Mess in SE Asia?/me points to the US meddling in various democratic countries during the Cold War.
Restriction of airspace? So what, it's their own damn airspace.
Big oil deals? Well, yes, indeed... doesn't the US manipulate global political events to protect its own economic interests?
Nuclear reactor in Iraq?/me recalls seeing footage of good ole Donald Rumsfeld shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein back in the 80's, when Iraq was fighting Iran...
As for the French supplying weapons to Iraq... I have to say I haven't heard of this bit of news before.:P What I *have* heard of, is Korean missiles being shipped to the Gulf region...
quote from http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/30434.html
We fear this communications gear may really have been voice, and furthermore we fear the voice gear used by the "knots of commandos" is likely to have been (shush...) French (the comms gear of choice for us.mil's cheese-eating spearhead, the Rangers, Marines and Special Forces).
</quote>
Seriously, what's with the 'let's hate the French' bullshit?
The article's got a good point, but the author's not stating it properly. Rather than explain the point as directly as possible, he's gone and made analogies with the Matrix and so on... maybe to make it more 'understandable' by non-technical readers.
It also does not help to compare a computer to a car. As previous comments have pointed out, a car and a computer are vastly different things - cars do only one thing (or one set of tightly related things) while computers can do a lot more than what cars can do (you can even have a computer controlling parameters of your car, dammit. Can your car do that to your computer?).
The point Dylan Evans is trying to make is exactly that computers can do more than what people currently expect them to do. Just because there are currently protocols implemented, as computer applications, that enable you to 'surf the web' and 'send e-mail', does not necessarily mean that's how computers will be used forever. Better protocols can be implemented. More useful programs can be written. And that is the point - if someone is accustomed to clicking around nice GUIs and always using pre-written software, without ever trying to write their own bit of software, they will get to the point where they think "Oh well, I guess computers can't do this." That sort of thing would happen because the user does not realise that he has the power to make it possible for the computer to do what he want to do, if only he can communicate the instructions to the computer in the appropriate format.
Disclaimer: I'm being overly optimistic when I say that the user can tell the computer to do anything. E.g. a program to "take over the world in seven days" might not be reasonably feasible. Keeping in mind the hardware and other logical limitations of computing devices, I hope you get the point.
Slashdot Mirror
lol
/me points to the US meddling in various democratic countries during the Cold War.
/me recalls seeing footage of good ole Donald Rumsfeld shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein back in the 80's, when Iraq was fighting Iran...
:P What I *have* heard of, is Korean missiles being shipped to the Gulf region...
Mess in SE Asia?
Restriction of airspace?
So what, it's their own damn airspace.
Big oil deals?
Well, yes, indeed... doesn't the US manipulate global political events to protect its own economic interests?
Nuclear reactor in Iraq?
As for the French supplying weapons to Iraq... I have to say I haven't heard of this bit of news before.
"To secure peace is to prepare for war."
It's also been said...
"Fighting for peace, it's like fucking for virginity!"
The Google link
French hardware?
4 .html
quote from http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/3043
We fear this communications gear may really have been voice, and furthermore we fear the voice gear used by the "knots of commandos" is likely to have been (shush...) French (the comms gear of choice for us.mil's cheese-eating spearhead, the Rangers, Marines and Special Forces).
</quote>
Seriously, what's with the 'let's hate the French' bullshit?
The article's got a good point, but the author's not stating it properly. Rather than explain the point as directly as possible, he's gone and made analogies with the Matrix and so on... maybe to make it more 'understandable' by non-technical readers.
:)
It also does not help to compare a computer to a car. As previous comments have pointed out, a car and a computer are vastly different things - cars do only one thing (or one set of tightly related things) while computers can do a lot more than what cars can do (you can even have a computer controlling parameters of your car, dammit. Can your car do that to your computer?).
The point Dylan Evans is trying to make is exactly that computers can do more than what people currently expect them to do. Just because there are currently protocols implemented, as computer applications, that enable you to 'surf the web' and 'send e-mail', does not necessarily mean that's how computers will be used forever. Better protocols can be implemented. More useful programs can be written. And that is the point - if someone is accustomed to clicking around nice GUIs and always using pre-written software, without ever trying to write their own bit of software, they will get to the point where they think "Oh well, I guess computers can't do this." That sort of thing would happen because the user does not realise that he has the power to make it possible for the computer to do what he want to do, if only he can communicate the instructions to the computer in the appropriate format.
Disclaimer: I'm being overly optimistic when I say that the user can tell the computer to do anything. E.g. a program to "take over the world in seven days" might not be reasonably feasible. Keeping in mind the hardware and other logical limitations of computing devices, I hope you get the point.