Reviving the economy..... we'll start with running three major war fronts concurrently, Terrorism, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the money that it sucks away from the economy. Then we'll add-in a little spice, like investment banks gone amok with no controls or audit to warn of essentially knackered assets.
Stir-in oil companies, eager at any moment to suck the economy dry with no excuse now needed for price increases-- just boldness and trumped-up "bad" news (look! something happened in our new best trading partner, Nigeria!).
Add several cups of armchair economists building plentiful memes about keeping taxes artificially low, spending at draconian, and heaven-forbid: welfare????
Bake in an oven of heavily partisan politics. Sprinkle with daily epithets, lies, half-truths, and stuff that makes Politifact groan aloud. Remember the talk show hosts for icing, blabbling like polluted brooks, using the most possible incendiary language to polarize the public.
Failed to revive the economy? Go to a rodeo and see how fast they hog-tie calves. Obama was and is hamstrung by Kentuckians, who gloat, while not coming to tears or smoking out back.
By your description, I don't think you've been to either. I don't consider myself "elite" but I *am* very interested in the latest war stories and postures by varying agencies, ostensible hacker groups, and listening to the delicious screeds of various hacking icons.
That they were p0wn3d is hilarious. I don't believe their story regarding how it was some fool at ITN that did it, either. Someone ate their lunch. They should know better. The payload was a useless malformed URL, by the way, not a real one.
Having regrets over all of those nasty and violent tweets, are you? Should've thought about what might happen if you babbled about listening to those voices, and where to get that ammo online.
Time to get back into therapy now, and start taking those meds that you've eschewed all this time.
Or they'll nail your ass. Is that them knocking at the door? Did you hide everything?
While an interesting exercise, with outstanding payoff, I'd prefer to memorize the names of people that have been convicted of breaking into systems and abusing them, then sentenced to 30-50 years in a Gulag.
Think about it: forcing yourself to memorize a long stupid string because there are jerks out there that will break into your stuff, steal your identity, and give your credit card numbers for pennies per. There's something wrong here.
No, no compromise. The premise in the post that says that lack of patent coverage will stifle growth is just BS. Gene therapies are causing a revolution in human and animal patient care. Giving exclusive use and royalty potential is a failed model for genetics. Many patents are dubious to begin with, and the proof of prior art is almost impossible to know. Better to use this as a model for the failure of patents, rather than to some how once again rape the process.
Ah. You meant contextually absorbing data types/objects.
I used Rubenstein's WordStar when it was very, very small. Wrote seven books+ on it. I watched the WYSIWIGs emerge, and how Microsoft tried to make Word WYSIWIG, then make it work across vast platforms. WordPerfect was attempting the same thing. Windowing managers changed everything. That's where the first real round of bloat came-- not just accommodating mindless and endless printer drivers, and even mice drivers.
When the race was on, WordPerfect started resting on their laurels while Microsoft chugged ahead. The feature war started, and everyone wanted to make a desktop publishing app in word processing clothing. Document generation became "Office suites that had a modicum of interoperability, just like Lotus tried to achieve with Symphony.
Bloat and competitive armies of feature sets caused highly sophisticated apps where only a tiny majority needed the feature sets-- cool as they might be.
My applause was for the lowly text editor, as the final product has become different for different people. We print less than ever before, because we electronically transmit docs. Might be an email of a PDF or doc/rtf/whatever file. Could be a web post. Might be part of a web static page, or whatever. The targets aren't paper and emulating pre-press anymore.
People still make apps with MS Office. They use OLE(2) DCOM, and all varieties of kludges to do some fairly sophisticated stuff. They always will. As a newer generation knows Java from high school, the denominator of skill is brought up from the bottom. Sharepoint, while very clever, doesn't fill the need that it should, but it's a whole money-making subculture that has value and makes people nominally more productive.
I'm not sure "the cloud" is the answer, because the telcos and carriers-- the transport-- are as evil as politics on a good day. The metering banter is coming around again and transport metering will kill cloud like a hot summer day.
There was something, however: sport. David and Goliath, Larry Bird and even OJ and Wilt the Stilt.
Nature's way? Eating a great diet, training, doing your best? Yes, these things were present. There are lucky charms, but drug consumption is an angle that skews the results.
Should athletes have their blood removed, artificially re-oxygenated, then re-supplied-- as the accusation against Lance Armstrong? How far do you let this go? There seems to be a rationalization that says: we didn't have the technology back then, but we do now, so Let's Use It!!! without thinking thru the implications.
Do we have doctors and nurses, pumping serums like crazy into athletes in the dugouts before the game, tubes bound to their arms juicing them? Nine Men: Nine Juices: Who Wins? That's sportsmanship?
1) OLE, while clever, was also fairly proprietary for a while. The SmallTalk drag and drop metaphor was done more accurately elsewhere. Cool nonetheless
2) Complex versioning is very nice, but unfortunately, lack of metatagging meant that group use-- where complex versioning really pays off, was absent for a lonnnnng time.
3) Style sheets are cool, but they're just stock templates. Call them that, and WordStar users made many of them to use with varying printers, RIPs. etc. No, the graphics weren't WYSIWYG. Pity. Oh, 32K. I get it.
4) Multiple control types? What is this feature that you claim?
There's that tawdry "level playing field" thing. Over the years, I've gone from not quite extreme far sightedness to vision that will pass the test at the DMV without glasses or contacts. Lucky, I guess. My brother needed surgery to correct his. Now he can see and above "normal".
But he doesn't throw a ball with his eyes.
I think you're setting the world up for Roid Ragers. Genetics, practice, combinations of motor control, physique, even yoga can make a difference. When you start adding in drugs, you won't get any ceilings, no responsible use. Once people start bulking up, they often don't stop.
Understanding sociopathy is one of my research areas. Gotta call them as I see them. Rand qualifies; it's all about Rand with no remorse for the rest of us. Circumstances can bend you away from humanity; it happens too often. Violence is one of these circumstances. Survivors of violence have trauma that can change them forever. Some were predisposed, others made.
I have no misgivings nor praise for the Turks; but the Alewi broke much ground. Yes, there have been horrible factional genocide attempts against Kurds, Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, Yezidi, and others. The remarkable thing is that Turks aren't really Turks, they're many factions and the Alewi and Sufi-ish like factions took control and bred a forceful tolerance with lots of blood on the way. Ugly way to get there. The effect is: what now remains after horrific struggle is a probable and usable model for Middle Eastern tolerance.
Tolerance is often absent, and the Lebanese version almost succeeded, then failed. The Druze have also been a peaceful factor in the maelstrom of conflicting ideals.
Alpha male is a tribal hold-over. Except for loners, alphas need betas, etc. There is an instinctive component to this. It can be learned, but it's often deeply limbic. And I don't care. We need leaders, but we also need ethics and pride in them. Causal non-violence is something to aspire to. The survivors remember you longer.
We must continue to disagree. Quality of life is different for different people. Using your simple metric doesn't speak to the issue that humanity has endless curiosity.
Animal needs are entirely rational, and we are animals. We're really deadly, too. Civility requires, even mandates that we find those ways needed for cogent survival. The Prince was a sociopath, just as Ayn Rand is. Capitalism is an expression of value. It doesn't have to be greedy, but it can be. Like most tribes, there are leaders, followers, shamans, and they interact that way today, both wittingly, and unwittingly. It is, who we are.
We can rise above violence. It takes guts and courage and patience and other things that are non-reactive, non-provocative. The rewards can be tremendous. The tensions among Islamic and neo-Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and non-monotheists are going to be pretty high. We can thank the Alewi and others whose philosophies are tolerance. If it weren't for some strong Turks, the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf of Aqaba would run red.
I know that computers are made of binary logic and that many Slashdotters are in the computer industry, but there is a great distance between Kumbayaa and believing that we're capable of stanching war. It's called a scale, and you put me at one end without even knowing me. That's called prejudice.
You'll be angry now, thinking that I've tried to provoke you. But that's not true, either. It takes a lot of bravery to stand up and say you'll renounce violence and seek peaceful solutions, instead of using your gonads to make your decisions for you. There is every so much strategy out there, skullduggery, and machinations regarding war. We used to have a War Department in the US Presidential Cabinet; we needed a Peace Department. It's cheaper.
I've studied Gandhi and many, many others. We know, you and I, what Gandhi was about.
War is about greed. "Competition for limited resources" is a weasel expression. In the Afghan war, it was about the need for revenge. In Iraq, it was the need for oil.
Are there justified wars? Yes, of course. But this also has to do with leaders and followers, and the spoils, the power, the dominance. The costs are outrageous. The religious will tell you that their reward is in the next life. They were fooled into believing there was a next life for just this very purpose.
We started this because we were, 3000 years ago, tribes, and today, we are still tribes and behave tribally. We belong to lots of them, whether cheering for a sports team or fawning over the latest operating system release, political party, or new BBQ restaurant. We are animals, and there is a thin line between us and animals called civility. Unless we can stanch the urge to annihilate, we are no better than they are, and given the damage to the planet, far worse.
>>A preemptive strike is relatively non-violent. Assassinating key people is almost care bear. Computer virus' based attacks are care bear.
Tell that to the families of the dead and the injured.
I've read Sun Tsu's works, and many others. The premises for action are based on tribal behavior, which in a civilized world, we should rise above. Practically speaking, it takes courage and trust and admission that sociopathic tendencies are common place, must be identified, and mitigated.
The itchy trigger finger pulls from weakness, not from strength. We fight the wars of our ancestors for the rich of the world. Neither quality is worth it. Since the beginning of time, our instinct to fall behind leaders full of pugnacious qualities has thwarted humanity.
Indeed, there are clearly places where these leaders need to be stopped. Instinctively, we pull triggers, drop bombs, poison, whatever. There are other ways, principally based on usurping power. Read Gandhi and learn. Sun Tzu was astute, but lived in the context of a warrior.
Indeed there are choices. Impatience versus inevitability are two completely different characteristics that imply differing choices. The Art of War is a book of aggression and suppression. It posits choices that are based on false assumptions, IMHO.
Has India dropped the bomb? No. Pakistan? No. Israel? No.
As I believe you're referring to Iran, I will concur that their intentions are plainly evil. These are the intentions of its leaders, not its general populace. How many might die so that the leadership is stanched? How much violence incurred?
This isn't Chamberlin and appeasement. Tehran could be wiped from the map should they try something. Violence? On an incredible scale. Needless.
You can call it pre-emptive defense, but civility mandates the exhaustion you appear to abhor. I understand inevitability, and I also see the rampant abuse of the excuse..... daily, in headlines across the world to local newspapers.
There are no absolutes, but there is the bravery of striving to achieve a more peaceful world. For some, dogma and orthodoxy and just plain sociopathy dictate their readiness to use violence. It's instinctive. And for that reason, it's necessary to advance the cause of peace and non-violence.
Aggression is the last resort of the thwarted. You'll think yourself to be proud to cite how uncivilized people can be. How it's somehow the wiser choice. How moral it was. "The right thing to do". And in each case, I can tell you that barring defense, it was the wrong thing to do. And we'll argue, but in the end, it's a line that you believe can be crossed, and that I argue must not be.
No, your justifications for violence cite defense. Initiated violence, (should you need the clarification) solves nothing. Walk softly and carry a big stick? Sure. Violence in defense is no crime, no immorality. But violence with arson? A boor's choice, and the stuff of cowards.
Consider a recent unfavorable post I made regarding Microsoft recently. Initially, the post was ground to a -1 Troll. Eventually, it was modded to +5 along with several other replies in the same vein and thread.
The power of fanboyism when an issue regarding Microsoft is posted is enormous. I find no pathos, and an adult response regarding the qualities of Groklaw, and the facts of the matter.
Indeed there are Linux and Apple prejudices here as well. My sense of the Microsoft version is that it has a different musculature behind it. I believe there is active, perhaps sponsored spin-control afoot. There are facts, and there are denials of them, and there are opinions. There are also wingnuts, and people that didn't take their meds lurking around here. The common sadness is the vehement amount of testosterone and bluster that's bandied about as established fact.
Slashdot Mirror
Reviving the economy..... we'll start with running three major war fronts concurrently, Terrorism, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the money that it sucks away from the economy. Then we'll add-in a little spice, like investment banks gone amok with no controls or audit to warn of essentially knackered assets.
Stir-in oil companies, eager at any moment to suck the economy dry with no excuse now needed for price increases-- just boldness and trumped-up "bad" news (look! something happened in our new best trading partner, Nigeria!).
Add several cups of armchair economists building plentiful memes about keeping taxes artificially low, spending at draconian, and heaven-forbid: welfare????
Bake in an oven of heavily partisan politics. Sprinkle with daily epithets, lies, half-truths, and stuff that makes Politifact groan aloud. Remember the talk show hosts for icing, blabbling like polluted brooks, using the most possible incendiary language to polarize the public.
Failed to revive the economy? Go to a rodeo and see how fast they hog-tie calves. Obama was and is hamstrung by Kentuckians, who gloat, while not coming to tears or smoking out back.
By your description, I don't think you've been to either. I don't consider myself "elite" but I *am* very interested in the latest war stories and postures by varying agencies, ostensible hacker groups, and listening to the delicious screeds of various hacking icons.
That they were p0wn3d is hilarious. I don't believe their story regarding how it was some fool at ITN that did it, either. Someone ate their lunch. They should know better. The payload was a useless malformed URL, by the way, not a real one.
Almost.
You can't patent an idea. You explain the rest correctly.
Having regrets over all of those nasty and violent tweets, are you? Should've thought about what might happen if you babbled about listening to those voices, and where to get that ammo online.
Time to get back into therapy now, and start taking those meds that you've eschewed all this time.
Or they'll nail your ass. Is that them knocking at the door? Did you hide everything?
All that copper is worth a lot of $crap money.
While an interesting exercise, with outstanding payoff, I'd prefer to memorize the names of people that have been convicted of breaking into systems and abusing them, then sentenced to 30-50 years in a Gulag.
Think about it: forcing yourself to memorize a long stupid string because there are jerks out there that will break into your stuff, steal your identity, and give your credit card numbers for pennies per. There's something wrong here.
Yeah, Rooski, we don't want you finding that hidden money, either.
No, no compromise. The premise in the post that says that lack of patent coverage will stifle growth is just BS. Gene therapies are causing a revolution in human and animal patient care. Giving exclusive use and royalty potential is a failed model for genetics. Many patents are dubious to begin with, and the proof of prior art is almost impossible to know. Better to use this as a model for the failure of patents, rather than to some how once again rape the process.
Ah. You meant contextually absorbing data types/objects.
I used Rubenstein's WordStar when it was very, very small. Wrote seven books+ on it. I watched the WYSIWIGs emerge, and how Microsoft tried to make Word WYSIWIG, then make it work across vast platforms. WordPerfect was attempting the same thing. Windowing managers changed everything. That's where the first real round of bloat came-- not just accommodating mindless and endless printer drivers, and even mice drivers.
When the race was on, WordPerfect started resting on their laurels while Microsoft chugged ahead. The feature war started, and everyone wanted to make a desktop publishing app in word processing clothing. Document generation became "Office suites that had a modicum of interoperability, just like Lotus tried to achieve with Symphony.
Bloat and competitive armies of feature sets caused highly sophisticated apps where only a tiny majority needed the feature sets-- cool as they might be.
My applause was for the lowly text editor, as the final product has become different for different people. We print less than ever before, because we electronically transmit docs. Might be an email of a PDF or doc/rtf/whatever file. Could be a web post. Might be part of a web static page, or whatever. The targets aren't paper and emulating pre-press anymore.
People still make apps with MS Office. They use OLE(2) DCOM, and all varieties of kludges to do some fairly sophisticated stuff. They always will. As a newer generation knows Java from high school, the denominator of skill is brought up from the bottom. Sharepoint, while very clever, doesn't fill the need that it should, but it's a whole money-making subculture that has value and makes people nominally more productive.
I'm not sure "the cloud" is the answer, because the telcos and carriers-- the transport-- are as evil as politics on a good day. The metering banter is coming around again and transport metering will kill cloud like a hot summer day.
There was something, however: sport. David and Goliath, Larry Bird and even OJ and Wilt the Stilt.
Nature's way? Eating a great diet, training, doing your best? Yes, these things were present. There are lucky charms, but drug consumption is an angle that skews the results.
Should athletes have their blood removed, artificially re-oxygenated, then re-supplied-- as the accusation against Lance Armstrong? How far do you let this go? There seems to be a rationalization that says: we didn't have the technology back then, but we do now, so Let's Use It!!! without thinking thru the implications.
Do we have doctors and nurses, pumping serums like crazy into athletes in the dugouts before the game, tubes bound to their arms juicing them? Nine Men: Nine Juices: Who Wins? That's sportsmanship?
I'll take that argument:
1) OLE, while clever, was also fairly proprietary for a while. The SmallTalk drag and drop metaphor was done more accurately elsewhere. Cool nonetheless
2) Complex versioning is very nice, but unfortunately, lack of metatagging meant that group use-- where complex versioning really pays off, was absent for a lonnnnng time.
3) Style sheets are cool, but they're just stock templates. Call them that, and WordStar users made many of them to use with varying printers, RIPs. etc. No, the graphics weren't WYSIWYG. Pity. Oh, 32K. I get it.
4) Multiple control types? What is this feature that you claim?
There's that tawdry "level playing field" thing. Over the years, I've gone from not quite extreme far sightedness to vision that will pass the test at the DMV without glasses or contacts. Lucky, I guess. My brother needed surgery to correct his. Now he can see and above "normal".
But he doesn't throw a ball with his eyes.
I think you're setting the world up for Roid Ragers. Genetics, practice, combinations of motor control, physique, even yoga can make a difference. When you start adding in drugs, you won't get any ceilings, no responsible use. Once people start bulking up, they often don't stop.
Understanding sociopathy is one of my research areas. Gotta call them as I see them. Rand qualifies; it's all about Rand with no remorse for the rest of us. Circumstances can bend you away from humanity; it happens too often. Violence is one of these circumstances. Survivors of violence have trauma that can change them forever. Some were predisposed, others made.
I have no misgivings nor praise for the Turks; but the Alewi broke much ground. Yes, there have been horrible factional genocide attempts against Kurds, Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, Yezidi, and others. The remarkable thing is that Turks aren't really Turks, they're many factions and the Alewi and Sufi-ish like factions took control and bred a forceful tolerance with lots of blood on the way. Ugly way to get there. The effect is: what now remains after horrific struggle is a probable and usable model for Middle Eastern tolerance.
Tolerance is often absent, and the Lebanese version almost succeeded, then failed. The Druze have also been a peaceful factor in the maelstrom of conflicting ideals.
Alpha male is a tribal hold-over. Except for loners, alphas need betas, etc. There is an instinctive component to this. It can be learned, but it's often deeply limbic. And I don't care. We need leaders, but we also need ethics and pride in them. Causal non-violence is something to aspire to. The survivors remember you longer.
We must continue to disagree. Quality of life is different for different people. Using your simple metric doesn't speak to the issue that humanity has endless curiosity.
Animal needs are entirely rational, and we are animals. We're really deadly, too. Civility requires, even mandates that we find those ways needed for cogent survival. The Prince was a sociopath, just as Ayn Rand is. Capitalism is an expression of value. It doesn't have to be greedy, but it can be. Like most tribes, there are leaders, followers, shamans, and they interact that way today, both wittingly, and unwittingly. It is, who we are.
We can rise above violence. It takes guts and courage and patience and other things that are non-reactive, non-provocative. The rewards can be tremendous. The tensions among Islamic and neo-Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and non-monotheists are going to be pretty high. We can thank the Alewi and others whose philosophies are tolerance. If it weren't for some strong Turks, the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf of Aqaba would run red.
How silly.
I know that computers are made of binary logic and that many Slashdotters are in the computer industry, but there is a great distance between Kumbayaa and believing that we're capable of stanching war. It's called a scale, and you put me at one end without even knowing me. That's called prejudice.
You'll be angry now, thinking that I've tried to provoke you. But that's not true, either. It takes a lot of bravery to stand up and say you'll renounce violence and seek peaceful solutions, instead of using your gonads to make your decisions for you. There is every so much strategy out there, skullduggery, and machinations regarding war. We used to have a War Department in the US Presidential Cabinet; we needed a Peace Department. It's cheaper.
I've studied Gandhi and many, many others. We know, you and I, what Gandhi was about.
War is about greed. "Competition for limited resources" is a weasel expression. In the Afghan war, it was about the need for revenge. In Iraq, it was the need for oil.
Are there justified wars? Yes, of course. But this also has to do with leaders and followers, and the spoils, the power, the dominance. The costs are outrageous. The religious will tell you that their reward is in the next life. They were fooled into believing there was a next life for just this very purpose.
We started this because we were, 3000 years ago, tribes, and today, we are still tribes and behave tribally. We belong to lots of them, whether cheering for a sports team or fawning over the latest operating system release, political party, or new BBQ restaurant. We are animals, and there is a thin line between us and animals called civility. Unless we can stanch the urge to annihilate, we are no better than they are, and given the damage to the planet, far worse.
>>A preemptive strike is relatively non-violent. Assassinating key people is almost care bear. Computer virus' based attacks are care bear.
Tell that to the families of the dead and the injured.
I've read Sun Tsu's works, and many others. The premises for action are based on tribal behavior, which in a civilized world, we should rise above. Practically speaking, it takes courage and trust and admission that sociopathic tendencies are common place, must be identified, and mitigated.
The itchy trigger finger pulls from weakness, not from strength. We fight the wars of our ancestors for the rich of the world. Neither quality is worth it. Since the beginning of time, our instinct to fall behind leaders full of pugnacious qualities has thwarted humanity.
Indeed, there are clearly places where these leaders need to be stopped. Instinctively, we pull triggers, drop bombs, poison, whatever. There are other ways, principally based on usurping power. Read Gandhi and learn. Sun Tzu was astute, but lived in the context of a warrior.
Indeed there are choices. Impatience versus inevitability are two completely different characteristics that imply differing choices. The Art of War is a book of aggression and suppression. It posits choices that are based on false assumptions, IMHO.
Has India dropped the bomb? No. Pakistan? No. Israel? No.
As I believe you're referring to Iran, I will concur that their intentions are plainly evil. These are the intentions of its leaders, not its general populace. How many might die so that the leadership is stanched? How much violence incurred?
This isn't Chamberlin and appeasement. Tehran could be wiped from the map should they try something. Violence? On an incredible scale. Needless.
You can call it pre-emptive defense, but civility mandates the exhaustion you appear to abhor. I understand inevitability, and I also see the rampant abuse of the excuse..... daily, in headlines across the world to local newspapers.
There are no absolutes, but there is the bravery of striving to achieve a more peaceful world. For some, dogma and orthodoxy and just plain sociopathy dictate their readiness to use violence. It's instinctive. And for that reason, it's necessary to advance the cause of peace and non-violence.
That, too.
Do any damn thing you want.
Aggression is the last resort of the thwarted. You'll think yourself to be proud to cite how uncivilized people can be. How it's somehow the wiser choice. How moral it was. "The right thing to do". And in each case, I can tell you that barring defense, it was the wrong thing to do. And we'll argue, but in the end, it's a line that you believe can be crossed, and that I argue must not be.
No, your justifications for violence cite defense. Initiated violence, (should you need the clarification) solves nothing. Walk softly and carry a big stick? Sure. Violence in defense is no crime, no immorality. But violence with arson? A boor's choice, and the stuff of cowards.
I would disagree. You're citing testosterone driven, aggressive behavior which knows no geographic or ethnic bounds. Violence is the choice of idiots.
Consider a recent unfavorable post I made regarding Microsoft recently. Initially, the post was ground to a -1 Troll. Eventually, it was modded to +5 along with several other replies in the same vein and thread.
The power of fanboyism when an issue regarding Microsoft is posted is enormous. I find no pathos, and an adult response regarding the qualities of Groklaw, and the facts of the matter.
Indeed there are Linux and Apple prejudices here as well. My sense of the Microsoft version is that it has a different musculature behind it. I believe there is active, perhaps sponsored spin-control afoot. There are facts, and there are denials of them, and there are opinions. There are also wingnuts, and people that didn't take their meds lurking around here. The common sadness is the vehement amount of testosterone and bluster that's bandied about as established fact.