely serious flaws that would take a lot to resolve. It's not even close to being the "superb standard" that Miguel de Icaza has called it. It is so far from being such, that I feel I have good grounds for suspicion. I don't like just repeating what I hear, so I have taken some time to actually look at OOXML and try to understand it. I have also worked as a professional software engineer for just over a decade now, so I feel I have a reasonable grounding to at least understand the principles involved. OOXML is awful. No-one involved in free software should be advocating effort be squandered on this when the staggeringly more efficient approach for the industry is for Microsoft to implement the well-documented and more genuinely open ODF. This, incidentally, is actually done. (reference).
In short, the only reason I can see for advocating OOXML (and it is advocacy, not merely "resolving issues") is personal gain, presumably financial. Misguided is possible, but we're talking heavily misguided here.
Regarding:
It is perfectly plausible that MS would help their opponents into a legally vulnerable position. But keep in mind that Mono is largely the pet project of Novell, which has recently signed secretive agreements with Microsoft to use their patents without legal risk. As Microsoft seems very in bed with Novell, it seems very believable that the intent could be to sue everyone except Novell. Patents could be the way to do this (unfortunately for the USA). But I think the big motivation behind Mono in the immediate future is to help the take off of Silverlight. Adobe scares Microsoft. Silverlight is intended to be a Flash killer. For that they need Mono to get it onto other platforms. If they did manage to lever Silverlight into being the de facto standard however, I would expect the old games of shifting implementations could begin again. Mono is built on sand and nothing more. I don't think that would actually happen so long as Silverlight is still engagaged in a struggle with its rivals - Microsoft would be hurting themselves by hurting Mono. But I wouldn't bet money on this. And regardless of anything else, any success of Mono will be at the expense of truly free and open source solutions which would benefit from wider use and developer interest.
I don't think I'm spreading FUD. I certainly hope not. I've laid out some of my reasons for why I'm making the statements I am. Microsoft have a very great deal of money and have historically have demonstrated a very great capacity for deceit and betrayal. I believe that I'm right to be wary and to advocate some measure of preventative strategy.
Many things are possible. But if this were true, it could easily be in the form of a promise of future reward in an easily disguised form - a nice, highly paid job at Microsoft with good conditions and juicy benefits or severance deals. How would that ever be proved in the long run?
I think the best policy, as it usually is, is to extend as little authority to people on the basis of their position as possible and judge every action and utterance on its own merits regardless of whether it comes from on-high or from the lowliest of the low. An over-exaggerated respect for authority is one of humanity's biggest failings. But that said, when someone repeatedly demonstrates behaviour that suggestes that are a shill, it's wise to keep a close eye one whatever else they might be up to.
For all I know, they offered him a better job outside Microsoft for a nice thirty pieces of silver collectible at some future date. Every time I read his name, it's in connection with something I see as damaging to Linux and the Free Software movement. And surely nobody can describe OOXML in these terms without some sort of bias?
Gnome is GPL, isn't it? Doesn't that make it inherently possible for people to sideline this person no matter his current position, before we risk serious damage? In terms of patents, introduction of copyrighted code, or perhaps other issues, presumably someone in his position acting deliberately, could cause some nasty legal wrangles. And actions so far give reason for distrust, do they not?
Now that is a delightful image. I wonder what class she played?
We watch video. Think we understand strings now. Would faint at first equation.
Is this going to be another case of people taking a scientific discovery in one area and attributing everything in that area to it? Saying that a region of the brain is responsible for optimism (which is not what the article says) is ignoring all our personal experience and psychological research that shows we ourselves can change our way of thinking to be more optimistic through experience and practice.
Besides, what the researchers discovered is that when asked to think about positive events in the future, this area of the brain showed activity. That's a long way from saying that this area of the brain is pumping out optimism.
Keep it. I have several.
It is. Though happily I work in an environment where I was able to get our SuSE installation replaced with Debian. And I did that in response to their Microsoft deal. It's a small thing, but I did it and I liked that I did it.
Under Pressure?
Or maybe from the Microsoft side: "I want it all"
Frustration is understandable, but targeted disgust can be more therapeutic. Instead of "dammit" try saying "treacherous judases who have just signed their own death warrant and thank fuck they're just a pissant little distro that nobody really gave a shit and whose only notable achievement is this sudden managing to replace the Linux world's apathy toward them in one stroke, albeit with dislike."
Yep, saying that is much more therapeutic. Especially at the top of a thread on an international tech news forum.
"Traitors - we piss on you!"
To people with families, threatening to torture and ruin the lives of your loved ones is more effective than the pain of bamboo splints under the fingernails. It can also be done without leaving evidence.
I'm sorry you're disappointed at the lack of super-secret torture techniques, but if there's anyone you deeply care about or love, you might want to consider how you would respond to a government agent saying admit to a crime or they'll have the crap kicked out of them, lose their job and home, maybe be locked in a cell for years.
Even if that does not strike you as wrong to do to someone, you can at least see that in this case it has led to faulty confessions and mistakes.
Well that was fascinating. Extracted the text from both PDFs and ran diff on the resulting text files. The big thing that was removed seemed to be the following passage. Seems pretty unpleasant.
There are other changes in there, though much smaller. I haven't gone through it exhaustively. The above seemed to be the big thing. Threats against the suspects family...
The only other thing that leapt out at me from a brief skim was the comment that they didn't believe a polygraph would be useful because "if he was a member of Al Quaeda, he could pass it." I find that comment fascinating, too.
Speaking of "widely disseminated" does anyone have a torrent? I would very much like to read this.
Done.
Done.
Doing it.
Likewise, you make valid points about how much upper management in big business is largely informed by who you know and emulating the powerful. However, I (politely) disagree that the following is a workable strategy:
Leaving aside that there are many very nice and sincere people who simply like to wear suits and plenty of incompetents who wear combats and t-shirts, those who breaking suit prejudice amongst those who hold it cannot realistically be achieved by first conforming to the prejudice. The only workable approach is to demonstrate value whilst not conforming. To do otherwise is to sign over the value one possesses to the cause of suit-prejudice, i.e. if someone who contributes as much to free software as Richard Stallman is commonly seen wearing an expensive suit and dazzlingly coiffured hair, it simply goes to reinforce the idea that suit=competence. If he does not, his value contributes to the idea that not-wearing-suit can also equal competence. Someone who wore a suit for twenty years to become CEO and then suddenly started turning up in beach shorts and sandles, would not be seen as "overthrowing" anything. People don't work like that, no more than the Pope could suddenly reveal he's a muslim infiltrator and declare that Catholicism is now a branch of Sunnism. If you want to overcome prejudice, then the first rule is to stand by what you are.
Alternately, he is undoing a system that sets too much store by clothing and labels by showing people that a hugely influential and intelligent person can get where they are and change things without having to conform to other people's expectations. In that, he is trying to bring about another social change he believes is for the better. And I agree with him. Confusing the cost of someone's clothing with the value of what they're saying is a problem in our society.
There's also Iron Heroes which is an alternative players handbook with different character classes and rules tweaks to provide much greater variability at low levels. It's a very, very good system and broadly compatible with general D&D. Very much worth a look and available as a cheap PDF.
I agree to some extent, but then any words used inappropriately are a mistake. Someone who drops words like ratiocination into a sentence for the sake of it is as bad or worse, than someone who similarly wishes to merely portray an image of themselves. But the notion that a word is inherently bad in and of itself is difficult to support. You can say that the word cunt has a harsh sound on the ear and therefore inherently has greater potential for connoting aggression than a word like boobies... but it's stretching it to say that there's anything more than that which makes cunt intrinsically an obscene word. What it does lack is the stifling, clinicality of other terms such as vagina which protect them against the sex=obscenity value-system many people have. But I, like many others, do not share that sex=obscenity value-system and do not consider cunt, fuck, cock and all their ilk to be necessarily bad. As far as I am concerned, growing up in an environment where these words are commonplace, I have come to resent other people telling me how I may or may not speak. Though I was quite jokey (and glib) in my nearby post in tracing the transformation of these words into "obscenities," I was serious when I stated that it has its origins in class prejudice (and still does, today). For any individual or section of society to thumb its nose at another and look down on them for talking differently, is rank and disgusting to me. Now I have a very good vocabulary and like Humpty Dumpty, when I use a word, it means exactly what I intend it to mean, no more or less. So in this post and in working conversations, the fucks are few and far between for they are not needed, but I have no problem with them and they colour my speech often enough.
What is reprehensible is the introduction of wildcard symbols into obvious swear words, as in f**k or c*nt. These are far worse to me because they clearly convey to the reader that regardless of any obscenity-blindness on their part, the word is intended to convey an offence. The meaning is not at all concealed and the obscenity angle is emphasized. Far better to use the word itself in the appropriate context.
The word is not the issue for me. The meaning is. To say you fucked someone sounds negative and souless to me. But to say you really fucking love someone... well, that's just great.
Humorous, but I suspect they'd be much more hesitant about busting into an obviously wealthy home than one that is not - more checking of facts, etc.
I'll take a guess that you're american, seeing as at the schools here in the UK, it's only the word 'insensitive' that gets omitted. And as I understand it, the USA does not like the French due to opposition to the Iraq invasion, cheese-jealousy, etc. Hence 'freedom fries' and so forth. (Stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this). So if you wish to say fucking and cunt, you can justify it as resisting French oppression. You see both Fuck and Cunt are genuine English words with a long history and weren't always considered vulgar. This all changed with the Norman invasion of England, when the French speaking invaders turned everything upside down and the language of the court and nobility became French (the Lingua Franca, if you'll forgive me). Not only did the sycophantic nobility of England use French, but the aspiring well-to-do also put on airs and graces and adopted french. And the use of English words became looked down on and a sign that one was lower class. Indeed, the word vulgar is actually just Latin for common. The entire prejudice against these words is, essentially, a class thing.
As a country with a good solid founding in patriotism and Francophobia, I believe that you should embrace such words and I encourage you to boldy explain such to your tutors, denouncing them as French-loving sycophants if they disagree; and declare that all americans should be proud of their cunts and generous with their fucks. If you are criticised for use of either of these words, the correct response is not sorry, but "WHY DO YOU HATE CHAUCER?"
So good luck with the fucking and the cunt. I'm afraid I'm not much good on the insensitive, but I don't let that stop me.
Regards,
-H.