>You are actually considering OpenOffice a valid replacement of Microsoft Office?
I got off that high-horse, and am ashamed to admit that I was once on it.
I have worked with too many people who are power users of Excel, not strictly computer nerds, but scientists in a research field, and I have learned that Excel is far superior to OO's spreadsheet. I refuse to even entertain the argument anymore. OO is good, and I personally use it, but a serious user of Excel is not going to be fully served by it.
>There's plenty of KVM switches that handle both USB devices as well as audio.
None of them are very good, USB KVM's are very expensive, and do not support multiple displays, or DVI, and the ones that support audio are not suitable at all for professional audio.
I need windows and linux for the simple reason that my employment requires me to develop and test software on these particular systems. If Windows intentionally prevents me from running Linux, it's restraining my trade.
"I have not yet looked into the possibility of getting the Vista boot manager to boot to the linux HD, I just reinstalled Grub."
And... Grub boots Vista OK? So this is a non-issue? My MSDN sub doesn't renew until probably September, so I haven't seen anything new from Microsoft in a while.
The Bush Administration seems bound and determined to grab as much power as possible in order to hand it over to the incoming administration in the next term, and at the same time, doing everything in their power to ensure that the incoming administration will be fully controlled by the Democratic party.
I don't claim to be able to see the wisdom of their plan, but, to your question, I can assure you that if Padilla is ever tried, it will be under the next administration, assuredly a Democratic one.
>On the contrary, the people of Iraq are opposing it.
Oh, I was picturing something on the order of an alliance between Russia, China and Germany with ships and subs blockading the Gulf to prevent the US from invading, or if you want diplomatic solutions, a scenario where Americans are not allowed to travel or conduct business elsewhere in the world.
That sort of opposition might have had an impact. Iraqi guerilla defenses do nothing except put a finer point on the fact that nobody was willing to do the slightest thing in their defense. You could say this is because everyone in the world is afraid of confronting the US or the UK, either economically or militarily, but I say it is simply because nobody with a military force had any interest whatsoever in defending Iraq to begin with.
>And the people of this country will have the chance to repudiate the crimes >committed in their name this November.
You should prepare yourself for the possibility that the status quo may indeed continue to prevail.
Notice, for example, that after 2000 or so, large numbers of peaceable, liberal minded people did not choose to relocate from the cities to the interior in order to affect the political distribution. Red states are still red states. If you live among people who are like-minded, it is very easy to forget just how much support some of these lawmakers actually enjoy among their consituents -- constituencies which have not dramatically changed over the past decade, and who, if they have changed their views, are actually now even *more* in support of the bellicose, intolerant representatives, many of whom *will* be re-elected in November, or replaced by even more conservative candidates.
Even the most optimistic projections lead to a seven- or eight- seat Democratic majority in the House -- that would be good enough to help resolve some issues, but not the revolution some would have us believe it will be.
>Ask you Congressman what their position on torture is
Interesting that you should bring that up. The Congressman from my district is a first-generation American citizen whose parents were immigrants from Mexico. He doesn't go too deep into foreign policy issues, but he is certainly a champion of human rights, particularly issues related to humanitarian aid and immigration reform.
But one of the Senators from my state happens to also be on the very short list of national politicians who I personally know -- he is a Republican Senator who was a POW during the Vietnam war, and he was also a neighbor of mine in Yavapai county for several years. Despite his being a Republican politician, and me being generally a Democrat for lack of a real party representing my own ethos, this candidate would enjoy my full support for any office he would aspire to, regardless of party affiliation.
So there you go. You've got a liberal peacenik hippie willing to re-elect a Republican incumbent.
Now, to be fair, my politics are weird -- I tend to support people I know personally (happens a lot in local politics, especially since I grew up in a very small town, and these days, I happen to live near a few politicians -- council, sherriff, school superintendent, and one or two others), regardless of "party" concepts.
>where is the bar for one country deciding to invade another country[?]
That's easy: The prevailing doctrine in global politics has been shown to be "Might Makes Right."
If you can invade a country and no other nation lifts a finger to defend it, then it is justified. The whole world has voted on this one, pretty much unanimously. The USA gets the blame because they were the most recent to successfully test the idea, but today Israel is following through on the same premise.
>And article 3 of the Geneva convention absolutely prohibits use of torture without >exception. It is irrelevant what status the administration claims the prisoners have, >the convention recognizes no exceptions.
Well, there are a few interesting things going on at the time we happen to be witnessing:
1. We are testing the ideas of "international law", in some ways, for the first time in history, and the ideas are not meeting their goals, for the simple fact that there is no realistic possibility for such laws to be enforced against a sufficiently strong nation.
2. The US has demonstrated that it is possible for a nation to invade another, sovreign nation, replace its government, and torture and kill its people, and no nation will raise the slightest opposition to this. Other nations are now learning this lesson, and following suit.
Old World is "Europe" and the sphere of European influence that was established by the 13th-15th century.
New World is "the Western Hemisphere" and various other places that saw modern development with the advent of exploration and the industrial revolution.
Third World is everyplace that was unknown, unsettled, or remained in an isolated, sparse, or otherwise primitive state with respect to the social and technological advances of most of the world, until the 19th or 20th century.
When smart people make bad decisions, they seem to make *monumentally* bad decisions sometimes.
I'll bet your company's founder cannot even explain what went wrong himself.
Something similar happened with my company, but it was more like the founder(s) burned out, exhausted. The company made them rich (and even somewhat famous), but it was also destroying their lives. I don't claim to understand exactly what they *did*, but whatever it was, they did it passionately, and to the point of personal sacrifices that nobody should ever have to do for a job -- even for a multi-million dollar executive job.
They did the wise thing and sold out. But everything changed, of course.
>I am sure that together we can make just as good of decisions as your precious CEO.
If you actually got to play in that park, you might just discover you are wrong. There's another side to understanding the business world, and you might find that it's NOT just a bunch of overpaid incompetent boobs playing it by ear.
Are you willing to put all your assets into a trust for the company, as compensation if your plan fails? How much of your own money are you willing to invest into preferred stock in order to acquire the kind of vested interest that comes with a C-level executive position?
"Well, you can bet your ass that Windows's native NTFS is much faster than the Linux one, because they wrote the FS, and they have years of time to optimize the working driver."
Are you making assumptions based on metrics? Are you willing to be something more than "your ass?"
>Personally, I really, honestly believe that all vulnerabilities should simply be reported to the world at large.
And, thanks to our living in the twenty-first century, it is quite simple to report such things completely anonymously.
Instead, we see people who insist on identifying themselves, making sure everyone knows *who* discovered and reported these vulnerabilities. And that makes it an entirely different game.
Warn the users in your enterprise immediately. Warn any clients or business associates immediately. Warn the vendor that if the situation is not corrected immediately, litigation will ensue.
That isn't even language from the act. I know that distribution of "circumvention devices" is forbidden, but that doesn't stop you from making and using them.
Actually, I love it. I hope we get past the equilibrium range where people continue to be willing to pay the price. I don't think $5 and $6/gallon gas is going to do that. Still on some sort of saddle of a logistics curve. At $10 or $12, it might be at a point where people actually spend more to go to their workplaces than they earn there. Probably not very many, though.
$3.00 is not so high that driving has become unpopular. I don't even see that it has reduced traffic.
Do you even have a source for Tin (Sn) foil? I can find Aluminum (Al) foil, Gold (Au) foil, and even Lead (Pb) foil, but I have never even seen Tin foil.
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>You are actually considering OpenOffice a valid replacement of Microsoft Office?
I got off that high-horse, and am ashamed to admit that I was once on it.
I have worked with too many people who are power users of Excel, not strictly computer nerds, but
scientists in a research field, and I have learned that Excel is far superior to OO's spreadsheet.
I refuse to even entertain the argument anymore. OO is good, and I personally use it, but a serious
user of Excel is not going to be fully served by it.
>There's plenty of KVM switches that handle both USB devices as well as audio.
None of them are very good, USB KVM's are very expensive, and do not support multiple displays,
or DVI, and the ones that support audio are not suitable at all for professional audio.
>For me, that is reason enough to install Linux.
I need windows and linux for the simple reason that my employment requires me to develop and test software on these particular systems. If Windows intentionally prevents me from running Linux, it's restraining my trade.
"I have not yet looked into the possibility of getting the Vista boot manager to boot to the linux HD, I just reinstalled Grub."
And... Grub boots Vista OK? So this is a non-issue? My MSDN sub doesn't renew until probably September, so I haven't seen anything new from Microsoft in a while.
>O2 only allows HTTP and blocks TCP and UDP.
Please explain how HTTP works with TCP blocked.
> Today we have know nothings and learn nothings in charge.
They would learn a lot more, and much more quickly, if people were willing to bring consequences to them.
Why do so many nations even tolerate the actions of the US? Why no opposition?
The Bush Administration seems bound and determined to grab as much power as possible in order to hand it over to the incoming administration in the next term, and at the same time, doing everything in their power to ensure that the incoming administration will be fully controlled by the Democratic party.
I don't claim to be able to see the wisdom of their plan, but, to your question, I can assure you that if Padilla is ever tried, it will be under the next administration, assuredly a Democratic one.
>On the contrary, the people of Iraq are opposing it.
Oh, I was picturing something on the order of an alliance between Russia, China and Germany with ships and subs blockading the Gulf to prevent the US from invading, or if you want diplomatic solutions, a scenario where Americans are not allowed to travel or conduct business elsewhere in the world.
That sort of opposition might have had an impact. Iraqi guerilla defenses do nothing except put a finer point on the fact that nobody was willing to do the slightest thing in their defense. You could say this is because everyone in the world is afraid of confronting the US or the UK, either economically or militarily, but I say it is simply because nobody with a military force had any interest whatsoever in defending Iraq to begin with.
>And the people of this country will have the chance to repudiate the crimes
>committed in their name this November.
You should prepare yourself for the possibility that the status quo may indeed continue to prevail.
Notice, for example, that after 2000 or so, large numbers of peaceable, liberal minded people did not choose to relocate from the cities to the interior in order to affect the political distribution. Red states are still red states. If you live among people who are like-minded, it is very easy to forget just how much support some of these lawmakers actually enjoy among their consituents -- constituencies which have not dramatically changed over the past decade, and who, if they have changed their views, are actually now even *more* in support of the bellicose, intolerant representatives, many of whom *will* be re-elected in November, or replaced by even more conservative candidates.
Even the most optimistic projections lead to a seven- or eight- seat Democratic majority in the House -- that would be good enough to help resolve some issues, but not the revolution some would have us believe it will be.
>Ask you Congressman what their position on torture is
Interesting that you should bring that up. The Congressman from my district is a first-generation American citizen whose parents were immigrants from Mexico. He doesn't go too deep into foreign policy issues, but he is certainly a champion of human rights, particularly issues related to humanitarian aid and immigration reform.
But one of the Senators from my state happens to also be on the very short list of national politicians who I personally know -- he is a Republican Senator who was a POW during the Vietnam war, and he was also a neighbor of mine in Yavapai county for several years. Despite his being a Republican politician, and me being generally a Democrat for lack of a real party representing my own ethos, this candidate would enjoy my full support for any office he would aspire to, regardless of party affiliation.
So there you go. You've got a liberal peacenik hippie willing to re-elect a Republican incumbent.
Now, to be fair, my politics are weird -- I tend to support people I know personally (happens a lot in local politics, especially since I grew up in a very small town, and these days, I happen to live near a few politicians -- council, sherriff, school superintendent, and one or two others), regardless of "party" concepts.
>where is the bar for one country deciding to invade another country[?]
That's easy: The prevailing doctrine in global politics has been shown to be "Might Makes Right."
If you can invade a country and no other nation lifts a finger to defend it, then it is justified. The whole world has voted on this one, pretty much unanimously. The USA gets the blame because they were the most recent to successfully test the idea, but today Israel is following through on the same premise.
>And article 3 of the Geneva convention absolutely prohibits use of torture without
>exception. It is irrelevant what status the administration claims the prisoners have,
>the convention recognizes no exceptions.
Well, there are a few interesting things going on at the time we happen to be witnessing:
1. We are testing the ideas of "international law", in some ways, for the first time in history, and the ideas are not meeting their goals, for the simple fact that there is no realistic possibility for such laws to be enforced against a sufficiently strong nation.
2. The US has demonstrated that it is possible for a nation to invade another, sovreign nation, replace its government, and torture and kill its people, and no nation will raise the slightest opposition to this. Other nations are now learning this lesson, and following suit.
Fair enough. There's ONE world.
Old World is "Europe" and the sphere of European influence that was established by the 13th-15th century.
New World is "the Western Hemisphere" and various other places that saw modern development with the advent of exploration and the industrial revolution.
Third World is everyplace that was unknown, unsettled, or remained in an isolated, sparse, or otherwise primitive state with respect to the social and technological advances of most of the world, until the 19th or 20th century.
When smart people make bad decisions, they seem to make *monumentally* bad decisions sometimes.
I'll bet your company's founder cannot even explain what went wrong himself.
Something similar happened with my company, but it was more like the founder(s) burned out, exhausted. The company made them rich (and even somewhat famous), but it was also destroying their lives. I don't claim to understand exactly what they *did*, but whatever it was, they did it passionately, and to the point of personal sacrifices that nobody should ever have to do for a job -- even for a multi-million dollar executive job.
They did the wise thing and sold out. But everything changed, of course.
>I am sure that together we can make just as good of decisions as your precious CEO.
If you actually got to play in that park, you might just discover you are wrong.
There's another side to understanding the business world, and you might find that it's NOT just a bunch of overpaid incompetent boobs playing it by ear.
Are you willing to put all your assets into a trust for the company, as compensation if your plan fails? How much of your own money are you willing to invest into preferred stock in order to acquire the kind of vested interest that comes with a C-level executive position?
>Give the guy in Africa $10000 and he'll spend the rest of his days .....
Destroying his local economy...
You made a mistake by using song titles as examples, and these are not protected as lyrics.
>Right, because there's no way that your acquaintances might have connections to black hats
You have to assume they had the info long before you did.
"Well, you can bet your ass that Windows's native NTFS is much faster than the Linux one, because they wrote the FS, and they have years of time to optimize the working driver."
Are you making assumptions based on metrics? Are you willing to be something more than "your ass?"
>Personally, I really, honestly believe that all vulnerabilities should simply be reported to the world at large.
And, thanks to our living in the twenty-first century, it is quite simple to report such things completely anonymously.
Instead, we see people who insist on identifying themselves, making sure everyone knows *who* discovered and reported these vulnerabilities. And that makes it an entirely different game.
>Best practices in my not-so-humble-opinion:
Warn the users in your enterprise immediately.
Warn any clients or business associates immediately.
Warn the vendor that if the situation is not corrected immediately,
litigation will ensue.
To hell with the public.
That isn't even language from the act. I know that distribution of "circumvention devices" is forbidden, but that doesn't stop you from making and using them.
>Well, let's start with the DMCA in the USA.
No, the DMCA does NOT prohibit reverse engineering.
>Reverse engineering may or may not be legal depending on the country the reversing was done in.
Kindly list some countries where this type of "reverse engineering" is illegal.
>Meanwhile, if you don't like it
/gallon gas is going to do that. Still on some sort of saddle of a logistics curve. At $10 or $12, it might be at a point where people actually spend more to go to their workplaces than they earn there. Probably not very many, though.
Actually, I love it. I hope we get past the equilibrium range where people continue to be willing to pay the price. I don't think $5 and $6
$3.00 is not so high that driving has become unpopular. I don't even see that it has reduced traffic.
Do you even have a source for Tin (Sn) foil? I can find Aluminum (Al) foil, Gold (Au) foil, and even Lead (Pb) foil, but I have never even seen Tin foil.