Considering Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Cisco, HP, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and a myriad of other companies with massive reach into other countries your statement about growth is simply asinine. There is no slavery in this country. I grew up with a middle income family bordering poverty at times; I wanted a car, I got out and found a job so I could buy the car. I bought the car, started a business with no initial capital. I financed myself through high school then went to college where I flew into debt. Now I'm out of college making damn good money with a clear view of what's ahead being debt free in two years and starting my company back up now that I'm 3000 miles away from where I grew up. To call that slavery is absurd.
As for Somalia and Kosovo sure we had other motives for intervening but it was to directly help one side getting slaughtered. Just like WWII only on a smaller scale. Deciding which countries to intervene in should be a public debate. No one suggested all moves were right or even that most were. Only that doing something is better than doing nothing. Isolationism doesn't work.
The U.S. government directly decides who we get involved with but when enough people disagree with this they get voted out and course slowly shifts. Takes time to convince enough of the 300 million people in this country that action should change course.
Surely if you're in the what-if game then you might have considered the what-if we didn't impose such hard conditions on Germany and Austria after WWI. If that would have happened both countries would have prospered along with the whole of Europe and WWII wouldn't have happened either. I think we both agree that the U.S. didn't make the right move. Where we disagree is probably in our opinion of what the right move should have been.
Honestly this reply makes no sense, the sarcasm is rank but completely misguided. The only reason we ever tangled with the Japanese was because their ideas for expansion collided with the U.S. ideas for expansion and the two were mutually exclusive. Japan didn't refuse to continue imperial expansion in China. They had to stop because they were running out of oil and couldn't protect their tiny island which is why MacArthur made such gains initially.
You can argue bad reasoning but the last three words of your post have no relation to the the rest of it.
Your timelines are a bit off there. The Aleutian Islands were invaded after hostilities had already began in an attempt to divert our forces away from Midway. That was after we forced Japan into a conflict.
As for reasoning to enter World War I it was pretty simple, our allies requested help and in return were willing to give us more say in world affairs. A pretty sane reason to fight for a country if there is sanity to be found in war.
As I said in my post as well, when we were shipping non-military items to Britain our ships were not being destroyed. It was until we started shipping specifically guns and ammo that they started sinking everything that moved.
Also in regards to the Philippines MacArthur was supplying Filipino guerillas with weapons to fend of the Japanese advancements. We were not controlling the Philippines at that time. We actually moved up our schedule to go back there because of Japanese aggression with MacArthur blockading New Guinea cutting off Japanese resources.
As I said, your timelines are off. Japan was hungry for oil because of invading China which had no diplomatic relations with us at the time. We saw what Japan was doing and chose to hinder their efforts.
Japan attacked America because we cut off their oil. If we had been isolationists we wouldn't have been dealing with them in the first place let alone cutting off a vital supply we knew they needed. We had plenty of oil, we cut off their supply to slow their growth and to allow us to continue our western expansion. Isolationists we were when it came to matters in Europe but certainly not on the Pacific side.
As for protecting our trade routes, we were giving guns and ammo along with medical supplies to the British during that time and that is why the Germans attacked our ships. For quite a while our trade routes were uninterrupted until we started aiding our allies.
World War I did work, it ceased the violence and as you stated, the reason why it fell apart was because the two countries couldn't survive under the imposed conditions. The reasoning for entering the war was sound. The aftermath was not handled properly. Sounds an awful lot like what's happening in Afghanistan right now. We went there for all the right reasons but then allowed ourselves to get sidetracked into Iraq which did not have sound reasoning. Congress really dropped the ball on that one, amazingly so.
World War II was more straight forward but no one was bringing the war to American soil. It wasn't until after we started involving ourselves in the politics of the world that they turned hostile towards us. Fortunately it looks like the lessons of WWI were learned and applied to WWII as opposed to the lessons of Vietnam being applied to the Golf. Sad when people don't learn and even worse when people that should know better don't say anything to stop it.
I didn't mean to suggest we should intervene in China, when I said we should pick our battles more intelligently I was implying that we should stay out of frivolous pursuits such as that. I did not say it outright. I was also similarly not implying that we should do anything with North Korea, only an example of a populous that has no hope of rising against their government to change anything. Their culture seems to accept their reality so let them be. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Kosovo were examples I provided where we should be involved given that Afghanistan at the time was posing a clear threat harboring internationally wanted criminals.
I was merely suggesting that isolationism doesn't work and that there are legitimate reasons to get involved in another country's affairs. Picking those battles in not an easy task. I'm not suggesting the current course of action is anything close to perfect but I can't accept isolationism. The Scandinavian countries have been doing a lot of things right, of course they aren't perfect either as you don't see a whole lot of new research and technology come from there. That is changing of course as well as the current atmosphere in America doesn't exactly promote intellectualism which is unfortunate to say the least.
Of course as an American I can freely converse with anyone in any country so the mechanism exists for outsiders to educate me in the wrongs of my country and despite what you think, I don't hate them for informing about things I didn't know were happening. Of course more often they are shouting complete fabrications and it is up to me to correct them. It's like all those people that visit NYC or go to Disneyland and think the whole country is the same. Some things you can only learn from an outsiders perspective, and some things you really have be an insider to know. Gotta love the fuzzy world where things are clearly right and wrong.
So you're saying World War I and II didn't work? You did rarely so we could call them exceptions to the rule. The problem is your statement is that your advocating isolationism and that simply doesn't work as it gives an economy no direction for it to grow. That is why the U.S. is involved in so many countries because our economy depends on growth. If companies with public share holders weren't required to make the most profit then we could probably find something sustainable within our own borders. Until the underlying greed is vanquished this will never happen.
Also, the people in North Korea I think see fit that their government is good for them and is serving in their best interests because they aren't educated in the alternatives. While the U.S. is far from perfect we are still free to see any and all alternatives and talk about them openly. It would be great to be able to leave other countries alone but when you depend on them for food on your table that is what you get.
Look at all the people calling for us to intervene with Darfur. A great cause and one we could probably do a lot of good in but it is us butting into another country's business. You had Somalia and Kosovo in more recent history. Neither situations resulted in a complete turn around but don't people have to try? Same goes with Afghanistan. Iraq is a different sad issue. War is never successful but it almost always leads to some pretty massive changes for good and bad.
Isolationism didn't work for us before, I don't think anything has changed that would make me thing is would work now. Picking our battles more intelligently would be a better move in my opinion.
While your point is valid it's not really relevant to this particular situation since it was a single implementation of VOIP that died.
Skype going down had zero impact on my life or my network. If a computer is relying solely on Skye for VOIP then your statements would be relevant to the story. This is why I have both Cisco VOIP and Vertical's VOIP implemented into my network. The Cisco as a backup to my primary PBX. It's not as functional but during a failure mode it will still allow us to call out and to receive calls so it'll work.
Monoculture is indeed bad, Skype runs on multiple platforms though and all platforms for affected. The headline is horridly misleading.
Sounds simply like an insecure kiosk. A lot of them are Windows based but you only need to setup one to be able to secure them all so the OS excuse doesn't really hold water especially with products like VMWare out there providing solid solutions for this very problem.
I would also say number 1 is a likely scenario. Marketing made the decision to purchase the kiosks and misrepresented what the kiosk manufacturer was providing so IT let it slide because they're busy working. Course you can also argue that IT missed it's due diligence on this one.
I wouldn't be inclined to think that biodiversity has an upper limit given what we know has existed in the past. Seems likely something like it exists somewhere. It was a question of probability though, not an argument. I think the odds versus the size means it's pretty likely but that doesn't mean it exists.
Seriously probability question here. Given the size of the universe what do you think is the likelihood that the conditions required for this form of life exist somewhere at sometime?
Your premise is correct in that the possibility of something doesn't make it real but given the vastness of space I'd say the likelihood is pretty good that something like this at least both has occurred and is still occurring somewhere out there.
Why would anyone do that? It's a passive app, I have it open on a second monitor although most of the time it's minimized to the systray. There's no reason to close it, that way you get the convenience of a fast reply to a person with a quick question along with the control of picking and choosing what you want to respond to and when. Unless it's a pop3 or an imap scenario to a lesser extend when you're getting a bunch of email at one time, then there's no reason to close it. Might as well get it as it arrives, waiting doesn't accomplish anything. If you're that hurting for memory then it's time for more memory although honestly I've never seen it be an issue on any of the programmers computers I support. Of course they all have 2gigs of ram or more. RAM is cheap though.
I don't check my email at all during the day. Outlook poles Exchange every few seconds and when a message arrives I get a little notification in the corner of my screen with the sender and subject and based on that I can either open the email, delete the message, or leave it be because I'm busy working on something else. In my mind most people operate this way in a corporate setting, but I could be wrong.
Some emails you might stress out about like one stating that I lost communications with a remote server while others like the funny emails a coworkers sends us I don't have to pay attention to until I have a moment when I feel like a laugh. Seems people make email out to be something you have to think about. In this modern world I get it on my phone or on my computer and all are synchronized over the air and completely automatic without a thought in my head. I have it when I need it. I can turn the phone on vibrate during a meeting so I can ignore it but know I have something coming. Seems people like to stress out over just about anything.
So I agree about it being insightful as people shouldn't be worrying about email. If you're in a job where you have to worry then you are probably in the wrong profession unless luck plays a major part in the success of your profession. Of course I'm IT so luck has nothing to do with it for me. I have double or triple redundancy on all critical servers for a reason. So I can have a hard drive fail and be able to sleep at night knowing everything will be fine in the morning when I receive the replacement and put it in there even if I have an additional failure over night.
Hell, can even bomb this building and I don't have to worry. I can have the place up and running enough to work within an hour and that's mostly drive time. Seems like, if you plan ahead and have the fortune of working for a company willing to open it's wallet to achieve proper uptime; then all parties are happier.
Yeah the numbers are a little out of date but 2003 is recent enough as I don't believe there has been a huge swing in either direction. It's the reporting myth all over again. People think there are more pedophiles in the world today for the same reason. Because you hear about it so much now and you didn't hear about it in the past. Course in the U.S. there was a time you couldn't even say pregnant on TV, let alone talk about rape or child molestation. You hear about it all now and assume everywhere is violent. Most of America is not typical inner city gangland which is also grossly portrayed. Think Compton in California. I know a group of whities that lived there for two years and not a single problem yet it is widely known to be a very violent place. Funny how reporting on the place doesn't exactly live up to reality.
How is that relevant to this conversation? Crime is not only murder. For instance, gun violence in the UK is low, but look at the number of assaults. This type of data mining is universally useful no matter what country you live in. Every country has crime, surprise surprise, they all have different types of crime. All the more reason this data mining is important because concepts aren't universal, in some towns even in the same country there are different crimes at different locations because amazingly the people aren't the same from place to place.
All your points are valid except for the root issue. Global warming is practically irrelevant. It's long been understand that the Earth heats up and cools down. It's a natural swing. We as humans might not be interested in the temperatures rising to 140F but they will. Our impact only speeds up the process. How much it speeds up the process is up for debate but is practically irrelevant as well.
The root issue is how we use our resources and how wasteful we are. If everyone became energy conscious we would all save money on our energy costs so it makes good economic sense. We wouldn't need to build new refineries or nuke plants to power our hungry lives. Should we give up our lifestyle to conserve and better use resources? That's up for debate but polluting the air hurts us all in the short term with asthma and all the other conditions brought on by bad air. Look at acid rain in the Adirondacks produced by pollution from the Ohio Valley. Lots of wildlife is dying because of this pollution. That, in my mind at least, is the real reason to take into consideration what a lot of global warming advocates are saying. Alternative energy sources diversify our energy production so weaknesses in production of one form will not cause everything to come to a stand still.
It makes perfect sense to me in the IT world with redundancy. It costs money to achieve, but once you're there, you're up and running and it takes a lot to cause the whole deal to come to a screeching halt.
Radical changes in my mind are not needed, we can afford to ramp up but we need to stop debating peripheral issues that really don't matter and start debating the real issues and more importantly; we need to take action. At least one step towards responsibility. My success should not come at the detriment of my neighbor.
That's convenience? What if you're dropping a log and need medical help. Now they gotta bust through your nice fancy door. Nevermind the fact that a robber could easily break into the stall and do bad things to you while you're on the crapper. That doesn't sound very convenient to me.
Convenience and security have always been trade-offs. The more secure you make things the less convenient they become. So yes, your bathroom door like might be convenient but it is not very secure.
Sorry, but did you just say you can have something be both secure and convenient? I'd love to see an implementation like that because it's never been done in the history of all things.
Now security and functionality can be achieved but make no mistake, security is not convenient, always has, and always will take a lot of work to maintain both in the physical world and in the electronic one.
Look at smart card authentication, convenient right? Now someone can steal your card and gain access to all things you can gain access. Want to double up your challenges and use a pin in addition to smart card? Now they have something to memorize which is inconvenient and downright difficult for some people. Plus they have to remember to bring their smart card wherever they need to use it.
Finger print authentication? Won't get into the problems with that. Retina scanning? Now you're getting expensive, but it's exciting, secure, and convenient! Never mind the privacy concerns or accessibility problems.
That seems backwards to me. Treating an STD like chlamydia can't be as expensive as getting pregnant. Maybe I'm wrong. Of course, last I checked, family plans weren't cheap.
Of course that ignores the fact that I stopped going to the movies until I met said girl who had also stopped going because the experience just wasn't enjoyable anymore. Of course when we go together it is enjoyable so the theater we specifically choose gets our patronage. If they do anything to inconvenience people at a theater more than they already have people will go less and less, they won't stop all-together because some movies you simply want to see and you don't want to wait for. Movies like the Simpsons brings out a lot of people that ordinarily wouldn't go for instance.
As I said, theaters that don't treat their customers well will go out of business. The new theater in town here prides itself on introducing a movie and being friendly with the customers. Is there a wonder it is already the most successful theater in the area?
I'll grant sample size is small and that my experiences are not the same as others but I don't think me or the people I associate with are particularly out of step with the world at large.
If their response to a camera in the crowd is to simply call the police then they should have to pay for the wasted police resources in addition to the defense of the girl in a criminal case and possibly he legal bills for a civil suit she, if she is sane, will certainly file. You can't have it both ways, if you're going to call the police over every little thing then sooner or later you're going to have to pay them. It happens with fire departments. If the fire alarm goes off at a business and trucks get dispatched you have to pay them if there is no fire.
For that matter if you call the police too many times for your business and it was completely unnecessary then you will have to pay them as well. That is at least how it is hear in AZ.
I'm aware of this sooner than everyone else, but as soon as it hits the newspaper a lot of common moviegoers will indeed see it and be disgusted. I usually go once a week, with a girl no less! Everyone I know doesn't particularly enjoy the movie theater experience anymore. They just want to see the movie and the harder the theaters make that the less and less people will go. The theater I go to treats people fairly and not surprisingly it's quite popular. I have seen other theaters in the area practice draconian policies and have found themselves out of business.
Theater attendance over the years would probably beg to differ with your assertion that people don't change their behavior when treated bad enough. I for one wouldn't go to that theater after hearing about that kind of treatment.
20 seconds of film is perfectly legal so she clearly did nothing wrong and should sue the theater to recover the costs of her legal defense. The whole thing could have been avoided if the manager had looked at the recording and seen it was only 20 seconds worth of video. The manager had everything needed to determine intent. The Police did too but apparently it's out of their hands because the theater wanted to press charges.
Others have said it best, it took a lack of common sense on a lot of people's part to make this happen as it did. It is a sad day we live in.
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Doesn't like you've actually done this if you throw out a 3:1 figure like that given that in most businesses there are far more Windows installs than OS X installs so that 3:1 figure actually makes Linux and OS X look bad. Fortunately I know the figure isn't accurate for a lot of places. In the company I work for at least the OS makes absolutely no difference on the number of support calls since the problems are related to the in-house web-based ERP system which has specific issues with specific browsers on all platforms. I have to visit my OS X users just like I have to visit my Windows users. If you're in an environment where users can screw up their own workstation then you've got some business policies you need to build out and more importantly, enforce.
That's the problem most people don't seem to understand, these days most any OS is "good enough" for the vast majority of tasks out there so it becomes a game where you pick what's familiar because it's familiar and you know how it works. The reason I don't have a compelling reason to run Linux on the desktop is that I won't gain anything by doing it. Laptops are cheap as hell especially when you're leasing them all with Windows so OS licensing costs don't matter.
Of course that's probably why I always push for Linux on the server end of things. There you actually do save money on licensing and support. A hybrid approach for this company is working beautifully. Of course I've got both Windows and Linux servers throughout the place. Linux DHCP and FreeRadius have become lovers of mine because they support more standards than the Microsoft products and thus present a compelling reason to run Linux at least for those two cases. Those are just off the top of my head given my recent experience with them.
In my short career thus far I've seen hundreds of businesses move to XP but only one that actually upgraded the OS on existing machines. Most businesses will get Vista just like this did with XP. During their 3 year hardware refresh. Most businesses these days are leasing their hardware and will be more than happy to get laptops which have no trouble handling Vista.
Given that everyone knew Vista was on the horizon and how MS deals with roll-outs a lot of businesses did their refresh last year since the devil you know is usually better than the devil you don't. Makes sense to me, I don't know why a business would upgrade the OS either from 2000 to XP or from XP to Vista. You end up with extra crap you don't need if you do it poorly or you end up gaining very little for your efforts. If the OS comes with the machine then there is no work in deploying the OS. You just join it to the domain and GP installs SMS client which installs Office and any other apps you wish to deploy. Easy as pie and works with old and new OS's.
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Considering Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Cisco, HP, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and a myriad of other companies with massive reach into other countries your statement about growth is simply asinine. There is no slavery in this country. I grew up with a middle income family bordering poverty at times; I wanted a car, I got out and found a job so I could buy the car. I bought the car, started a business with no initial capital. I financed myself through high school then went to college where I flew into debt. Now I'm out of college making damn good money with a clear view of what's ahead being debt free in two years and starting my company back up now that I'm 3000 miles away from where I grew up. To call that slavery is absurd.
As for Somalia and Kosovo sure we had other motives for intervening but it was to directly help one side getting slaughtered. Just like WWII only on a smaller scale. Deciding which countries to intervene in should be a public debate. No one suggested all moves were right or even that most were. Only that doing something is better than doing nothing. Isolationism doesn't work.
The U.S. government directly decides who we get involved with but when enough people disagree with this they get voted out and course slowly shifts. Takes time to convince enough of the 300 million people in this country that action should change course.
Surely if you're in the what-if game then you might have considered the what-if we didn't impose such hard conditions on Germany and Austria after WWI. If that would have happened both countries would have prospered along with the whole of Europe and WWII wouldn't have happened either. I think we both agree that the U.S. didn't make the right move. Where we disagree is probably in our opinion of what the right move should have been.
Honestly this reply makes no sense, the sarcasm is rank but completely misguided. The only reason we ever tangled with the Japanese was because their ideas for expansion collided with the U.S. ideas for expansion and the two were mutually exclusive. Japan didn't refuse to continue imperial expansion in China. They had to stop because they were running out of oil and couldn't protect their tiny island which is why MacArthur made such gains initially.
You can argue bad reasoning but the last three words of your post have no relation to the the rest of it.
Your timelines are a bit off there. The Aleutian Islands were invaded after hostilities had already began in an attempt to divert our forces away from Midway. That was after we forced Japan into a conflict.
As for reasoning to enter World War I it was pretty simple, our allies requested help and in return were willing to give us more say in world affairs. A pretty sane reason to fight for a country if there is sanity to be found in war.
As I said in my post as well, when we were shipping non-military items to Britain our ships were not being destroyed. It was until we started shipping specifically guns and ammo that they started sinking everything that moved.
Also in regards to the Philippines MacArthur was supplying Filipino guerillas with weapons to fend of the Japanese advancements. We were not controlling the Philippines at that time. We actually moved up our schedule to go back there because of Japanese aggression with MacArthur blockading New Guinea cutting off Japanese resources.
As I said, your timelines are off. Japan was hungry for oil because of invading China which had no diplomatic relations with us at the time. We saw what Japan was doing and chose to hinder their efforts.
Japan attacked America because we cut off their oil. If we had been isolationists we wouldn't have been dealing with them in the first place let alone cutting off a vital supply we knew they needed. We had plenty of oil, we cut off their supply to slow their growth and to allow us to continue our western expansion. Isolationists we were when it came to matters in Europe but certainly not on the Pacific side.
As for protecting our trade routes, we were giving guns and ammo along with medical supplies to the British during that time and that is why the Germans attacked our ships. For quite a while our trade routes were uninterrupted until we started aiding our allies.
World War I did work, it ceased the violence and as you stated, the reason why it fell apart was because the two countries couldn't survive under the imposed conditions. The reasoning for entering the war was sound. The aftermath was not handled properly. Sounds an awful lot like what's happening in Afghanistan right now. We went there for all the right reasons but then allowed ourselves to get sidetracked into Iraq which did not have sound reasoning. Congress really dropped the ball on that one, amazingly so.
World War II was more straight forward but no one was bringing the war to American soil. It wasn't until after we started involving ourselves in the politics of the world that they turned hostile towards us. Fortunately it looks like the lessons of WWI were learned and applied to WWII as opposed to the lessons of Vietnam being applied to the Golf. Sad when people don't learn and even worse when people that should know better don't say anything to stop it.
I didn't mean to suggest we should intervene in China, when I said we should pick our battles more intelligently I was implying that we should stay out of frivolous pursuits such as that. I did not say it outright. I was also similarly not implying that we should do anything with North Korea, only an example of a populous that has no hope of rising against their government to change anything. Their culture seems to accept their reality so let them be. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Kosovo were examples I provided where we should be involved given that Afghanistan at the time was posing a clear threat harboring internationally wanted criminals.
I was merely suggesting that isolationism doesn't work and that there are legitimate reasons to get involved in another country's affairs. Picking those battles in not an easy task. I'm not suggesting the current course of action is anything close to perfect but I can't accept isolationism. The Scandinavian countries have been doing a lot of things right, of course they aren't perfect either as you don't see a whole lot of new research and technology come from there. That is changing of course as well as the current atmosphere in America doesn't exactly promote intellectualism which is unfortunate to say the least.
Of course as an American I can freely converse with anyone in any country so the mechanism exists for outsiders to educate me in the wrongs of my country and despite what you think, I don't hate them for informing about things I didn't know were happening. Of course more often they are shouting complete fabrications and it is up to me to correct them. It's like all those people that visit NYC or go to Disneyland and think the whole country is the same. Some things you can only learn from an outsiders perspective, and some things you really have be an insider to know. Gotta love the fuzzy world where things are clearly right and wrong.
So you're saying World War I and II didn't work? You did rarely so we could call them exceptions to the rule. The problem is your statement is that your advocating isolationism and that simply doesn't work as it gives an economy no direction for it to grow. That is why the U.S. is involved in so many countries because our economy depends on growth. If companies with public share holders weren't required to make the most profit then we could probably find something sustainable within our own borders. Until the underlying greed is vanquished this will never happen.
Also, the people in North Korea I think see fit that their government is good for them and is serving in their best interests because they aren't educated in the alternatives. While the U.S. is far from perfect we are still free to see any and all alternatives and talk about them openly. It would be great to be able to leave other countries alone but when you depend on them for food on your table that is what you get.
Look at all the people calling for us to intervene with Darfur. A great cause and one we could probably do a lot of good in but it is us butting into another country's business. You had Somalia and Kosovo in more recent history. Neither situations resulted in a complete turn around but don't people have to try? Same goes with Afghanistan. Iraq is a different sad issue. War is never successful but it almost always leads to some pretty massive changes for good and bad.
Isolationism didn't work for us before, I don't think anything has changed that would make me thing is would work now. Picking our battles more intelligently would be a better move in my opinion.
While your point is valid it's not really relevant to this particular situation since it was a single implementation of VOIP that died.
Skype going down had zero impact on my life or my network. If a computer is relying solely on Skye for VOIP then your statements would be relevant to the story. This is why I have both Cisco VOIP and Vertical's VOIP implemented into my network. The Cisco as a backup to my primary PBX. It's not as functional but during a failure mode it will still allow us to call out and to receive calls so it'll work.
Monoculture is indeed bad, Skype runs on multiple platforms though and all platforms for affected. The headline is horridly misleading.
Sounds simply like an insecure kiosk. A lot of them are Windows based but you only need to setup one to be able to secure them all so the OS excuse doesn't really hold water especially with products like VMWare out there providing solid solutions for this very problem.
I would also say number 1 is a likely scenario. Marketing made the decision to purchase the kiosks and misrepresented what the kiosk manufacturer was providing so IT let it slide because they're busy working. Course you can also argue that IT missed it's due diligence on this one.
I wouldn't be inclined to think that biodiversity has an upper limit given what we know has existed in the past. Seems likely something like it exists somewhere. It was a question of probability though, not an argument. I think the odds versus the size means it's pretty likely but that doesn't mean it exists.
Seriously probability question here. Given the size of the universe what do you think is the likelihood that the conditions required for this form of life exist somewhere at sometime?
Your premise is correct in that the possibility of something doesn't make it real but given the vastness of space I'd say the likelihood is pretty good that something like this at least both has occurred and is still occurring somewhere out there.
Why would anyone do that? It's a passive app, I have it open on a second monitor although most of the time it's minimized to the systray. There's no reason to close it, that way you get the convenience of a fast reply to a person with a quick question along with the control of picking and choosing what you want to respond to and when. Unless it's a pop3 or an imap scenario to a lesser extend when you're getting a bunch of email at one time, then there's no reason to close it. Might as well get it as it arrives, waiting doesn't accomplish anything. If you're that hurting for memory then it's time for more memory although honestly I've never seen it be an issue on any of the programmers computers I support. Of course they all have 2gigs of ram or more. RAM is cheap though.
I don't check my email at all during the day. Outlook poles Exchange every few seconds and when a message arrives I get a little notification in the corner of my screen with the sender and subject and based on that I can either open the email, delete the message, or leave it be because I'm busy working on something else. In my mind most people operate this way in a corporate setting, but I could be wrong.
Some emails you might stress out about like one stating that I lost communications with a remote server while others like the funny emails a coworkers sends us I don't have to pay attention to until I have a moment when I feel like a laugh. Seems people make email out to be something you have to think about. In this modern world I get it on my phone or on my computer and all are synchronized over the air and completely automatic without a thought in my head. I have it when I need it. I can turn the phone on vibrate during a meeting so I can ignore it but know I have something coming. Seems people like to stress out over just about anything.
So I agree about it being insightful as people shouldn't be worrying about email. If you're in a job where you have to worry then you are probably in the wrong profession unless luck plays a major part in the success of your profession. Of course I'm IT so luck has nothing to do with it for me. I have double or triple redundancy on all critical servers for a reason. So I can have a hard drive fail and be able to sleep at night knowing everything will be fine in the morning when I receive the replacement and put it in there even if I have an additional failure over night.
Hell, can even bomb this building and I don't have to worry. I can have the place up and running enough to work within an hour and that's mostly drive time. Seems like, if you plan ahead and have the fortune of working for a company willing to open it's wallet to achieve proper uptime; then all parties are happier.
You would be very incorrect with your prediction. Despite your impression the U.S. is not a very violent place.
Some Stats for you
Yeah the numbers are a little out of date but 2003 is recent enough as I don't believe there has been a huge swing in either direction. It's the reporting myth all over again. People think there are more pedophiles in the world today for the same reason. Because you hear about it so much now and you didn't hear about it in the past. Course in the U.S. there was a time you couldn't even say pregnant on TV, let alone talk about rape or child molestation. You hear about it all now and assume everywhere is violent. Most of America is not typical inner city gangland which is also grossly portrayed. Think Compton in California. I know a group of whities that lived there for two years and not a single problem yet it is widely known to be a very violent place. Funny how reporting on the place doesn't exactly live up to reality.
How is that relevant to this conversation? Crime is not only murder. For instance, gun violence in the UK is low, but look at the number of assaults. This type of data mining is universally useful no matter what country you live in. Every country has crime, surprise surprise, they all have different types of crime. All the more reason this data mining is important because concepts aren't universal, in some towns even in the same country there are different crimes at different locations because amazingly the people aren't the same from place to place.
What Utopian countries are you referring to that don't have crime?
All your points are valid except for the root issue. Global warming is practically irrelevant. It's long been understand that the Earth heats up and cools down. It's a natural swing. We as humans might not be interested in the temperatures rising to 140F but they will. Our impact only speeds up the process. How much it speeds up the process is up for debate but is practically irrelevant as well.
The root issue is how we use our resources and how wasteful we are. If everyone became energy conscious we would all save money on our energy costs so it makes good economic sense. We wouldn't need to build new refineries or nuke plants to power our hungry lives. Should we give up our lifestyle to conserve and better use resources? That's up for debate but polluting the air hurts us all in the short term with asthma and all the other conditions brought on by bad air. Look at acid rain in the Adirondacks produced by pollution from the Ohio Valley. Lots of wildlife is dying because of this pollution. That, in my mind at least, is the real reason to take into consideration what a lot of global warming advocates are saying. Alternative energy sources diversify our energy production so weaknesses in production of one form will not cause everything to come to a stand still.
It makes perfect sense to me in the IT world with redundancy. It costs money to achieve, but once you're there, you're up and running and it takes a lot to cause the whole deal to come to a screeching halt.
Radical changes in my mind are not needed, we can afford to ramp up but we need to stop debating peripheral issues that really don't matter and start debating the real issues and more importantly; we need to take action. At least one step towards responsibility. My success should not come at the detriment of my neighbor.
That's convenience? What if you're dropping a log and need medical help. Now they gotta bust through your nice fancy door. Nevermind the fact that a robber could easily break into the stall and do bad things to you while you're on the crapper. That doesn't sound very convenient to me.
Convenience and security have always been trade-offs. The more secure you make things the less convenient they become. So yes, your bathroom door like might be convenient but it is not very secure.
Sorry, but did you just say you can have something be both secure and convenient? I'd love to see an implementation like that because it's never been done in the history of all things.
Now security and functionality can be achieved but make no mistake, security is not convenient, always has, and always will take a lot of work to maintain both in the physical world and in the electronic one.
Look at smart card authentication, convenient right? Now someone can steal your card and gain access to all things you can gain access. Want to double up your challenges and use a pin in addition to smart card? Now they have something to memorize which is inconvenient and downright difficult for some people. Plus they have to remember to bring their smart card wherever they need to use it.
Finger print authentication? Won't get into the problems with that. Retina scanning? Now you're getting expensive, but it's exciting, secure, and convenient! Never mind the privacy concerns or accessibility problems.
That seems backwards to me. Treating an STD like chlamydia can't be as expensive as getting pregnant. Maybe I'm wrong. Of course, last I checked, family plans weren't cheap.
Of course that ignores the fact that I stopped going to the movies until I met said girl who had also stopped going because the experience just wasn't enjoyable anymore. Of course when we go together it is enjoyable so the theater we specifically choose gets our patronage. If they do anything to inconvenience people at a theater more than they already have people will go less and less, they won't stop all-together because some movies you simply want to see and you don't want to wait for. Movies like the Simpsons brings out a lot of people that ordinarily wouldn't go for instance.
As I said, theaters that don't treat their customers well will go out of business. The new theater in town here prides itself on introducing a movie and being friendly with the customers. Is there a wonder it is already the most successful theater in the area?
I'll grant sample size is small and that my experiences are not the same as others but I don't think me or the people I associate with are particularly out of step with the world at large.
If their response to a camera in the crowd is to simply call the police then they should have to pay for the wasted police resources in addition to the defense of the girl in a criminal case and possibly he legal bills for a civil suit she, if she is sane, will certainly file. You can't have it both ways, if you're going to call the police over every little thing then sooner or later you're going to have to pay them. It happens with fire departments. If the fire alarm goes off at a business and trucks get dispatched you have to pay them if there is no fire.
For that matter if you call the police too many times for your business and it was completely unnecessary then you will have to pay them as well. That is at least how it is hear in AZ.
I'm aware of this sooner than everyone else, but as soon as it hits the newspaper a lot of common moviegoers will indeed see it and be disgusted. I usually go once a week, with a girl no less! Everyone I know doesn't particularly enjoy the movie theater experience anymore. They just want to see the movie and the harder the theaters make that the less and less people will go. The theater I go to treats people fairly and not surprisingly it's quite popular. I have seen other theaters in the area practice draconian policies and have found themselves out of business.
Theater attendance over the years would probably beg to differ with your assertion that people don't change their behavior when treated bad enough. I for one wouldn't go to that theater after hearing about that kind of treatment.
20 seconds of film is perfectly legal so she clearly did nothing wrong and should sue the theater to recover the costs of her legal defense. The whole thing could have been avoided if the manager had looked at the recording and seen it was only 20 seconds worth of video. The manager had everything needed to determine intent. The Police did too but apparently it's out of their hands because the theater wanted to press charges.
Others have said it best, it took a lack of common sense on a lot of people's part to make this happen as it did. It is a sad day we live in.
Doesn't like you've actually done this if you throw out a 3:1 figure like that given that in most businesses there are far more Windows installs than OS X installs so that 3:1 figure actually makes Linux and OS X look bad. Fortunately I know the figure isn't accurate for a lot of places. In the company I work for at least the OS makes absolutely no difference on the number of support calls since the problems are related to the in-house web-based ERP system which has specific issues with specific browsers on all platforms. I have to visit my OS X users just like I have to visit my Windows users. If you're in an environment where users can screw up their own workstation then you've got some business policies you need to build out and more importantly, enforce.
That's the problem most people don't seem to understand, these days most any OS is "good enough" for the vast majority of tasks out there so it becomes a game where you pick what's familiar because it's familiar and you know how it works. The reason I don't have a compelling reason to run Linux on the desktop is that I won't gain anything by doing it. Laptops are cheap as hell especially when you're leasing them all with Windows so OS licensing costs don't matter.
Of course that's probably why I always push for Linux on the server end of things. There you actually do save money on licensing and support. A hybrid approach for this company is working beautifully. Of course I've got both Windows and Linux servers throughout the place. Linux DHCP and FreeRadius have become lovers of mine because they support more standards than the Microsoft products and thus present a compelling reason to run Linux at least for those two cases. Those are just off the top of my head given my recent experience with them.
Given that everyone knew Vista was on the horizon and how MS deals with roll-outs a lot of businesses did their refresh last year since the devil you know is usually better than the devil you don't. Makes sense to me, I don't know why a business would upgrade the OS either from 2000 to XP or from XP to Vista. You end up with extra crap you don't need if you do it poorly or you end up gaining very little for your efforts. If the OS comes with the machine then there is no work in deploying the OS. You just join it to the domain and GP installs SMS client which installs Office and any other apps you wish to deploy. Easy as pie and works with old and new OS's.