Good for a start, but unless the people of Pakistan declare enough is enough against their military-mullah combined rulers and clamor for good governance and economic development rather than funding the Taliban and obsessing over India, nothing's gonna change.
Dear self proclaimed 'peaceful' Muslims, where the fuck were you during these episodes orchestrated by your co-religionists in the name of your wonderful religion? Where were the masses of allegedly moderate Muslims protesting at the gates of the embassies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for aiding and funding these terror groups?
There's a complete sepulchral silence around these episodes, but one fucking cartoon or film and suddenly all these assholes get butthurt.
And in a toss up between Jobs and Gates, I'll give the crown to Gates for truly bringing computing to the masses. DOS on the PC, and later Windows were what got computers into the mainstream. Apple remained a niche rich boy's toy from the very beginning. And even if you're talking about GUI and multimedia...Commodore 64/Amiga & ZX Sinclair anyone?
You mean you actually liked Apple until you read this story?? They broke all records for evilness long ago, and make Microsoft look like a cuddly teddy bear by comparison. (Albeit one that will fling chairs at you if it's in a bad mood).
You are replying to something that the GP did not say.
Yes, that is correct. This however is something I feel strongly about, and hence felt it needed saying.
Unless your claim is that Muslims deserve to have "children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking out of their foreheads" because Ali Sina says it's a violent religion, then your argument is a non sequiter.
Nope. Firstly, it's not Ali Sina who says it's a violent religion, just reading their holy book is enough evidence of the fact. He merely points out the fact (and no, comparisons to the old testament don't count). My grouse is the fact that people just blindly call it the religion of peace, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and act as though the religion (I'm only talking about the religion throughout this discussion, not its followers) is worthy of respect automatically because it's a religion. Somehow it's above reproach and criticism, since anyone who dares to do so faces death threats, in some cases, succumbing to them.
It is also telling that Muslims around the world are the first to protest loudly at any sort of parody or (even perceived) criticism, such as the Danish cartoons, but are strangely silent about Islam inspired bomb blasts/terror attacks, stoning women to death for adultery by the Taliban, and snuff videos of hostages being beheaded.
Let's just call a spade a spade and stop referring to it as a religion of peace.
And in response, there's the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina, whose site alisina.org and allied site faithfreedom.org are both currently conveniently down. He writes movingly about his journey from being a devout Muslim to one who researched the Koran in its original Arabic and decided to quit the religion as he was appalled by what it teaches. And every statement he makes is backed up with chapter and verse citations from the book, no less. He makes the case that Islam is by nature a violent and conquest obsessed religion that advocates no mercy towards non Muslims (with full citations from the Koran, no less) and that Muslims who get offended by this statement are living in denial about the true nature of their faith (i.e. that all talk of peace and brotherhood is only applicable to fellow Muslims, that those who don't worship Allah are beneath contempt and should be crushed, and that its ultimate goal is to take over the world). And well, you just have to look at the history of Islam to see that barring very few exceptions, Islamic rulers have just sacked and pillaged their way around the world.
Islam is overdue for a reformation movement such as what swept Christianity during the Renaissance. Unfortunately most people go on parroting that it's the religion of peace, that terrorists are misguided fanatics instead of the fact that they're actually doing what their book tells them to i.e. it is a recipe for fanaticism, intolerance and murder of non Muslims.
Finally - as most of you will see this as a bigoted rant - there is a distinction between Islam and Muslims. It is the former that should be opposed, not the latter, the majority of whom are content to mind their own business and live their lives without trying to hurt others. But hey, let's all be politically correct because, 'religion of peace', right? And if you say 'Old Testament'- BITCH PLEASE. There was this little thing known as the Reformation, and do a tally of the number of Christian fanatic inspired terror attacks around the world compared to Islam inspired ones.
Then again, there's no telling how many are going to just blindly mod this as a troll post.
I wonder. All the Hotmail users would probably be migrated over to this new system, but who else? The masses use Facebook. People here have their own email solutions. Others who still prefer webmail are on either Gmail or Yahoo, and at this stage have had their accounts for easily 8 years or more and are accustomed to how they work. Regular folk are not the sort to try out something new just because. And seriously, this is nothing like how new and clean and different GMail was when it launched in 2004. So when neither the masses nor the technical folk are interested, just who will it be? Maybe we'll get our viagra spam from outlook.com instead of hotmail.com.
India as a country, had everything going for it. Plenty of natural resources, forests, rivers, minerals, human resources.. Bad economic policies will screw you no matter how good initial conditions may be. The British left in 1947, but their government system built for extracting wealth and keeping people poor was retained, just that there were Indians in the drivers' seat. Add to that the first PM Nehru's fascination for socialism, and we ended up stagnating for the first 45 years. Growth started to improve only after opening up the economy to foreign investment in 1991. And even now, socialism is a holy grail among politicians, and gigantic social welfare schemes are the norm. Add to this an utterly indifferent middle class that never once got off its ass to vote, and we have a classic case of the poor voting themselves largesse out of the public treasury.
TL;DR - We're at the other extreme from the US where big business makes the rules and government power is steadily eroding. Tell you what, send over your Tea Party crowd here along with Romney and the rest of the Republicans, and we'll trade you some of our Congress party socialist politicians;)
If you ask me, the idea is to kill off PC gaming in this manner so that everyone's forced to use a console where everything is locked down by definition.
That was IBM's Thomas Watson, speaking in the 1940s, and note that he didn't add 'for all time to come'. Given the size and cost of early computers, he was perfectly right for his time.
Let's face it. Living in one of the most oppressive Islamic countries, he decides to post his heretical opinion on a public website. Having done that, he chose to flee to ANOTHER Sharia loving state. WTF was he thinking? What did he expect would happen? And if his death sentence is carried out, what will it have achieved for him, or for the cause of free speech in Saudi Arabia? Either keep your head down and don't post inflammatory content in a country where the price you pay is your life, or cover your tracks online, or run like hell to a friendlier country BEFORE you express your opinion!
Atheism is incidental to communism, people who died under communist regimes were not killed because of their religious beliefs. This is like claiming all men with mustaches are evil because Hitler and Stalin had them.
Yeah, sure, tell that to all the victims of the Gujarat riots at the hands of crazed Hindu fundamentalists (with complicity from the pro-Hindu state government).
As another Indian, have you so conveniently forgotten what provoked the riots in the first place? A train filled with Hindus was set on fire by a Muslim mob, and the rioting across the state was in response to that. Amazing how many people forget, or choose to forget, the basic cause of the entire riot,and are quick to pin the blame on the state government. No one asks who stood to gain from the inevitable riots that the act would provoke.
I've been running I2P for the last few days, and it seems to me to be one step towards a future of darknets or secure anonymous networks. Since it works as a network layer, it can support other services running on top of it - so you already have blogs, email, IRC and anonymous sites called 'eepsites'.
Technologies sometimes don't get adopted right away, but need some kind of tipping point before they become widespread. I wonder if this kind of censorship bullshit will drive more people to look for alternatives to communicate online without fear of detection or blockade.
I for one wouldn't mind permanently migrating onto an anonymous network like this- but for the fact that there's very little content here. I2P right now seems to be the best approach - tackling anonymity and cryptography at the network layer instead of running as one application, but there's very few people on it now.
Seamonkey uses the same code as Firefox/Thunderbird for rendering the browser/mail functions, and provides a pretty suite experience (pun intended). They've been forced to keep up with FF's faster release schedule, but they do the sensible thing and only increment minor version numbers. So the latest version of SM corresponding to FF 10 is 2.7.
Seamonkey is aimed at power users and is the successor of Netscape 4 and the Mozilla Suite, for those who miss the idea of a single 'internet suite. It comes with a browser, email/news/RSS client, HTML editor and Chatzilla for IRC. There are many features built in that would otherwise require separate extensions on Firefox - for eg - 3rd party image blocking, mouse wheel behavior customization, a sidebar for searching and HTTP pipelining options. There's a 'Data Manager' that lets you customize preferences for cookies,stored form data/passwords and other privacy options on a per site basis. Most of the popular FF extensions have been ported over to it, and running SM with the mail/news component consumes less RAM than running FF and Thunderbird together. It also works with Firefox Sync, so you can keep bookmarks synchronized between different installations (or even between FF and SM if you use both).
I use the 'Classic default' skin that has the old Netscape style icons for nostalgia's sake. I primarily use a HP netbook with 1 GB RAM and an Atom processor - and memory usage for SM, while moderate, is still lower than FF from what I've observed. It's a pretty good browser suite and they don't dick around with the UI, so I'm surprised to see no one talks about it on Slashdot.
It would be better if they bifurcated internet access permission into 'internet access for only serving ads' and 'general internet access'. That way there's no risk of non internet related applications connecting to it behind your back.
Install Droidwall, a powerful FOSS IP tables firewall. Use the whitelist feature to only allow network access to apps that need them to function.
Next, use an ad blocking hosts file. Either manually update/system/etc/hosts, or use AdAway, which will auto update your hosts file with ad server entries and is also FOSS.
Third, get LBE Privacy Guard. This monitors permission usage and lets you override the defaults (something which I believe is baked into CyanogenMod) on a per app basis by alerting you whenever an app tries to access the internet, or your phonebook, IMEI or other personal information.
With these three set up, I really don't have to worry either about ads on the phone platform or of any app accessing the net or doing things behind my back.
Slashdot Mirror
Good for a start, but unless the people of Pakistan declare enough is enough against their military-mullah combined rulers and clamor for good governance and economic development rather than funding the Taliban and obsessing over India, nothing's gonna change.
9/11 - the one big terror attack that brought Islamic terrorism to the fore
2004 - Madrid
2006 - London and Bombay.
26/11 2008 - Again, Bombay, the Taj Hotel attacks.
And more recently, a 14 year old girl is shot in the head by the Taliban for daring to campaign for women's rights (where else, but in Pakistan).
Dear self proclaimed 'peaceful' Muslims, where the fuck were you during these episodes orchestrated by your co-religionists in the name of your wonderful religion? Where were the masses of allegedly moderate Muslims protesting at the gates of the embassies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for aiding and funding these terror groups?
There's a complete sepulchral silence around these episodes, but one fucking cartoon or film and suddenly all these assholes get butthurt.
Given that everybody and their grandmother is using an iPhone these days (at least in the US), is it really about social status anymore?
And in a toss up between Jobs and Gates, I'll give the crown to Gates for truly bringing computing to the masses. DOS on the PC, and later Windows were what got computers into the mainstream. Apple remained a niche rich boy's toy from the very beginning. And even if you're talking about GUI and multimedia...Commodore 64/Amiga & ZX Sinclair anyone?
You mean you actually liked Apple until you read this story?? They broke all records for evilness long ago, and make Microsoft look like a cuddly teddy bear by comparison. (Albeit one that will fling chairs at you if it's in a bad mood).
I've always preferred vector / real-time drawn maps over pre-rendered tiled raster maps (which is what Google's are).
No, they're not, and haven't been for more than a year or two now. I remember when a Google Maps update announced vector rendering for maps.
Gary Brecher aka the War Nerd, on aircraft carriers, and why they're an obsolete idea.
You are replying to something that the GP did not say.
Yes, that is correct. This however is something I feel strongly about, and hence felt it needed saying.
Unless your claim is that Muslims deserve to have "children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking out of their foreheads" because Ali Sina says it's a violent religion, then your argument is a non sequiter.
Nope. Firstly, it's not Ali Sina who says it's a violent religion, just reading their holy book is enough evidence of the fact. He merely points out the fact (and no, comparisons to the old testament don't count). My grouse is the fact that people just blindly call it the religion of peace, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and act as though the religion (I'm only talking about the religion throughout this discussion, not its followers) is worthy of respect automatically because it's a religion. Somehow it's above reproach and criticism, since anyone who dares to do so faces death threats, in some cases, succumbing to them.
It is also telling that Muslims around the world are the first to protest loudly at any sort of parody or (even perceived) criticism, such as the Danish cartoons, but are strangely silent about Islam inspired bomb blasts/terror attacks, stoning women to death for adultery by the Taliban, and snuff videos of hostages being beheaded.
Let's just call a spade a spade and stop referring to it as a religion of peace.
And in response, there's the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina, whose site alisina.org and allied site faithfreedom.org are both currently conveniently down. He writes movingly about his journey from being a devout Muslim to one who researched the Koran in its original Arabic and decided to quit the religion as he was appalled by what it teaches. And every statement he makes is backed up with chapter and verse citations from the book, no less.
He makes the case that Islam is by nature a violent and conquest obsessed religion that advocates no mercy towards non Muslims (with full citations from the Koran, no less) and that Muslims who get offended by this statement are living in denial about the true nature of their faith (i.e. that all talk of peace and brotherhood is only applicable to fellow Muslims, that those who don't worship Allah are beneath contempt and should be crushed, and that its ultimate goal is to take over the world).
And well, you just have to look at the history of Islam to see that barring very few exceptions, Islamic rulers have just sacked and pillaged their way around the world.
Islam is overdue for a reformation movement such as what swept Christianity during the Renaissance. Unfortunately most people go on parroting that it's the religion of peace, that terrorists are misguided fanatics instead of the fact that they're actually doing what their book tells them to i.e. it is a recipe for fanaticism, intolerance and murder of non Muslims.
Finally - as most of you will see this as a bigoted rant - there is a distinction between Islam and Muslims. It is the former that should be opposed, not the latter, the majority of whom are content to mind their own business and live their lives without trying to hurt others. But hey, let's all be politically correct because, 'religion of peace', right?
And if you say 'Old Testament'- BITCH PLEASE. There was this little thing known as the Reformation, and do a tally of the number of Christian fanatic inspired terror attacks around the world compared to Islam inspired ones.
Then again, there's no telling how many are going to just blindly mod this as a troll post.
This has got to be one of the best tributes to the A-10 Warthog :)
I wonder. All the Hotmail users would probably be migrated over to this new system, but who else? The masses use Facebook. People here have their own email solutions. Others who still prefer webmail are on either Gmail or Yahoo, and at this stage have had their accounts for easily 8 years or more and are accustomed to how they work. Regular folk are not the sort to try out something new just because.
And seriously, this is nothing like how new and clean and different GMail was when it launched in 2004.
So when neither the masses nor the technical folk are interested, just who will it be? Maybe we'll get our viagra spam from outlook.com instead of hotmail.com.
Uh, no one's claiming that it is.
India as a country, had everything going for it. Plenty of natural resources, forests, rivers, minerals, human resources..
Bad economic policies will screw you no matter how good initial conditions may be. The British left in 1947, but their government system built for extracting wealth and keeping people poor was retained, just that there were Indians in the drivers' seat. Add to that the first PM Nehru's fascination for socialism, and we ended up stagnating for the first 45 years.
Growth started to improve only after opening up the economy to foreign investment in 1991. And even now, socialism is a holy grail among politicians, and gigantic social welfare schemes are the norm.
Add to this an utterly indifferent middle class that never once got off its ass to vote, and we have a classic case of the poor voting themselves largesse out of the public treasury.
TL;DR - We're at the other extreme from the US where big business makes the rules and government power is steadily eroding. Tell you what, send over your Tea Party crowd here along with Romney and the rest of the Republicans, and we'll trade you some of our Congress party socialist politicians;)
If you ask me, the idea is to kill off PC gaming in this manner so that everyone's forced to use a console where everything is locked down by definition.
s/consumer/customer/g
FTFY. Consumers consume. There's no talk of whether they pay for what they consume. So customer is the right word to use here.
That was IBM's Thomas Watson, speaking in the 1940s, and note that he didn't add 'for all time to come'. Given the size and cost of early computers, he was perfectly right for his time.
Even the Nazi's "Stazi" had to report to someone.
I think you either mean the Gestapo, or the Stasi, which was the East German secret police, and had nothing to do with Nazis.
Let's face it. Living in one of the most oppressive Islamic countries, he decides to post his heretical opinion on a public website. Having done that, he chose to flee to ANOTHER Sharia loving state. WTF was he thinking? What did he expect would happen?
And if his death sentence is carried out, what will it have achieved for him, or for the cause of free speech in Saudi Arabia?
Either keep your head down and don't post inflammatory content in a country where the price you pay is your life, or cover your tracks online, or run like hell to a friendlier country BEFORE you express your opinion!
Atheism is incidental to communism, people who died under communist regimes were not killed because of their religious beliefs. This is like claiming all men with mustaches are evil because Hitler and Stalin had them.
As another Indian, have you so conveniently forgotten what provoked the riots in the first place? A train filled with Hindus was set on fire by a Muslim mob, and the rioting across the state was in response to that.
Amazing how many people forget, or choose to forget, the basic cause of the entire riot,and are quick to pin the blame on the state government. No one asks who stood to gain from the inevitable riots that the act would provoke.
This has been done in a comic, a great satire on the Iraq war.
I've been running I2P for the last few days, and it seems to me to be one step towards a future of darknets or secure anonymous networks. Since it works as a network layer, it can support other services running on top of it - so you already have blogs, email, IRC and anonymous sites called 'eepsites'.
Technologies sometimes don't get adopted right away, but need some kind of tipping point before they become widespread. I wonder if this kind of censorship bullshit will drive more people to look for alternatives to communicate online without fear of detection or blockade.
I for one wouldn't mind permanently migrating onto an anonymous network like this- but for the fact that there's very little content here. I2P right now seems to be the best approach - tackling anonymity and cryptography at the network layer instead of running as one application, but there's very few people on it now.
Seamonkey uses the same code as Firefox/Thunderbird for rendering the browser/mail functions, and provides a pretty suite experience (pun intended). They've been forced to keep up with FF's faster release schedule, but they do the sensible thing and only increment minor version numbers.
So the latest version of SM corresponding to FF 10 is 2.7.
Seamonkey is aimed at power users and is the successor of Netscape 4 and the Mozilla Suite, for those who miss the idea of a single 'internet suite. It comes with a browser, email/news/RSS client, HTML editor and Chatzilla for IRC.
There are many features built in that would otherwise require separate extensions on Firefox - for eg - 3rd party image blocking, mouse wheel behavior customization, a sidebar for searching and HTTP pipelining options.
There's a 'Data Manager' that lets you customize preferences for cookies,stored form data/passwords and other privacy options on a per site basis.
Most of the popular FF extensions have been ported over to it, and running SM with the mail/news component consumes less RAM than running FF and Thunderbird together. It also works with Firefox Sync, so you can keep bookmarks synchronized between different installations (or even between FF and SM if you use both).
I use the 'Classic default' skin that has the old Netscape style icons for nostalgia's sake.
I primarily use a HP netbook with 1 GB RAM and an Atom processor - and memory usage for SM, while moderate, is still lower than FF from what I've observed.
It's a pretty good browser suite and they don't dick around with the UI, so I'm surprised to see no one talks about it on Slashdot.
It would be better if they bifurcated internet access permission into 'internet access for only serving ads' and 'general internet access'. That way there's no risk of non internet related applications connecting to it behind your back.
Install Droidwall, a powerful FOSS IP tables firewall. Use the whitelist feature to only allow network access to apps that need them to function.
Next, use an ad blocking hosts file. Either manually update /system/etc/hosts, or use AdAway, which will auto update your hosts file with ad server entries and is also FOSS.
Third, get LBE Privacy Guard. This monitors permission usage and lets you override the defaults (something which I believe is baked into CyanogenMod) on a per app basis by alerting you whenever an app tries to access the internet, or your phonebook, IMEI or other personal information.
With these three set up, I really don't have to worry either about ads on the phone platform or of any app accessing the net or doing things behind my back.
Nokia used to be an option till February last year.