I said I was a political conservative, not an anarchist. I freely admit that any group of people larger than a family needs some stable system of government. I agree that a government needs certain powers in order to assure the freedom and security of it's citizens However I also believe that those powers need to be very clearly defined and carefully implemented. I have done little reading on Somalia, but it my understanding that there are two key factors which created the current Somali mess. First, the Somali's never really had true self-rule. The Italians, the British and the Americans have all been influencing how government and civil law is run there since long before WWII. The second factor is that that entire region of Africa, not just Somalia, has been devastated by years of cyclical droughts and the concommitant wars, coups, civil insurrections and lengthy, bloody civil wars. If you lock five strangers in a room and only supply enough food and water for three, violence is almost inevitable. One of the fundemental jobs of good government is to ensure that such situations do not occur, and if they do occur, to protect the weak. (the disaster relief supplied by the government to the people of Louisiana is a case in point) When the government is corrupt that can't happen. Instead, the groups with the most influence get all the resources.
No system of government is perfect. Because any government is composed of human beings, a certain amount of incompetence, corruption, greed and abuse will always exist. The purpose of the vote is to give the people the ability to replace their government when the abuse gets out of hand. (something the average Somali does not have). The purpose of private ownership of firearms is to give the people the ability to forcibly remove the people in power when all else fails . A government can be said to be a good government when it is accountible to the people and acts accordingly. The general gist of my earlier post is that I am not sure that the current American administration is in fact accountable to the people it governs, nor do I believe that the people still have the ability to change it.
My opinion of the current Somali strife is that civil methods of limiting power have failed and right now the citizens are using the option of last resort. Whoever is strongest will be on top, whoever is weakest will be exploited and abused until a large enough and diverse enough group of people gather together and agree to a neutral and fair system of government. This hypothetical coalition of ethnic, religious and language groups would have the power and more importantly, the moral suasion to enact change. Isn't this what allegedly happened in 1776?
IANAL and in fact am not even an American, but I am a gun enthusiast and politically conservative. (in that I believe in a comparatively small government with very clearly defined roles and limitations) As such, I have read a lot over the years about about personal liberty vs public security as it applies to gun and privacy laws in the USA.
Two quotes come immediately to mind, one which I quote exactly, the other I paraphrase from an article in Guns & Ammo some years ago. (feel free to correct me if I err significantly)
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." (Thomas Jefferson)
"All freedom and all security in this country rely utterly on three things, the right to free speech, the right to vote anonymously and the right to bear arms. Everything else is meaningless without those three. " (Lt Col. Jeff Cooper, Marines(ret))
I had never shared the viewpoint of pro-gun doomsayers who warned that losing the right to bear arms would *inevitably* lead to a further erosion of all other rights, but in light of the past years revelations regarding the Bush administration's policies, I have been forced to change my opinion.
The right to free speech : gone
The right to free assembly : gone (see the Seattle WTO protests of '99)
The right to vote : rendered meaningless. (see the Florida scandals and the related but underreported scandals with absentee ballots and the ballots of overseas servicemen
The right to bear arms : been crippled for years at the state and federal levels.
The right to freedom from discrimation regardless of race, creed, color(sic) faith, sexual orientation or physical ability. gone
(ethnic/religous profiling has been a news headline for years and the current administration is clearly biased against same-sex couples)
Slashdotters, being largely IT people, are naturally more interested in how the Bush administrations reindeer games are affecting things like access to information, privacy and the right to due process. I think it would also be worthwhile to check out a well written article on how the Second Amendment is involved in all this:
http://www.gunsandammomag.com/second_amendment/050 9/
I'm wondering, where is this "Land of the Free and home of the Brave" I have heard so much about?
I am reminded of a scene in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers where the drill instructor is lecturing the new recruits. In it, he defends not only the training methods, but the philosophy behind the training. I do not recall the exact wording, but the gist of it goes something like this:
DI: There are those who complain that our training is too hard, far harder then it needs to be. The people who make such complaints miss the entire point! Our training is as hard as possible and *on purpose*
The point of a University degree in IMHO, is to prove you are first, among the most capable people within a field; second, have acquired the most through theoretical knowledge of your field and third, that you have proven your ability to work very hard towards a long term and somewhat abstract goal.
If one can obtain a job in say engineering with a liberal arts degree or a college diploma in chemistry, the problem isn't that the University program was harder then it needed to be, the problem is that the HR folk do not fully appreciate the value of the various degrees.
When my wife and I got together, I gave her then 4 year old son my old collection. It was in a large American Tourister suitcase/semi-trunk. (and another example of great quality you never see any more)
My folks started buying me sets when I was 5, so some of those pieces were over 30 years old when my step-son finally got his hands on them. Aside from scuff marks on the oldest pieces, they are as solid and functional as the day they were made.
I am looking forward to the day when the lad is old enough to inherit my Meccano collection as well.
I don't recall the exact words George Carlin used, but here's the gist of it:
Sanctity of Life is BS, plain and simple. People like to believe that life is somehow sacred. Why? 'cause we're alive! We have a vested interest in maintaining the notion that our status is somehow special. For life to be sacred, that implies that there is a God who favours us because of we are alive. Yet if you look at history, God is the leading cause of death. Q: Do you believe in God? A: no dead. Q: do you believe in *my* God? A: no Millions of dead motherfuckers, all because they gave the wrong answer to the god question, so don't preach to me about the sanctity of life...
In essence, life is not inherently sacred. The very concept of holding an abstract ideal like sanctity requires life, more then that, sentient life in order to exist. The meaning of life is simple, to exist. If you believe that human life is sacred, you must by logical extension, believe that *all* life is somehow special. If that is the case, then you must refuse vaccinations, hold still to let mosquitos feed, and be opposed to most forms of birth control, the death penalty, war, eating meat, wearing leather or real linen etc etc because all of those involve the death of one life form to benefit another life form.
My personal unanswered technical question regards using with multiple OS's at once.
If the keyboard merely asks the OS for currently active windows and remaps accordingly, that's great, but what I would like to see is the keyboard *also* check to see which OS it is talking to as well.
As described, the keyboard is intended to be used with multiple apps within a single OS. However, my most likely use would be a single app, or a limited number of apps on a multiple set of OS's.
Having say the Windows key remap itself automatically to an Apple key when I flipped the KVM switch to control another box along with having all the other keys remap to the OS appropriate labels *without my having to hit a hotkey*.
Also good would be doing the same when controlling different OS's within VMware or IBM's LPAR. Based on the description, it sounds like the VMware option will already be covered, depends on how they implement it.
Re:Of course it isn't dead!
on
DECnet Isn't Dead
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· Score: 2, Insightful
to my mind, the situation isn't as simple as all that. There are a lot of issues to consider before giving up on a solution that is currently working just fine. 1) migration ain't cheap 2) the original post said clearly that 100% uptime was required. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most migration swap-overs, there is typically at least a few seconds of dropped client requests is there not? This would drop the uptime into the high nines. 3) I haven't heard of a migration yet that didn't have at least *one* application that needed to be modified or was broken outright 4) doing this swapover requires a lot of free space and power capacity to run both old and new sets of machines for a considerable length of time. (if this were in my server room, I'd want to keep the old hardware around for at least a business quarter "just in case".) I dunno about where you work, but I don't really have enough rackspace and power to run 10 times as many servers as I have in there now, which is what you seem to suggest. 5)Sure the newer hardware will provide faster capability, but if the current setup is running just fine at say 40% capacity, what is all that extra power going to do? I gather from the article that the server in question is used internally. Client load and load growth seem to be well in hand and easily managed. The extra hardware you suggest would just sit around warming the cages. 6)seasoned admins (and I cheerfully admit I am not one of them) don't come cheap. Someone is going to have to pay to retrain or replace these guys in order to manage the new system(s) 7) old hardware, old license, fully amortized costs vs brand-new hardware, possible licence fees, additional "hidden costs" for new backup solutions, monitoring software etc etc....to me that's no contest...
I think you are entirely correct..
I belong to a couple of fan-sub torrent sites, I watch downloaded files that were translated into Spanish or French even though both languages are as foreign to me as Japanese. Why? because I love the stuff so much and you can pretty much figure the basics out through context.
Every fan-sub site I belong to has a strict policy of not allowing licenced material to be posted. In fact, I've had more then one torrent fail because the tracker site killed it when the licenced release was announced. Us fans *want* to see this stuff, we are willing to pay for it, (I have a whole shelving unit full of the stuff availible to me) but if no-one will release them commercially, we'll swap them with fellow fans from overseas.
I agree that much of what is well-known over here is puerile kid crap, but that is because as others have pointed out, our animation legacy is greatly influenced by Disney and Warner Bros. For the most part only child safe titles are released for broadcast here. Borderline titles like Sailor Moon get heavily edited to make them safe. Between ham-handed editing to suit western parental prejudices and translation problems, the final product is often pretty confusing. The more sophisticated and mature a plot is, the harder it is to do a translation justice. Cultural archetypes are among the hardest things to translate. Just think of how ridiculous "spaghetti westerns" can be compared to say a Tom Mix film. Even where the language is putatively the same, things get lost in the transplant from it's original cultural matrix. (think of how bizarre or unfunny most N. Americans find Monty Python or any of the Carry-on movies)
I personally feel that foreign films, be they live-action or animated should never be edited to suit a particular market and that the original script writer(s) and directors be heavily invoved in any trasnlations. Where it is not possible to do so, then sub-titles are appropriate. Any scientist, when studying anything, wants as much as possible to have access to the raw, original data in order to get as close to the unbiased truth. I think that the same applies to any entertainment, give me access to the closest to the original that can be arranged, so that I can come to my own judgment of the piece....
*if* this happens, then those of us who run other OS's in VMware for help desk support will be S.O.L. At least until the folks at VMware figure out a way to pass a virtual copy of that tag to the OS....
I personally have Mandrake, Syllable, Win98se and WinME installed in VMware here at home. I'd love to get a copy of Mac OS 9 or X as well, but lack the licence(s) to do so. If this is implemented, I won't be able to install OS.X will I?
It will also give headaches to those die hard Mac fans who want to try an upgrade older machines. Granted, there is a limit to how many generations you can keep upgrading to, but I do know several people who have upgraded from either 8 to 9 or 9 to 10.4. Encorporating this lockout option will mandate buying new hardware..../light dawns/ oh wait....
I have two machines here, almost identical stats on each. (one's got CD-rw, the other a DVD-rw, diff size HDD's, same CPU, same memory, nothing different that really affects speeds)
One runs Win2K, the other WinXP and here is what I found in my real-world experience. Win2k : default install loaded slower, but once the desktop was up, everything else loads faster. native Windows apps like Office load MUCH faster. I have found some drivers, 3rd party software and such that appear to only recognize WinXP and 9x/ME as they refuse to load on the Win2k box using the installer. A very few have claimed to be compatible with any NT based OS, yet failed to install on 2k. (in some cases I have been able to sneak them in and they work flawlessly)
Surfing and e-mail seem identical(Firefox 1.0.4 and each OS's native OE {I use Hotmail too much to switch mail clients}) but I haven't done any measured/controlled speed tests. WinXP : default install loaded much faster, but has this rather annoying delay once the desk top is up before the startup folder items are launched which delays some parts y anti-virus protection and means I have to wait a seemingly endless time before I can access the apps I want.
All apps seem to load slower, most operate a tad slower and almost all save files slower. (both machines are NTFS with 7200rpm 8MB cache drives, 2K on a 80GB and XP on a 60)
I have had a much easier time finding drivers, shareware tweaks and the like for the XP machine then I have with the 2K machine. However, I found that by the time I killed all the unnecessary services, added my mandatory 3rd party apps (A, firewall, browser etc), set resource usage, page files and so on to what I want I end up with virtually indistingusable machines. XP remains faster to get to the desktop, but 2K runs a bit quicker once it's up.
The only application that appears to run faster on XP that I actually use is my Java compiler, programs compile in up to 20% less time. (no, I haven't been able to figure out why)
The biggest issue I have had with XP has been how it subverts the APCI on the BIOS. The BIOS and XP both assume they have total control over power regulation to the USB ports. When there is a conflict between what the BIOS wants to do and what XP wants to do, it BSOD's. What this has meant is that I cannot boot XP with the webcam or any other USB device plugged in during boot
The bottomline for me is that as far as I'm concerned, there was never a valid reason to switch to XP in the first place. The only reason I have an XP machine is because someone I loaned it to "upgraded" it for me, thinking they were doing me a favour....
This reminds me of a science fiction short story I read once. (I *think* it may have been written by Larry Niven, or may have been in an anthology that he was associated with)
The basic plot was of a activist woman, a widow of a incredibly popular recording artist, who attempts to persuade a very powerful politician to vote *against* an upcoming bill that would extend copyright in perpetuity. As far as the back-room pol was concerned, the bill was a done deal, there was too much money behind it, besides, he'd already been bought and concerned it a point of repuattion to stay bought. In the end, the woman was successful and he even offered to nominate her as his political heir.
The womans basic argument was that must have a degree of artistic amnesia in order to allow continual creativity. In an era of digital media, any artistic creation can live "forever". In the story, the widow relates how, in the last years before his death, her husband failed to release any new works. The reason for that was that as a standard anti-lawsuit practice, his works would be compared to a huge database of existing musical works. All of his later works, entirely his own, created entirely in ignorance of prior art, ended up being close enough to some older work that it *seemed* derivative. He was a wealthy artist, paying royalties wasn't the issue, maintaining his sense of creativity *as an artist* was.
I am not a legal historian, but as far as I know, the basic concept of copyright was intended to protect the artist, allow an artist to benefit from the fruits of that art. It seems to me the problem here is not an artist claiming protection for too long. I think the problem is based on the concept of corporation as a legal person under the law. An individual artist is mortal, and I seriously doubt George Harrison really cares what is done with the Beatles catalog 50 years after he is dead. A corporation on the other hand, can be effectively immortal and as long as it exists, it will seek to make money in any way it can. The problem therefore is in allowing an immortal creation own intellectual property it did not create.
My suggestion would be to vest copyright in only the creator, publication rights can be signed over, but not the copyright itself. Allow the copyright expire a set period after the creators death. The basic copyright remains with the creator no matter what, and only the original creator and/or heirs can decide who gets to publish his/her materials until the copyright expires. Any new artists anti-lawsuit check would be then be confined to a finite body of modern work.
I have seen this kind of quote many, many times. There as always been one crucial assumption in them that I believe is a flaw in thinking.
If there are say 10 million possible customers for your software at a licence cost of 10$, then the bean counters assume that means projected sales of 100 million dollars. If they only sell 6 million copies, they then claim that they "lost" 40 million to piracy. * a failure to sell is not automatically a loss* Out of those 10 million possible customers, some used a competing product (open source/free or commercial), some used pirated copies and some simply did without.
If I were to use a pirated copy of a application, that does not automatically translate into lost earnings for the producer. First off, without the pirated alternative, I may not have used that product at all. (which is *still* lost earnings)
Second, if that application is a utility, then my using it, by any means, only encourages others to use it as well. (if I create a.pps with Powerpoint, then my co-workers need Powerpoint to read it) Whatever is popular enough becomes the standard. If it is a game, then you have to consider the hype effect. Enough hype makes me want the game more 'cause all my friends are playing it too and are raving about it.
Bottomline, *if* I use your software without permission, I am indeed stealing *but I am not stealing your money* While my actions may hurt your bottom line an infintesmal amount, they also contribute to your company's popularity. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this part of the basic premise behind most shareware and freeware given out by otherwise "for profit" companies and solo programmers? Simply let people have for free, and if it's good enough, enough people will agree to pay you that you can profit.
I deliberately left Picard and Kirk of the list because they had both been covered in the parent post. My post was to mention the *overlooked* Captains....
The original question is who was the better captain of the Enterprise, but was expanded to include all Star Fleet captains, every one seems to forget or over look the other notable captains: of the Enterprise(s): Jonathan Archer (NX-01) Robert April (1701) Christopher Pike (1701) Montgomery Scott (held rank of captain but served as engineer on 1701-A) Willard Decker (1701-A) Spock son of Sarek (1701) John Harriman (1701-B) Rachel Garret (1701-C) Richard Costello (acting captain of the 1701-C after the death of Capt. Garret) William T. Riker (1701-D and the 1701_c just before he transferred to the Titan) Edward Jellico (1701-D) Data (1701-D) Worf son of Moog (1701-D, done only to deceive some klingon-sicles to go home instead of attacking, saving the fragile Klingon-Federation alliance) Dr. Beverly Crusher (1701-D in a parallel universe she was the only crew member, making her the de facto captain and the officer I'd most like to serve under;) )
The site automatically chooses one of the availible pictures, (in this case 7 images) and lists it as the main picture. Everytime I reload the page I see a different choice from the series. One of those pictures features the building view blocked by a courier vehicle. (and big brown gets some free advertising out of the deal)
I'm guessing that when he first looked at the page, the UPS truck pic was the main pic.
I work tech support for a major cable ISP and my employer, at least DOES police it's customers (albeit with a light hand).
There are four basic ways an account gets disabled or throttled. (aside from the obvious non-payment)
1. an e-mail account attempts to send more than a certain, but undisclosed, number of e-mails within a 12 hour period. result : smtp server rejects all further e-mails from source for 24 hours.
2. infected e-mails are traced back to a customers computer. result: customer given a warning e-mail from the security dept and a very short deadline. failure to get cleaned results in ALL internet access being disabled
3. if a customer keeps maxing out bandwidth, the local office has the choice of either dialing down the access or disabling the modem completely
4. if a technician spots the fact that a customers modem is not using a bin file appropriate to the account. ( a fact which can be scanned for automatically with DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modems)
When the ISP decides to disable an account, the most common way is indeed to send an updated disabled.bin file to the modem, however, it is possible to "de-provision" a modem. Essentially, the CMTS at the headend gets told that the MAC ID does not have permission to get on the network.
One final note, most DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modems, will NOT accept a updated.bin file from the ethernet side....
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No system of government is perfect. Because any government is composed of human beings, a certain amount of incompetence, corruption, greed and abuse will always exist. The purpose of the vote is to give the people the ability to replace their government when the abuse gets out of hand. (something the average Somali does not have). The purpose of private ownership of firearms is to give the people the ability to forcibly remove the people in power when all else fails . A government can be said to be a good government when it is accountible to the people and acts accordingly. The general gist of my earlier post is that I am not sure that the current American administration is in fact accountable to the people it governs, nor do I believe that the people still have the ability to change it.
My opinion of the current Somali strife is that civil methods of limiting power have failed and right now the citizens are using the option of last resort. Whoever is strongest will be on top, whoever is weakest will be exploited and abused until a large enough and diverse enough group of people gather together and agree to a neutral and fair system of government. This hypothetical coalition of ethnic, religious and language groups would have the power and more importantly, the moral suasion to enact change. Isn't this what allegedly happened in 1776?
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." (Thomas Jefferson)
"All freedom and all security in this country rely utterly on three things, the right to free speech, the right to vote anonymously and the right to bear arms. Everything else is meaningless without those three. " (Lt Col. Jeff Cooper, Marines(ret))
I had never shared the viewpoint of pro-gun doomsayers who warned that losing the right to bear arms would *inevitably* lead to a further erosion of all other rights, but in light of the past years revelations regarding the Bush administration's policies, I have been forced to change my opinion. The right to free speech : gone The right to free assembly : gone (see the Seattle WTO protests of '99) The right to vote : rendered meaningless. (see the Florida scandals and the related but underreported scandals with absentee ballots and the ballots of overseas servicemen The right to bear arms : been crippled for years at the state and federal levels. The right to freedom from discrimation regardless of race, creed, color(sic) faith, sexual orientation or physical ability. gone (ethnic/religous profiling has been a news headline for years and the current administration is clearly biased against same-sex couples) Slashdotters, being largely IT people, are naturally more interested in how the Bush administrations reindeer games are affecting things like access to information, privacy and the right to due process. I think it would also be worthwhile to check out a well written article on how the Second Amendment is involved in all this: http://www.gunsandammomag.com/second_amendment/050 9/
I'm wondering, where is this "Land of the Free and home of the Brave" I have heard so much about?
I am reminded of a scene in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers where the drill instructor is lecturing the new recruits. In it, he defends not only the training methods, but the philosophy behind the training. I do not recall the exact wording, but the gist of it goes something like this:
DI: There are those who complain that our training is too hard, far harder then it needs to be. The people who make such complaints miss the entire point! Our training is as hard as possible and *on purpose*
The point of a University degree in IMHO, is to prove you are first, among the most capable people within a field; second, have acquired the most through theoretical knowledge of your field and third, that you have proven your ability to work very hard towards a long term and somewhat abstract goal.
If one can obtain a job in say engineering with a liberal arts degree or a college diploma in chemistry, the problem isn't that the University program was harder then it needed to be, the problem is that the HR folk do not fully appreciate the value of the various degrees.
When my wife and I got together, I gave her then 4 year old son my old collection. It was in a large American Tourister suitcase/semi-trunk. (and another example of great quality you never see any more)
My folks started buying me sets when I was 5, so some of those pieces were over 30 years old when my step-son finally got his hands on them. Aside from scuff marks on the oldest pieces, they are as solid and functional as the day they were made.
I am looking forward to the day when the lad is old enough to inherit my Meccano collection as well.
I don't recall the exact words George Carlin used, but here's the gist of it:
Sanctity of Life is BS, plain and simple. People like to believe that life is somehow sacred. Why? 'cause we're alive! We have a vested interest in maintaining the notion that our status is somehow special. For life to be sacred, that implies that there is a God who favours us because of we are alive. Yet if you look at history, God is the leading cause of death. Q: Do you believe in God? A: no dead. Q: do you believe in *my* God? A: no Millions of dead motherfuckers, all because they gave the wrong answer to the god question, so don't preach to me about the sanctity of life...
In essence, life is not inherently sacred. The very concept of holding an abstract ideal like sanctity requires life, more then that, sentient life in order to exist. The meaning of life is simple, to exist. If you believe that human life is sacred, you must by logical extension, believe that *all* life is somehow special. If that is the case, then you must refuse vaccinations, hold still to let mosquitos feed, and be opposed to most forms of birth control, the death penalty, war, eating meat, wearing leather or real linen etc etc because all of those involve the death of one life form to benefit another life form.
this advertisment has been brought to you by the folks from Big Blue.........
Requiescat In Pace, Meum cor duxisiti.
Impossibile fecimus, quod nos potentes facit.
Per istam sanctam unctionem, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid deliquisti
et cum spiritutuo, Deus vobiscum
My personal unanswered technical question regards using with multiple OS's at once.
If the keyboard merely asks the OS for currently active windows and remaps accordingly, that's great, but what I would like to see is the keyboard *also* check to see which OS it is talking to as well.
As described, the keyboard is intended to be used with multiple apps within a single OS. However, my most likely use would be a single app, or a limited number of apps on a multiple set of OS's.
Having say the Windows key remap itself automatically to an Apple key when I flipped the KVM switch to control another box along with having all the other keys remap to the OS appropriate labels *without my having to hit a hotkey*.
Also good would be doing the same when controlling different OS's within VMware or IBM's LPAR. Based on the description, it sounds like the VMware option will already be covered, depends on how they implement it.
to my mind, the situation isn't as simple as all that. There are a lot of issues to consider before giving up on a solution that is currently working just fine.
1) migration ain't cheap
2) the original post said clearly that 100% uptime was required. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most migration swap-overs, there is typically at least a few seconds of dropped client requests is there not? This would drop the uptime into the high nines.
3) I haven't heard of a migration yet that didn't have at least *one* application that needed to be modified or was broken outright
4) doing this swapover requires a lot of free space and power capacity to run both old and new sets of machines for a considerable length of time. (if this were in my server room, I'd want to keep the old hardware around for at least a business quarter "just in case".) I dunno about where you work, but I don't really have enough rackspace and power to run 10 times as many servers as I have in there now, which is what you seem to suggest.
5)Sure the newer hardware will provide faster capability, but if the current setup is running just fine at say 40% capacity, what is all that extra power going to do? I gather from the article that the server in question is used internally. Client load and load growth seem to be well in hand and easily managed. The extra hardware you suggest would just sit around warming the cages.
6)seasoned admins (and I cheerfully admit I am not one of them) don't come cheap. Someone is going to have to pay to retrain or replace these guys in order to manage the new system(s)
7) old hardware, old license, fully amortized costs vs brand-new hardware, possible licence fees, additional "hidden costs" for new backup solutions, monitoring software etc etc....to me that's no contest...
I think you are entirely correct..
I belong to a couple of fan-sub torrent sites, I watch downloaded files that were translated into Spanish or French even though both languages are as foreign to me as Japanese. Why? because I love the stuff so much and you can pretty much figure the basics out through context.
Every fan-sub site I belong to has a strict policy of not allowing licenced material to be posted. In fact, I've had more then one torrent fail because the tracker site killed it when the licenced release was announced. Us fans *want* to see this stuff, we are willing to pay for it, (I have a whole shelving unit full of the stuff availible to me) but if no-one will release them commercially, we'll swap them with fellow fans from overseas.
I agree that much of what is well-known over here is puerile kid crap, but that is because as others have pointed out, our animation legacy is greatly influenced by Disney and Warner Bros. For the most part only child safe titles are released for broadcast here. Borderline titles like Sailor Moon get heavily edited to make them safe. Between ham-handed editing to suit western parental prejudices and translation problems, the final product is often pretty confusing. The more sophisticated and mature a plot is, the harder it is to do a translation justice. Cultural archetypes are among the hardest things to translate. Just think of how ridiculous "spaghetti westerns" can be compared to say a Tom Mix film. Even where the language is putatively the same, things get lost in the transplant from it's original cultural matrix. (think of how bizarre or unfunny most N. Americans find Monty Python or any of the Carry-on movies)
I personally feel that foreign films, be they live-action or animated should never be edited to suit a particular market and that the original script writer(s) and directors be heavily invoved in any trasnlations. Where it is not possible to do so, then sub-titles are appropriate. Any scientist, when studying anything, wants as much as possible to have access to the raw, original data in order to get as close to the unbiased truth. I think that the same applies to any entertainment, give me access to the closest to the original that can be arranged, so that I can come to my own judgment of the piece....
*if* this happens, then those of us who run other OS's in VMware for help desk support will be S.O.L. At least until the folks at VMware figure out a way to pass a virtual copy of that tag to the OS....
I personally have Mandrake, Syllable, Win98se and WinME installed in VMware here at home. I'd love to get a copy of Mac OS 9 or X as well, but lack the licence(s) to do so. If this is implemented, I won't be able to install OS.X will I?
It will also give headaches to those die hard Mac fans who want to try an upgrade older machines. Granted, there is a limit to how many generations you can keep upgrading to, but I do know several people who have upgraded from either 8 to 9 or 9 to 10.4. Encorporating this lockout option will mandate buying new hardware..../light dawns/ oh wait....
I have two machines here, almost identical stats on each. (one's got CD-rw, the other a DVD-rw, diff size HDD's, same CPU, same memory, nothing different that really affects speeds)
One runs Win2K, the other WinXP and here is what I found in my real-world experience.
Win2k : default install loaded slower, but once the desktop was up, everything else loads faster. native Windows apps like Office load MUCH faster. I have found some drivers, 3rd party software and such that appear to only recognize WinXP and 9x/ME as they refuse to load on the Win2k box using the installer. A very few have claimed to be compatible with any NT based OS, yet failed to install on 2k. (in some cases I have been able to sneak them in and they work flawlessly)
Surfing and e-mail seem identical(Firefox 1.0.4 and each OS's native OE {I use Hotmail too much to switch mail clients}) but I haven't done any measured/controlled speed tests.
WinXP : default install loaded much faster, but has this rather annoying delay once the desk top is up before the startup folder items are launched which delays some parts y anti-virus protection and means I have to wait a seemingly endless time before I can access the apps I want.
All apps seem to load slower, most operate a tad slower and almost all save files slower. (both machines are NTFS with 7200rpm 8MB cache drives, 2K on a 80GB and XP on a 60)
I have had a much easier time finding drivers, shareware tweaks and the like for the XP machine then I have with the 2K machine. However, I found that by the time I killed all the unnecessary services, added my mandatory 3rd party apps (A, firewall, browser etc), set resource usage, page files and so on to what I want I end up with virtually indistingusable machines. XP remains faster to get to the desktop, but 2K runs a bit quicker once it's up.
The only application that appears to run faster on XP that I actually use is my Java compiler, programs compile in up to 20% less time. (no, I haven't been able to figure out why)
The biggest issue I have had with XP has been how it subverts the APCI on the BIOS. The BIOS and XP both assume they have total control over power regulation to the USB ports. When there is a conflict between what the BIOS wants to do and what XP wants to do, it BSOD's. What this has meant is that I cannot boot XP with the webcam or any other USB device plugged in during boot
The bottomline for me is that as far as I'm concerned, there was never a valid reason to switch to XP in the first place. The only reason I have an XP machine is because someone I loaned it to "upgraded" it for me, thinking they were doing me a favour....
This reminds me of a science fiction short story I read once. (I *think* it may have been written by Larry Niven, or may have been in an anthology that he was associated with) The basic plot was of a activist woman, a widow of a incredibly popular recording artist, who attempts to persuade a very powerful politician to vote *against* an upcoming bill that would extend copyright in perpetuity. As far as the back-room pol was concerned, the bill was a done deal, there was too much money behind it, besides, he'd already been bought and concerned it a point of repuattion to stay bought. In the end, the woman was successful and he even offered to nominate her as his political heir. The womans basic argument was that must have a degree of artistic amnesia in order to allow continual creativity. In an era of digital media, any artistic creation can live "forever". In the story, the widow relates how, in the last years before his death, her husband failed to release any new works. The reason for that was that as a standard anti-lawsuit practice, his works would be compared to a huge database of existing musical works. All of his later works, entirely his own, created entirely in ignorance of prior art, ended up being close enough to some older work that it *seemed* derivative. He was a wealthy artist, paying royalties wasn't the issue, maintaining his sense of creativity *as an artist* was. I am not a legal historian, but as far as I know, the basic concept of copyright was intended to protect the artist, allow an artist to benefit from the fruits of that art. It seems to me the problem here is not an artist claiming protection for too long. I think the problem is based on the concept of corporation as a legal person under the law. An individual artist is mortal, and I seriously doubt George Harrison really cares what is done with the Beatles catalog 50 years after he is dead. A corporation on the other hand, can be effectively immortal and as long as it exists, it will seek to make money in any way it can. The problem therefore is in allowing an immortal creation own intellectual property it did not create. My suggestion would be to vest copyright in only the creator, publication rights can be signed over, but not the copyright itself. Allow the copyright expire a set period after the creators death. The basic copyright remains with the creator no matter what, and only the original creator and/or heirs can decide who gets to publish his/her materials until the copyright expires. Any new artists anti-lawsuit check would be then be confined to a finite body of modern work.
I have seen this kind of quote many, many times. There as always been one crucial assumption in them that I believe is a flaw in thinking. .pps with Powerpoint, then my co-workers need Powerpoint to read it) Whatever is popular enough becomes the standard. If it is a game, then you have to consider the hype effect. Enough hype makes me want the game more 'cause all my friends are playing it too and are raving about it.
If there are say 10 million possible customers for your software at a licence cost of 10$, then the bean counters assume that means projected sales of 100 million dollars. If they only sell 6 million copies, they then claim that they "lost" 40 million to piracy. * a failure to sell is not automatically a loss* Out of those 10 million possible customers, some used a competing product (open source/free or commercial), some used pirated copies and some simply did without.
If I were to use a pirated copy of a application, that does not automatically translate into lost earnings for the producer. First off, without the pirated alternative, I may not have used that product at all. (which is *still* lost earnings)
Second, if that application is a utility, then my using it, by any means, only encourages others to use it as well. (if I create a
Bottomline, *if* I use your software without permission, I am indeed stealing *but I am not stealing your money* While my actions may hurt your bottom line an infintesmal amount, they also contribute to your company's popularity. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this part of the basic premise behind most shareware and freeware given out by otherwise "for profit" companies and solo programmers? Simply let people have for free, and if it's good enough, enough people will agree to pay you that you can profit.
I deliberately left Picard and Kirk of the list because they had both been covered in the parent post. My post was to mention the *overlooked* Captains....
The original question is who was the better captain of the Enterprise, but was expanded to include all Star Fleet captains, every one seems to forget or over look the other notable captains: ;) )
of the Enterprise(s):
Jonathan Archer (NX-01)
Robert April (1701)
Christopher Pike (1701)
Montgomery Scott (held rank of captain but served as engineer on 1701-A)
Willard Decker (1701-A)
Spock son of Sarek (1701)
John Harriman (1701-B)
Rachel Garret (1701-C)
Richard Costello (acting captain of the 1701-C after the death of Capt. Garret)
William T. Riker (1701-D and the 1701_c just before he transferred to the Titan)
Edward Jellico (1701-D)
Data (1701-D)
Worf son of Moog (1701-D, done only to deceive some klingon-sicles to go home instead of attacking, saving the fragile Klingon-Federation alliance)
Dr. Beverly Crusher (1701-D in a parallel universe she was the only crew member, making her the de facto captain and the officer I'd most like to serve under
The site automatically chooses one of the availible pictures, (in this case 7 images) and lists it as the main picture. Everytime I reload the page I see a different choice from the series. One of those pictures features the building view blocked by a courier vehicle. (and big brown gets some free advertising out of the deal)
I'm guessing that when he first looked at the page, the UPS truck pic was the main pic.
for a real lean install, take a look at this! http://www.litepc.com/products.html
I work tech support for a major cable ISP and my employer, at least DOES police it's customers (albeit with a light hand). There are four basic ways an account gets disabled or throttled. (aside from the obvious non-payment) 1. an e-mail account attempts to send more than a certain, but undisclosed, number of e-mails within a 12 hour period. result : smtp server rejects all further e-mails from source for 24 hours. 2. infected e-mails are traced back to a customers computer. result: customer given a warning e-mail from the security dept and a very short deadline. failure to get cleaned results in ALL internet access being disabled 3. if a customer keeps maxing out bandwidth, the local office has the choice of either dialing down the access or disabling the modem completely 4. if a technician spots the fact that a customers modem is not using a bin file appropriate to the account. ( a fact which can be scanned for automatically with DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modems) When the ISP decides to disable an account, the most common way is indeed to send an updated disabled.bin file to the modem, however, it is possible to "de-provision" a modem. Essentially, the CMTS at the headend gets told that the MAC ID does not have permission to get on the network. One final note, most DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modems, will NOT accept a updated .bin file from the ethernet side....