Would it be THAT easy for a terrorist or other agressive attack on our communications infrastructure?
As the article suggests, I can imagine it would be *very* easy for terrorists to cripple telecommunications. The thing is, I doubt that they really want to. Al Qaida likes really dramatic attacks that scare the heck out of people. When people fear terrorism, they probably don't stay awake at night worrying that their phone or TV will go out. We nerds might get pretty worried about Internet going out or about computer security breaches, but the point is, attacks on technology by themselves don't strike fear into people's hearts.
What I could imagine is if they damaged communications while a more violent attack was going on. If they could take down an entire city's phone system or even power, and then attack actual people within the city, that would be something to worry about. Police, ambulance and firefighters would have difficulty getting to where they need to go and coordinating, causing lots of panic and confusion.
In short, Al Qaida doesn't want to look like mischievous little kids disconnecting phone wires. They want to look truly dangerous and powerful, and IMHO they'll only mess with technology if it helps them also kill people, not just destroy data.
I'm also left wondering why these big players like Spint doesn't have two wires for every important line like this? Cut one wire and the alternate route patches over with a notice. Cut the other and a notice is issued... both without incident to large scale service. If I can imagine it, then I know someone else out there has already thought of it.
Apparently that's exactly what Sprint had here. The article says that second cable had already been cut by a mudslide before this one got cut by the backhoe.
I bought the x86 version because Apple has a track record of agressively dropping support for legacy architectures and OS's.
Makes sense.:-) The reason I replied was that you called yourself a "hardcore" Linux and Windows user. To me, "hardcore" means that you really love the Linux and Windows platforms and see them as superior, not just that you use them. It looks like you just made a pragmatic choice (which is a good thing), not a religious conversion, so to speak.
After careful study, I believe that I can consolidate all three into a single iMac and get all of the functionality I need, thereby consildating the three computers into one. I cannot achieve the same objective if I try to consolidate onto Windows or linux.
Okay, I see what you're saying. However, the original poster said "Outside of a tiny number of hardcore Mac fanatics, no one is going to be stupid enough to blow a ton of cash on overpriced Apple x86 hardware." Your reply implied that there was a reason for using the x86 Mac instead of PPC. Did you buy the x86 machine because PPC doesn't meet your current needs?
What Bush was attempting, and what he actually accomplished, are two different things.
What I'm saying is that Bush isn't even attempting to seriously address the energy crisis (your claim is that Iraq is part of his plan to do that). If he wanted to address energy concerns he wouldn't reject mandatory emissions reductions (i.e. mandatory conservation) and he would be investing a whole lot more into nuclear research. This isn't a matter of competence; it's a matter of Bush isn't very concerned about the energy crisis, which is a bad thing, but it means that it's unrelated to the Iraq war.
For instance the closed-session Whitehouse meeting with senior oil executives during the early pre-9/11 days of the Bush presidency, a meeting which was spent poring over a GEOLOGICAL map of Iraq marked up to show the various oil fields.
I haven't heard of this before, so forgive my skepticism. Could you link to a source please?
If you think a Republican controlled establishment would spend trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives just to knock over a tinpot dictator on the other side of the world - a tinpot dictator who was thoroughly evil but no worse than dozens of non-oil-owning tinpot dictators who will continue to be left alone - then you are seriously deluding yourself.
The main justification given for the Iraq war was not liberation of the Iraqi people; it was concern about what Saddam would have done with the WMD he was believed to have had. To look at Saddam as just an "oil-owning tinpot dictator" is a complete oversimplification; if you shut out all the other facts, sure it looks like you're right. Saddam was unique in that (A) he was believed to have WMD and pursuing nuclear weapons, (B) didn't have nuclear weapons yet, (C) supported terrorist groups (not Al Qaida specifically) and (D) the UN had already undergone extensive diplomacy with his regime.
Actually, I think we agree on more than you think. Let me explain why.
This sounds a lot like an altruistic argument to me. The libertarian response is, "So what if China invades Taiwan? So what if NK invades SK?" I wouldn't personally posit that argument, but I also don't see the sense in spending something like six times (last time I checked) more than any other nation on the planet for defence. It strikes me as beyond paranoid.
It is an altruistic argument. There are two reasons why we should care about China invading Taiwan. First is altruistic; if "all men are created equal," then the value of Taiwanese lives should be just as important as American lives. The US is in the unique position of being the world's sole superpower, and I think it has an obligation to use its force for the good of the world, not just its own. Second, if China is allowed to expand unchecked, this is a serious threat to American national security as well.
I'm also in favor of spending every dollar we can to help with things like AIDS in Africa. In foreign policy, sometimes spending money on medicine and aid is the best way to save lives, sometimes diplomacy is the best way, and sometimes taking military action is necessary to save lives. That doesn't mean we can do one and leave out the others (though we obviously prefer the first two).
I agree that missile defense is basically useless, and there are lots of waste in defense dollars. But I do stand behind the idea that as long as there are dangerous undemocratic regimes in the world, there needs to be a democratic power strong enough to keep these states in check.
So if the US slashed its defence budget in half, do you really think the EU would beef theirs up a proportional amount to compensate?
No, at least not immediately. But I do think we would see rogue states acting more boldly and the world would become more dangerous. Perhaps after a while, in response to this destabilization, Europe would begin increasing its defense spending.
First, asserting that the poor ought to just "do better", and "not be poor" (which is what you're asserting when you say they "could" take care of themselves) is such an obvious dead-end to me that I have trouble understanding the popularity of the meme in America (and it's a very American attitude). Is it so they can feel better about all the wise decisions they've made to avoid poverty? Maybe it's because while I was growing up in a trailer park, I noticed this phenomenon: the worst trailer trash raised the worst kids.
I absolutely agree with you that many people are born into a disadvantage in society. What I'm saying is that simply giving people money, as in the case of Social Security, is just papering over the real problem, and if you keep doing this, you will end up spending tons of money without really fixing much. Since we're on Slashdot, the analogy would be having a memory leak in your program, and instead fixing it, you just buy more and more RAM. Yes, you're program runs, but it's (A) expensive and (B) an ugly kludge. The problem in the American public is a lack of financial planning, and instead of plugging the "money leak" we're just throwing more money at it.
Your point about people failing to plan for their future is completely missing the forest for the trees. You can yell at people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps until the cows come home, but until you provide them with boots in the first place, there's not much that can be done.
Again, my problem is *not* with kids born at a disadvantage. Although I'm generally libertarian on economic issues, I would support a near 100% inheritance tax. Why? In an ideal world, if you're born in a rich family, you should have no more of an advantage than a kid born in a poor family. Such a tax would probably make a true libertarian's stomach turn, but I think it's perfectly reasonable and good. Society has every obligation to level the playing field at child hood. I know it
The fact that you're literally comparing the dollar amounts between defence and social spending is troubling. Defence spending shouldn't even be on the same order of magnitude as social spending. Take a look at Britain's budget, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/91D/93/ACF12D7.pdf . And Britain isn't exactly what I'd call a pacifist state.
Britain isn't a pacifist state, but it isn't a superpower either. There's a lot of wasteful spending that goes on for defense, but a big reason for why Europe can spend less on its military is that the US spends so much on its own. Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, the fact that the US does have a powerful military is a big deterrent to dictators who'd like to do various international mischief. China can't invade Taiwan primarily because the US Navy is there. North Korea can't invade its southern neighbor because the US would take action; even though the UN was the official body that countered the north's first attack, the vast majority of non-Korean troops in the UN force came from the US. There are many other similar examples.
In a nutshell, my point is that the military gives teeth to the words of the US and Europe, and in many cases this serves an indirect social purpose in itself. That's not to say there aren't exceptions or waste in the military; I'm just saying that Europe can have a smaller military because the US has a bigger one. Having such a large military requires a lot of money.
As far as social programs go, most of these programs are designed to make up for a lack of financial planning and/or discipline on the part of individuals. For example, if everyone was wise enough to invest their money in a retirement account, Social Security would be unnecessary. Unfortunately, Americans save only 2% of their incomes (compare this with the Chinese, who save 40%), and thus when they reach retirement, they expect the rest of the public to pick up the tab. Entitlement programs cause people to take less care of themselves and expect everyone else to take care of their own problems. Obviously there are some legitimately poor people who ought to be helped, but with excessive social programs you get things like the enormous unemployment in Germany.
In short, we *are* spending huge amounts of money on social programs. Frankly, I find it somewhat ridiculous that we spend half of our tax dollars on taking care of people who could take care of themselves.
Well, this hardcore linux/Windows user has his arriving on Wednesday. And, as soon as Tivo releases their Tivo To Go for the Mac, the Windows box will be completely decomissioned. The linux box will go sooner.
You don't sound "hardcore" at all. Apple releases a new product, and you immediately buy it and replace everything else with Apple's stuff, just because it uses Intel? Do you mean that you are a hardcore Intel or hardcore x86 user? (If so... why?)
However, you can't say that America is better in any significant way. Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine.
You think we *aren't* spending huge amounts of money on social programs? We're spending much more on entitlement programs on our "war machine." Take a look at the budget and reassess your view of what the federal government spends its money on. If you find the current level of defense spending "absolutely obscene," just look at how much money goes to the elderly alone through Social Security.
To cut straight to the chase: I promise you that Washington's invasion of Iraq had nothing at all to do with liberating anyone and everything to do with gaining control of significant oil supplies in order to forestall an imminent and rapid worsening of the ongoing energy crisis.
To the extent that forestalling the effects of "peak oil" will keep everyone in the US comfortable for a couple of years longer than would have been the case without the Iraq invasion, you could say that the US govt's actions were beneficial for the US public. But because it is only a temporary fix, this is a policy that doesn't lead anywhere other than to further wars, both military and economic. It only buys time. But time for what?
And just after that, you go on about how the US government isn't being serious about addressing the energy crisis. Look, if Bush were interested in getting oil, presumably to reduce oil prices (greater supply means lower prices), the Iraq war isn't helping the economy, isn't pushing oil prices down, and it isn't addressing the energy crisis in any way. If Bush wanted to get cheaper oil, there would have been many far easier ways; he could have pushed for easing Iraq's sanctions so that more oil flowed out, for example.
As you point out, the Iraq war does nothing to solve the energy crisis. That's exactly why claiming that it was intended to is absurd.
Who cares? What's in it for us to allow Apple the power to control what we can and can't do with OS X?
What's in it for you is that you get to use their software. For the vast majority of Apple's customers, this is perfectly acceptable; they merely want to use OS X, and they don't particularly care whether Apple, Dell, or their techie friend built it.
Since Apple built OS X, they get to choose the terms under which they distribute it. If those terms are unacceptable to you, feel free to use another operating system.
If Apple wants to sell a product then they need someone to sell it to and as long as software consumers continue to accept these "no rights but those we allow" stance currently offered by Apple and other software companies they will continue to make money. So I say, why stand for it?
You don't have to stand for it. Use Linux or BSD (or even Windows, if all you're concerned about is using generic x86 boxes). The reason people "stand for it" is that they see the value of using OS X to be greater than the value of using their operating system on different hardware configurations (for most people, the latter has practically zero value because they don't care).
The point is that most people just want to *use* software, not tinker with it. The software companies you mention will continue restricting user's rights as long as this is true, and because nerds will always represent a small minority of the general public, it always will be true.
Personally I think wind farms look really cool and if the noise level were not unbearable I would not mind living near one. However, it always helps to offer people SOMEthing for this. I suspect a lot of the complaining would die down if anyone within 1 mile of a wind farm would get free power for life; within 2-5 miles a 40% discount and within 5-7 miles a 10% discount.
I'm sure there are ways to bargain with people; some like windmills (I do), and others don't. The latter types will need to be negotiated with. But if you're really trying to solve energy and environmental issues, building wind mills is procrastinating a real solution. The article submitter implies that nuclear power isn't the "green route," but I'll argue that it's the "greenest" route that can accommodate future energy demand. Relying solely on solar and wind power for energy is a "green" fantasy that will never be realized.
to it's just plain silly to claim that our energy problems can be solved with solar and wind energy. They simply take up an enormous amount of land when compared with how much power they actually produce. Obviously coal and natural gas will run out eventually and are also contributing to global warming, so they aren't a long term solution either. Nuclear power is the only sustainable energy source over long periods of time. Many "environmentalists" will exploit the public's paranoia about anything with the words "nuclear" or "radiation" in it, and while storing nuclear waste securely is an important question, it's not one that has no answers. Energy conservation and solar/wind energy are nice, but when compared with the big picture, they really are drops in the bucket.
I'm not really defending these people; frankly, I think it would be cool to have wind turbines near my house. I'm just saying that people who are serious about solving energy problems are going to pick their battles, and this won't be one of them. Building nuclear power plants and storing nuclear waste will bring up similar "not in my backyard" protests, but at least it would accomplish something that would make a significant difference.
My argument assumed that this current wave of fear of terrorists was being inflated in order to be used to breed consent (the evidence for this is overwhelming). I thought that was particularly clear, I apologize if it was not to some people. I never stated that all fear was unjustified, or that "fearing any threat is wrong", as you suggested. I'm not even sure where you conjured that from. It is quite strange actually.
Then I apologize for misinterpreting your post. I was merely referring to the fact there are a lot of privacy activists on Slashdot that oppose nearly any kind of surveillance or screening to prevent terrorism.
I agree that fear of terrorism can be misused; I'm just saying that *some* fear of terrorism is appropriate, and that oftentimes the fear of the fear of terrorism is used on Slashdot to oppose reasonable policies (e.g., some on Slashdot opposed security cameras at the Olympics in 2004; I think we can agree that is an appropriate security measure).
I don't mean to lump you in with those people, but you shouldn't lump in the original poster with those who are excessive in their fear of terrorism. This isn't just "any type of space tourism story;" this story was specifically about US regulations on space tourism, some of which are designed to prevent terrorism. That's why the poster was both on-topic and insightful. If the story was "Virgin Galactic reveals in-space meals" or something like that, I could see where you're coming from, but this story is directly related to possible terrorism on tourist spacecraft.
Has he affected history? Certainly. Positively? Doubtful. His legacy is DRM and the anti-virus industry. Like the robber barrons, later in life he chooses to disgorge some of that wealth in a very public way in an effort to whitewash his image. He may leave his name on a couple of buildings, but posterity will see him reviled like his predecessors.
It's fair to say that DRM and anti-virus programs would exist even if Bill Gates never did. Some copyright holders will always want to build debatably invasive mechanisms to enforce their copyrights, and DRM is a natural outcome of this desire. Anti-virus would have been here without Gates because (A) no programmers are perfect and (B) there will always be programmers that make viruses and script kiddies that exploit them. I love to ridicule MS software as much as the next guy, but at worst Bill Gates's company caused more viruses than there would have otherwise been; viruses would still be there, perhaps in smaller numbers.
Bill Gates may have put some competitors out of business and suppressed some innovation in technology. IMHO, he has done a lot of things that negatively impacted the software world. But let's face it: his philanthropy has *saved lives*, helped students go to college, etc. Even if his intentions weren't so angelic, and it's hard for anyone to say with authority what they really are, the point is that as an overall human being, Bill Gates is doing good for the world in general. Would you honestly trade billions of dollars to help stop AIDS for 50% Firefox marketshare?
Frankly, I don't care whether he wants to whitewash his image or just wants to make the world a better place; he is doing both and the latter is what matters.
Richard Branson and his Virgin brand are English, why should he listen to US rules when they are only binding in USA ?
Because the spaceport he wants to build is going to be in the US (right next door to me, in fact). (I know the article is 99% fluff, but I was lazy so I googled my hometown paper and that's what I found.)
A story about space tourism, and how easy it's going to be to screen people to make sure we're "safe" getting an instant 5 Insightful is hillarious to me, sorry.
The post was very on topic; the whole point of the article was regulation to ensure safety. Plus, you don't even refute the poster's logic; personally, I think what the poster said made a lot of sense.
Sure, fear has been abused for terrible ends throughout human history; that doesn't mean fear is never justified. As these tourist spaceships grow in size to hold ever more passengers, they will undoubtedly become targets for criminals. To say that even thinking about security when it comes to transportation is "hillarious" is simply naive.
Authority should always be questioned, and we should always be skeptical of demagogues. But here on Slashdot, I think that the fear of authority and the fear of fear itself is often construed to argue that fearing any threat is wrong.
A post discussing the security of spacecraft, and then a reply post saying that "fear" of insecurity is too "invasive" and wrong getting a +5 Insightful is hillarious to me, sorry.
The Athlon XP was yesterday's news the day before yesterday. Where have you been? Opteron looks a LOT better in terms of heat/MIPS.
Perhaps AMD will get better in terms of heat in the future; I was merely commenting on what I'm currently using. Don't get me wrong; I love AMD (in fact, I only have one (running) Intel CPU out of about half a dozen processors in my house). I'd also remark that the Athlon XP, while not at all cutting edge anymore, is more representative of what most people today are running (in fact, mine is still probably a little bit above average). The general public won't be using 64 bit processors for a while still; so although the Athlon XP isn't "today's news," it's really because the Athlon XP has moved from the papers into people's computers.
script languages are so great because every moron can use them... do you realize that the fastest "programs" written in SCRIPT languages need about TWENTY TIMES the ammount of cpu time that a COMPILED C++ Program would need? Is it so important to us, that every idiot can write "programs" for us?
To a large extent I agree with you, and C++ is also my preferred language. However, there are good reasons for making languages easier (so that "every moron can use them"). The fact is, no programmer is perfect; and if it's easier for a very imperfect programmer (moron) to use a language, it's (usually) also easier for a good (but still imperfect) programmer. Easier languages mean fewer mistakes by programmers, no matter how good they are; fewer mistakes mean fewer bugs.
I like C++ as a good compromise between being able to do low-level stuff (like pointers and memory management) when you have to, and still being able to hide all that low-level code inside classes and benefiting from the features of OOP. However, sometimes ease-of-coding (and the greater reliability of your programs that comes with it) is worth more than the performance, and C++ may not be the best language for the job.
I have discovered a truly wonderful signature, but this margin is too narrow to hold it
Seems like you got your sig from the same place I got mine.;)
Sure, Open Source is going to have more bugs, it's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people contributing code. Of course not all of them are going to get everything perfect. Now compare how many people Microsoft has working on bugs. A few thousand at best. Now you see the reality of this. Linux is going to have more bugs simply because it has more software.
I love open source and everything, but, with respect, your argument is rather absurd. Basically, you're saying that there's far more FOSS than Microsoft software out there, and therefore more code will have more bugs. True, many Linux distros bundle far more software than MS does with Windows, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft's software doesn't exist; it just means it's not part of the Windows bundle, which is either because of antitrust reasons or because MS wants to make money from the software separately.
Also, saying "open source projects have hundreds of thousands of developers, while MS projects have only a few thousand" is very, very misleading. Open source projects might have lots of contributors, but the vast majority don't work on it full time. Usually FOSS projects have a "core" of developers that work full-time and coordinate the contributions from all of the many contributors. These core groups of programmers are usually comparable to the size of their proprietary counterparts.
That's not to diminish the contributions of the larger community at all. I think open source works very well as a development model and I much prefer it to proprietary software. But the way you portray it, one might think that open source is light years ahead of Microsoft software because MS developers are hopelessly outnumbered and that the open source world completely dwarfs the Microsoft world. This is simply false.
Plus, the whole premise behind open source, "given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow," would fall apart if your reasoning were true. You're saying that having more programmers means more bugs; the whole point of open source is that more programmers means *fewer* bugs.
"researchers found 812 flaws in the Windows operating system, 2,328 problems in various versions of the Unix/Linux operating systems (Mac included). "
If we listened to just the media you would have thought Windows has thousands and the others only had a few dozen. I promise I'm not trolling, but do those numbers stop and make anyone on the site re-think stances? We all saw the numbers that put Firefox with more holes then IE earlier this year too. Could MS be doing a better job, but just getting hammered in the press (who are mostly Apple users by the way)? MS holes get lots of press while other operating systems get a free pass.
If you look at the first post, you'll see that the real count of vulnerabilities isn't so shocking after all:
Windows 671
UNIX/Linux 891
Multiple 1512
Also, when you consider the fact that "UNIX/Linux" includes many different operating systems (e.g., GNU/Linux, *BSD, OS X, etc.), you can't give any one Unix operating system the blame. Remember that although some code is shared between projects, GNU/Linux and the *BSD are more or less completely different code bases. In any case, the simple counts of vulnerabilities don't take into account the severity of each, so the real winner is even more ambiguous.
I find myself defending MS allot on this site, and it's nice to have some numbers from a respected neutral organization to debate some of you guys with. I'm sure after this piece they will be re-classified as MS zealots, but what can ya do.
While Brian Krebs might be tainted by his misrepresentation (see the post I got the numbers from), I can't imagine anyone here claiming that US-CERT is somehow a bunch of MS zealots. In fairness to Microsoft, they've definitely come a long way with SP2, and I don't feel nearly as vulnerable when using an SP2 machine as I did with previous Windows versions (though the recent WMF hole makes me a bit more worried).
without considering the severity of each vulnerability. But they're still no where near the point where I would switch from Linux.
Although that gave me a chuckle, I can't say I agree with it. The only CPU I have had overheat on me was an AMD Athlon XP 3200, and a large reason for why AMD has trouble getting into the laptop market is that it hasn't invested as much in bringing its CPU temperatures down.
It's about professionalism and presentation. Now, if you're going to argue that these are spare-time developers working from their bedrooms who shouldn't have to worry about that, then fine. But don't complain then when nobody takes you seriously and, well, views you as a bedroom effort.
First of all, your argument is different from that of the article, which is that FOSS programs have names that don't suggest their function. Your view is that FOSS programs have "unprofessional" names.
Is there anything wrong with having some fun in naming your program? I find FOSS names to be (generally) a breath of fresh air from the hype surrounding lots of proprietary software. Websites for FOSS projects are generally very clear and informative, sometimes sprinkled with good humor; this contrasts with lots of proprietary ("professional?") software websites which are often flooded with meaningless marketing garble.
Whatever the case, are you suggesting that "bedroom efforts" are somehow inferior to "cubicle efforts?" I would argue that a bedroom effort should generally be taken more seriously than its cubicle counterpart, because it shows that the programmer obviously has a personal stake in its success and enjoys his work. A cubicle programmer may well also enjoy his work, but he could just as well be doing it solely for the money. Money can be a useful incentive, but I think we can all agree that the best programmers are ones who are in it for fun, not for a salary (even if they get a salary for it).
Slashdot Mirror
Would it be THAT easy for a terrorist or other agressive attack on our communications infrastructure?
As the article suggests, I can imagine it would be *very* easy for terrorists to cripple telecommunications. The thing is, I doubt that they really want to. Al Qaida likes really dramatic attacks that scare the heck out of people. When people fear terrorism, they probably don't stay awake at night worrying that their phone or TV will go out. We nerds might get pretty worried about Internet going out or about computer security breaches, but the point is, attacks on technology by themselves don't strike fear into people's hearts.
What I could imagine is if they damaged communications while a more violent attack was going on. If they could take down an entire city's phone system or even power, and then attack actual people within the city, that would be something to worry about. Police, ambulance and firefighters would have difficulty getting to where they need to go and coordinating, causing lots of panic and confusion.
In short, Al Qaida doesn't want to look like mischievous little kids disconnecting phone wires. They want to look truly dangerous and powerful, and IMHO they'll only mess with technology if it helps them also kill people, not just destroy data.
I'm also left wondering why these big players like Spint doesn't have two wires for every important line like this? Cut one wire and the alternate route patches over with a notice. Cut the other and a notice is issued... both without incident to large scale service. If I can imagine it, then I know someone else out there has already thought of it.
Apparently that's exactly what Sprint had here. The article says that second cable had already been cut by a mudslide before this one got cut by the backhoe.
I bought the x86 version because Apple has a track record of agressively dropping support for legacy architectures and OS's.
:-) The reason I replied was that you called yourself a "hardcore" Linux and Windows user. To me, "hardcore" means that you really love the Linux and Windows platforms and see them as superior, not just that you use them. It looks like you just made a pragmatic choice (which is a good thing), not a religious conversion, so to speak.
Makes sense.
After careful study, I believe that I can consolidate all three into a single iMac and get all of the functionality I need, thereby consildating the three computers into one. I cannot achieve the same objective if I try to consolidate onto Windows or linux.
Okay, I see what you're saying. However, the original poster said "Outside of a tiny number of hardcore Mac fanatics, no one is going to be stupid enough to blow a ton of cash on overpriced Apple x86 hardware." Your reply implied that there was a reason for using the x86 Mac instead of PPC. Did you buy the x86 machine because PPC doesn't meet your current needs?
What Bush was attempting, and what he actually accomplished, are two different things.
What I'm saying is that Bush isn't even attempting to seriously address the energy crisis (your claim is that Iraq is part of his plan to do that). If he wanted to address energy concerns he wouldn't reject mandatory emissions reductions (i.e. mandatory conservation) and he would be investing a whole lot more into nuclear research. This isn't a matter of competence; it's a matter of Bush isn't very concerned about the energy crisis, which is a bad thing, but it means that it's unrelated to the Iraq war.
For instance the closed-session Whitehouse meeting with senior oil executives during the early pre-9/11 days of the Bush presidency, a meeting which was spent poring over a GEOLOGICAL map of Iraq marked up to show the various oil fields.
I haven't heard of this before, so forgive my skepticism. Could you link to a source please?
If you think a Republican controlled establishment would spend trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives just to knock over a tinpot dictator on the other side of the world - a tinpot dictator who was thoroughly evil but no worse than dozens of non-oil-owning tinpot dictators who will continue to be left alone - then you are seriously deluding yourself.
The main justification given for the Iraq war was not liberation of the Iraqi people; it was concern about what Saddam would have done with the WMD he was believed to have had. To look at Saddam as just an "oil-owning tinpot dictator" is a complete oversimplification; if you shut out all the other facts, sure it looks like you're right. Saddam was unique in that (A) he was believed to have WMD and pursuing nuclear weapons, (B) didn't have nuclear weapons yet, (C) supported terrorist groups (not Al Qaida specifically) and (D) the UN had already undergone extensive diplomacy with his regime.
Actually, I think we agree on more than you think. Let me explain why.
This sounds a lot like an altruistic argument to me. The libertarian response is, "So what if China invades Taiwan? So what if NK invades SK?" I wouldn't personally posit that argument, but I also don't see the sense in spending something like six times (last time I checked) more than any other nation on the planet for defence. It strikes me as beyond paranoid.
It is an altruistic argument. There are two reasons why we should care about China invading Taiwan. First is altruistic; if "all men are created equal," then the value of Taiwanese lives should be just as important as American lives. The US is in the unique position of being the world's sole superpower, and I think it has an obligation to use its force for the good of the world, not just its own. Second, if China is allowed to expand unchecked, this is a serious threat to American national security as well.
I'm also in favor of spending every dollar we can to help with things like AIDS in Africa. In foreign policy, sometimes spending money on medicine and aid is the best way to save lives, sometimes diplomacy is the best way, and sometimes taking military action is necessary to save lives. That doesn't mean we can do one and leave out the others (though we obviously prefer the first two).
I agree that missile defense is basically useless, and there are lots of waste in defense dollars. But I do stand behind the idea that as long as there are dangerous undemocratic regimes in the world, there needs to be a democratic power strong enough to keep these states in check.
So if the US slashed its defence budget in half, do you really think the EU would beef theirs up a proportional amount to compensate?
No, at least not immediately. But I do think we would see rogue states acting more boldly and the world would become more dangerous. Perhaps after a while, in response to this destabilization, Europe would begin increasing its defense spending.
First, asserting that the poor ought to just "do better", and "not be poor" (which is what you're asserting when you say they "could" take care of themselves) is such an obvious dead-end to me that I have trouble understanding the popularity of the meme in America (and it's a very American attitude). Is it so they can feel better about all the wise decisions they've made to avoid poverty? Maybe it's because while I was growing up in a trailer park, I noticed this phenomenon: the worst trailer trash raised the worst kids.
I absolutely agree with you that many people are born into a disadvantage in society. What I'm saying is that simply giving people money, as in the case of Social Security, is just papering over the real problem, and if you keep doing this, you will end up spending tons of money without really fixing much. Since we're on Slashdot, the analogy would be having a memory leak in your program, and instead fixing it, you just buy more and more RAM. Yes, you're program runs, but it's (A) expensive and (B) an ugly kludge. The problem in the American public is a lack of financial planning, and instead of plugging the "money leak" we're just throwing more money at it.
Your point about people failing to plan for their future is completely missing the forest for the trees. You can yell at people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps until the cows come home, but until you provide them with boots in the first place, there's not much that can be done.
Again, my problem is *not* with kids born at a disadvantage. Although I'm generally libertarian on economic issues, I would support a near 100% inheritance tax. Why? In an ideal world, if you're born in a rich family, you should have no more of an advantage than a kid born in a poor family. Such a tax would probably make a true libertarian's stomach turn, but I think it's perfectly reasonable and good. Society has every obligation to level the playing field at child hood. I know it
The fact that you're literally comparing the dollar amounts between defence and social spending is troubling. Defence spending shouldn't even be on the same order of magnitude as social spending. Take a look at Britain's budget, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/91D/93/ACF12D7 .pdf . And Britain isn't exactly what I'd call a pacifist state.
Britain isn't a pacifist state, but it isn't a superpower either. There's a lot of wasteful spending that goes on for defense, but a big reason for why Europe can spend less on its military is that the US spends so much on its own. Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, the fact that the US does have a powerful military is a big deterrent to dictators who'd like to do various international mischief. China can't invade Taiwan primarily because the US Navy is there. North Korea can't invade its southern neighbor because the US would take action; even though the UN was the official body that countered the north's first attack, the vast majority of non-Korean troops in the UN force came from the US. There are many other similar examples.
In a nutshell, my point is that the military gives teeth to the words of the US and Europe, and in many cases this serves an indirect social purpose in itself. That's not to say there aren't exceptions or waste in the military; I'm just saying that Europe can have a smaller military because the US has a bigger one. Having such a large military requires a lot of money.
As far as social programs go, most of these programs are designed to make up for a lack of financial planning and/or discipline on the part of individuals. For example, if everyone was wise enough to invest their money in a retirement account, Social Security would be unnecessary. Unfortunately, Americans save only 2% of their incomes (compare this with the Chinese, who save 40%), and thus when they reach retirement, they expect the rest of the public to pick up the tab. Entitlement programs cause people to take less care of themselves and expect everyone else to take care of their own problems. Obviously there are some legitimately poor people who ought to be helped, but with excessive social programs you get things like the enormous unemployment in Germany.
In short, we *are* spending huge amounts of money on social programs. Frankly, I find it somewhat ridiculous that we spend half of our tax dollars on taking care of people who could take care of themselves.
Well, this hardcore linux/Windows user has his arriving on Wednesday. And, as soon as Tivo releases their Tivo To Go for the Mac, the Windows box will be completely decomissioned. The linux box will go sooner.
... why?)
You don't sound "hardcore" at all. Apple releases a new product, and you immediately buy it and replace everything else with Apple's stuff, just because it uses Intel? Do you mean that you are a hardcore Intel or hardcore x86 user? (If so
However, you can't say that America is better in any significant way. Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine.
You think we *aren't* spending huge amounts of money on social programs? We're spending much more on entitlement programs on our "war machine." Take a look at the budget and reassess your view of what the federal government spends its money on. If you find the current level of defense spending "absolutely obscene," just look at how much money goes to the elderly alone through Social Security.
To cut straight to the chase: I promise you that Washington's invasion of Iraq had nothing at all to do with liberating anyone and everything to do with gaining control of significant oil supplies in order to forestall an imminent and rapid worsening of the ongoing energy crisis.
To the extent that forestalling the effects of "peak oil" will keep everyone in the US comfortable for a couple of years longer than would have been the case without the Iraq invasion, you could say that the US govt's actions were beneficial for the US public. But because it is only a temporary fix, this is a policy that doesn't lead anywhere other than to further wars, both military and economic. It only buys time. But time for what?
And just after that, you go on about how the US government isn't being serious about addressing the energy crisis. Look, if Bush were interested in getting oil, presumably to reduce oil prices (greater supply means lower prices), the Iraq war isn't helping the economy, isn't pushing oil prices down, and it isn't addressing the energy crisis in any way. If Bush wanted to get cheaper oil, there would have been many far easier ways; he could have pushed for easing Iraq's sanctions so that more oil flowed out, for example.
As you point out, the Iraq war does nothing to solve the energy crisis. That's exactly why claiming that it was intended to is absurd.
Who cares? What's in it for us to allow Apple the power to control what we can and can't do with OS X?
What's in it for you is that you get to use their software. For the vast majority of Apple's customers, this is perfectly acceptable; they merely want to use OS X, and they don't particularly care whether Apple, Dell, or their techie friend built it.
Since Apple built OS X, they get to choose the terms under which they distribute it. If those terms are unacceptable to you, feel free to use another operating system.
If Apple wants to sell a product then they need someone to sell it to and as long as software consumers continue to accept these "no rights but those we allow" stance currently offered by Apple and other software companies they will continue to make money. So I say, why stand for it?
You don't have to stand for it. Use Linux or BSD (or even Windows, if all you're concerned about is using generic x86 boxes). The reason people "stand for it" is that they see the value of using OS X to be greater than the value of using their operating system on different hardware configurations (for most people, the latter has practically zero value because they don't care).
The point is that most people just want to *use* software, not tinker with it. The software companies you mention will continue restricting user's rights as long as this is true, and because nerds will always represent a small minority of the general public, it always will be true.
Personally I think wind farms look really cool and if the noise level were not unbearable I would not mind living near one. However, it always helps to offer people SOMEthing for this. I suspect a lot of the complaining would die down if anyone within 1 mile of a wind farm would get free power for life; within 2-5 miles a 40% discount and within 5-7 miles a 10% discount.
I'm sure there are ways to bargain with people; some like windmills (I do), and others don't. The latter types will need to be negotiated with. But if you're really trying to solve energy and environmental issues, building wind mills is procrastinating a real solution. The article submitter implies that nuclear power isn't the "green route," but I'll argue that it's the "greenest" route that can accommodate future energy demand. Relying solely on solar and wind power for energy is a "green" fantasy that will never be realized.
to it's just plain silly to claim that our energy problems can be solved with solar and wind energy. They simply take up an enormous amount of land when compared with how much power they actually produce. Obviously coal and natural gas will run out eventually and are also contributing to global warming, so they aren't a long term solution either. Nuclear power is the only sustainable energy source over long periods of time. Many "environmentalists" will exploit the public's paranoia about anything with the words "nuclear" or "radiation" in it, and while storing nuclear waste securely is an important question, it's not one that has no answers. Energy conservation and solar/wind energy are nice, but when compared with the big picture, they really are drops in the bucket.
I'm not really defending these people; frankly, I think it would be cool to have wind turbines near my house. I'm just saying that people who are serious about solving energy problems are going to pick their battles, and this won't be one of them. Building nuclear power plants and storing nuclear waste will bring up similar "not in my backyard" protests, but at least it would accomplish something that would make a significant difference.
My argument assumed that this current wave of fear of terrorists was being inflated in order to be used to breed consent (the evidence for this is overwhelming). I thought that was particularly clear, I apologize if it was not to some people. I never stated that all fear was unjustified, or that "fearing any threat is wrong", as you suggested. I'm not even sure where you conjured that from. It is quite strange actually.
Then I apologize for misinterpreting your post. I was merely referring to the fact there are a lot of privacy activists on Slashdot that oppose nearly any kind of surveillance or screening to prevent terrorism.
I agree that fear of terrorism can be misused; I'm just saying that *some* fear of terrorism is appropriate, and that oftentimes the fear of the fear of terrorism is used on Slashdot to oppose reasonable policies (e.g., some on Slashdot opposed security cameras at the Olympics in 2004; I think we can agree that is an appropriate security measure).
I don't mean to lump you in with those people, but you shouldn't lump in the original poster with those who are excessive in their fear of terrorism. This isn't just "any type of space tourism story;" this story was specifically about US regulations on space tourism, some of which are designed to prevent terrorism. That's why the poster was both on-topic and insightful. If the story was "Virgin Galactic reveals in-space meals" or something like that, I could see where you're coming from, but this story is directly related to possible terrorism on tourist spacecraft.
Has he affected history? Certainly. Positively? Doubtful. His legacy is DRM and the anti-virus industry. Like the robber barrons, later in life he chooses to disgorge some of that wealth in a very public way in an effort to whitewash his image. He may leave his name on a couple of buildings, but posterity will see him reviled like his predecessors.
It's fair to say that DRM and anti-virus programs would exist even if Bill Gates never did. Some copyright holders will always want to build debatably invasive mechanisms to enforce their copyrights, and DRM is a natural outcome of this desire. Anti-virus would have been here without Gates because (A) no programmers are perfect and (B) there will always be programmers that make viruses and script kiddies that exploit them. I love to ridicule MS software as much as the next guy, but at worst Bill Gates's company caused more viruses than there would have otherwise been; viruses would still be there, perhaps in smaller numbers.
Bill Gates may have put some competitors out of business and suppressed some innovation in technology. IMHO, he has done a lot of things that negatively impacted the software world. But let's face it: his philanthropy has *saved lives*, helped students go to college, etc. Even if his intentions weren't so angelic, and it's hard for anyone to say with authority what they really are, the point is that as an overall human being, Bill Gates is doing good for the world in general. Would you honestly trade billions of dollars to help stop AIDS for 50% Firefox marketshare?
Frankly, I don't care whether he wants to whitewash his image or just wants to make the world a better place; he is doing both and the latter is what matters.
Everyone thought she was the kindest person in the world, and one day I asked her why she did all of this stuff.
She said that she absolutely hated her husband and family and would do anything to get out of the house.
That doesn't mean that what she does is bad.
Richard Branson and his Virgin brand are English, why should he listen to US rules when they are only binding in USA ?
Because the spaceport he wants to build is going to be in the US (right next door to me, in fact). (I know the article is 99% fluff, but I was lazy so I googled my hometown paper and that's what I found.)
A story about space tourism, and how easy it's going to be to screen people to make sure we're "safe" getting an instant 5 Insightful is hillarious to me, sorry.
The post was very on topic; the whole point of the article was regulation to ensure safety. Plus, you don't even refute the poster's logic; personally, I think what the poster said made a lot of sense.
Sure, fear has been abused for terrible ends throughout human history; that doesn't mean fear is never justified. As these tourist spaceships grow in size to hold ever more passengers, they will undoubtedly become targets for criminals. To say that even thinking about security when it comes to transportation is "hillarious" is simply naive.
Authority should always be questioned, and we should always be skeptical of demagogues. But here on Slashdot, I think that the fear of authority and the fear of fear itself is often construed to argue that fearing any threat is wrong.
A post discussing the security of spacecraft, and then a reply post saying that "fear" of insecurity is too "invasive" and wrong getting a +5 Insightful is hillarious to me, sorry.
The Athlon XP was yesterday's news the day before yesterday. Where have you been? Opteron looks a LOT better in terms of heat/MIPS.
Perhaps AMD will get better in terms of heat in the future; I was merely commenting on what I'm currently using. Don't get me wrong; I love AMD (in fact, I only have one (running) Intel CPU out of about half a dozen processors in my house). I'd also remark that the Athlon XP, while not at all cutting edge anymore, is more representative of what most people today are running (in fact, mine is still probably a little bit above average). The general public won't be using 64 bit processors for a while still; so although the Athlon XP isn't "today's news," it's really because the Athlon XP has moved from the papers into people's computers.
script languages are so great because every moron can use them... do you realize that the fastest "programs" written in SCRIPT languages need about TWENTY TIMES the ammount of cpu time that a COMPILED C++ Program would need? Is it so important to us, that every idiot can write "programs" for us?
;)
To a large extent I agree with you, and C++ is also my preferred language. However, there are good reasons for making languages easier (so that "every moron can use them"). The fact is, no programmer is perfect; and if it's easier for a very imperfect programmer (moron) to use a language, it's (usually) also easier for a good (but still imperfect) programmer. Easier languages mean fewer mistakes by programmers, no matter how good they are; fewer mistakes mean fewer bugs.
I like C++ as a good compromise between being able to do low-level stuff (like pointers and memory management) when you have to, and still being able to hide all that low-level code inside classes and benefiting from the features of OOP. However, sometimes ease-of-coding (and the greater reliability of your programs that comes with it) is worth more than the performance, and C++ may not be the best language for the job.
I have discovered a truly wonderful signature, but this margin is too narrow to hold it
Seems like you got your sig from the same place I got mine.
If i could take the eye candy of a mac and put it on my debian kde box it would be excellent.
Have you tried out Baghira? It's not perfect, but I think it's a pretty darn good imitation of Apple's eye candy.
As much as hardware for my Mac tends to be more expensive, I'll take the price hit over the GOD DAMN HASSLE of Windows hardware.
Isn't it nice that Mac hardware and "Windows" hardware (quotes added because the hardware isn't specific to Windows at all) will soon be the same?
Sure, Open Source is going to have more bugs, it's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people contributing code. Of course not all of them are going to get everything perfect. Now compare how many people Microsoft has working on bugs. A few thousand at best. Now you see the reality of this. Linux is going to have more bugs simply because it has more software.
I love open source and everything, but, with respect, your argument is rather absurd. Basically, you're saying that there's far more FOSS than Microsoft software out there, and therefore more code will have more bugs. True, many Linux distros bundle far more software than MS does with Windows, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft's software doesn't exist; it just means it's not part of the Windows bundle, which is either because of antitrust reasons or because MS wants to make money from the software separately.
Also, saying "open source projects have hundreds of thousands of developers, while MS projects have only a few thousand" is very, very misleading. Open source projects might have lots of contributors, but the vast majority don't work on it full time. Usually FOSS projects have a "core" of developers that work full-time and coordinate the contributions from all of the many contributors. These core groups of programmers are usually comparable to the size of their proprietary counterparts.
That's not to diminish the contributions of the larger community at all. I think open source works very well as a development model and I much prefer it to proprietary software. But the way you portray it, one might think that open source is light years ahead of Microsoft software because MS developers are hopelessly outnumbered and that the open source world completely dwarfs the Microsoft world. This is simply false.
Plus, the whole premise behind open source, "given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow," would fall apart if your reasoning were true. You're saying that having more programmers means more bugs; the whole point of open source is that more programmers means *fewer* bugs.
Happy New Year!
"researchers found 812 flaws in the Windows operating system, 2,328 problems in various versions of the Unix/Linux operating systems (Mac included). "
If we listened to just the media you would have thought Windows has thousands and the others only had a few dozen. I promise I'm not trolling, but do those numbers stop and make anyone on the site re-think stances? We all saw the numbers that put Firefox with more holes then IE earlier this year too. Could MS be doing a better job, but just getting hammered in the press (who are mostly Apple users by the way)? MS holes get lots of press while other operating systems get a free pass.
If you look at the first post, you'll see that the real count of vulnerabilities isn't so shocking after all:
Windows 671
UNIX/Linux 891
Multiple 1512
Also, when you consider the fact that "UNIX/Linux" includes many different operating systems (e.g., GNU/Linux, *BSD, OS X, etc.), you can't give any one Unix operating system the blame. Remember that although some code is shared between projects, GNU/Linux and the *BSD are more or less completely different code bases. In any case, the simple counts of vulnerabilities don't take into account the severity of each, so the real winner is even more ambiguous.
I find myself defending MS allot on this site, and it's nice to have some numbers from a respected neutral organization to debate some of you guys with. I'm sure after this piece they will be re-classified as MS zealots, but what can ya do.
While Brian Krebs might be tainted by his misrepresentation (see the post I got the numbers from), I can't imagine anyone here claiming that US-CERT is somehow a bunch of MS zealots. In fairness to Microsoft, they've definitely come a long way with SP2, and I don't feel nearly as vulnerable when using an SP2 machine as I did with previous Windows versions (though the recent WMF hole makes me a bit more worried). without considering the severity of each vulnerability. But they're still no where near the point where I would switch from Linux.
10. We keep your house warm
Although that gave me a chuckle, I can't say I agree with it. The only CPU I have had overheat on me was an AMD Athlon XP 3200, and a large reason for why AMD has trouble getting into the laptop market is that it hasn't invested as much in bringing its CPU temperatures down.
It's about professionalism and presentation. Now, if you're going to argue that these are spare-time developers working from their bedrooms who shouldn't have to worry about that, then fine. But don't complain then when nobody takes you seriously and, well, views you as a bedroom effort.
First of all, your argument is different from that of the article, which is that FOSS programs have names that don't suggest their function. Your view is that FOSS programs have "unprofessional" names.
Is there anything wrong with having some fun in naming your program? I find FOSS names to be (generally) a breath of fresh air from the hype surrounding lots of proprietary software. Websites for FOSS projects are generally very clear and informative, sometimes sprinkled with good humor; this contrasts with lots of proprietary ("professional?") software websites which are often flooded with meaningless marketing garble.
Whatever the case, are you suggesting that "bedroom efforts" are somehow inferior to "cubicle efforts?" I would argue that a bedroom effort should generally be taken more seriously than its cubicle counterpart, because it shows that the programmer obviously has a personal stake in its success and enjoys his work. A cubicle programmer may well also enjoy his work, but he could just as well be doing it solely for the money. Money can be a useful incentive, but I think we can all agree that the best programmers are ones who are in it for fun, not for a salary (even if they get a salary for it).