Same goes for a gun - it does not matter that it can protect, it still is built with the purpose of ending life.
Yup, and that's still an amoral fact. The question is why the capacity to end a life is being used or threatened. I've personally used one in self defense, have you? The person in question was beligerant, trying to beat down a door and threatening my wife and I at 3:00AM. Is it evil to stop that, or evil to be the person threatening other people? Deciding to "turn the other cheek" so that you don't have to use force to stop someone is nonsense. If I had allowed the guy in question to hit me over the head with a steel pipe, I would have redeemed myself in your eyes, I suppose... but my inaction would have also condemned my wife to the same fate. But, as long as we don't point a gun at a violent guy, we're being saints, right? Is that all that matters to you? If I could have solved the same problem with a big knife (which can also cut up vegetables... but I suppose that's also a form of violence, right?) would that have passed your test?
Or, is there any chance that it comes down to choices and actions, and not the tool? A gun hurls a small bit of metal at high speeds when you choose to do so. Driving a car involves hurling a HUGE piece of metal down the road, and kills far, far more people in this country than guns. Evil, evil cars!
No, in this case, the retailers with things to sell ARE the consumers. They are consuming the service that PG is offering, just like they consume print ads in local papers, TV ads, and the services of their employees.
To the extent that a retailer can't succeed in the long term without, themselves, dealing honestly with their customers, they won't do a lot of business with a service that somehow pollutes that environment. There will always be exceptions - just like there are now with Google ads, or print ads, or a jillion other promotional channels. PG (and PW) are just sales vehicles. They are not some non-profit consumer advocacy groups, or some neo-socialist entities trying to spare plasma TV purchasers from having to see the manufacturers and retailers of the products the end users are frantically shopping for make a profit and stay in business. There are people who still fall for the "we've got some extra electronics in the back of our delivery van" scam, too, so if the PG venue becomes obviously tawdry, it won't be obvious to some people, but it will be to most. So the retailers using it (consuming it) will either ask for changes, force change by taking their business elsewhere, or it will just fade away.
who am I kidding, if they are shelling out $485 mil they plan on raping folks for everything they got in any way they can.
It's free. It has substantial (and probably overwhelming in the long term, Google-wise) competition. Companies can choose to have their items not listed there, and can pay money to sweeten things. Visitors can simply go away. How is this rape? Why does any merger/acquisition instantly turn into something Eeeeevil from the slashdot group-think perspective? I'm genuinely curious. This is a lot more benign than the "new product" news in pretty much every techie print magazine (almost universally regurgitated press releases, and in no way objective). Someone who's out there trying to find a thumbdrive for $0.05 cheaper than the next web site is already hoping for a too-good-to-be-true "find" on the web. Lack of critical thinking on the part of lazy consumers doesn't equate to rape of anybody.
thought the carnot heat engine was a perpetual motion machine. Input = output
Nope! Read the article you linked to. Carnot's theorm indicates that no engine operating between to heat resevoirs can be more efficient than his... but that doesn't mean there's no loss in the system. On the face of it, such a thing would require no gravity present, no friction in the system, literally perfect heat trapping, etc. The theories are that those things are impossible, and so with the Carnot engine, we're talking about degrees of efficiency, not perfection in efficiency. No free lunch!
There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, an honest politician, or perfect encryption. All three exist in theory, but never in reality.
Well, let's see. The perpetual motion machine doesn't exist, in theory, because the laws of thermodynamics and whatnot essentially rule it out. Of course, it may exist in somebody's theory, but their theory would be at odds with actual, working theories that correspond with reality.
You're closer to the mark when it comes to the honest politicians. I think the measure there should be "honest enough," or at least "honest about his/her opinions/policies when it comes to what we're actually talking about." No one, ever, is 100% honest. Civilization couldn't exist without a certain amount of fluff, white lies ("really, honey, you look great in that dress," or "some day, New Orleans will be just like it was before the storm"), and safety-minded subterfuge.
Perfect encryption? Don't know enough about it. But I know we can do better in talking about it than to use slightly off-balance analogies from other disciplines. It's probably far more useful, anyway, to talk in terms of how imperfectly normal human users use even the "perfect" tools we have for other purposes. That's where stuff always breaks down: GIGO.
A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on observation, that - by its very nature - is shaped in such a way that it can be tested, and proven or disproven. Religious belief is, by its nature, held without any consideration of reality... and in fact it's usually considered a sign of weakness in one's faith to actually pursue actual truth - because that challenges the foundation of the religion in question. When an entire way of life is built up around fiction, the only way to preserve it is to make questioning the story the one thing that's not allowed.
Science, on the other hand, is - at its core - the process of seeking reality, causality, and re-examining the answers over and over again (with a willingness to change your view as soon as new information presents itself). You're suggesting that, rather than new information, students of science should take into account new (to them, perhaps) fiction that is by its nature untestable, unverifiable, and doesn't actually shed any light on the nature of the universe, or on one's self. Myth-making has no place in a science classroom.
as well as FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. He was convinced that OBL was in fact responsible.
Have you actually listened to Freeh talk about that period? He was, and is, furious that they weren't allowed to actually do anything meaningful about the intelligence they were coming across. They weren't allowed to work directly with the CIA or DOD, and his specific recommendation was to do essentially what Bush finally did do once the shock of 9/11 cast off any ridiculous worries that getting our intelligence agencies working together would be somehow Eeeevil.
The arrest and subsequent prosecution of a number of the perpetrators in the Embassy bombings are, of course, also nothing.
Essentially, yes. Nothing. After-the-fact, criminal-case type handling of the stupid pawns that carry this stuff out does virtually nothing to stop the organizations that work to fund them and train them. That was exactly Freeh's point, too. Those groups, and the states that fund and harbor them, have to be dealt with preemptively. You can't criminally prosecute your way back from hundreds, thousands, or worse dead. Countries like Iran (with a president that refers blythely to wiping Israel off the map) that gleefully pump money into Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Queda - or, places like Syria that aren't going to stop funneling cash, loonies, and weapons into places like Iraq just because the FBI issues warrants - are completely outside the reach of the law enforcement. Clinton knew that, too - but didn't have the political capital or stomach to actually act.
you extremist right wing nutjobs
What makes you think I'm extreme, or right wing? You can sling around "nutjob" all you want, since I can just consider the source. But at least "right wing" is reasonable identifiable in pretty specific terms, just like "socialist left" or "liberal pacifist" are. But you're not even using labels that match what you're hearing, so there's not much point lecturing.
defending terrorists yet claiming patriotism
Defending terrorists? You're not even being lucid, here. Patriotism? Some people use that word to mean "dedication to the principles upon which this country was founded" and "pride in its successes", while other people are trying, very oddly, to redefine it as "anything that runs counter to what the other political party is doing, even if opposing it is irrational on the face of it." I'm a patriot because I find that our country is, on balance, a better and more liberty-minded place than any that history has ever produced or sustained, and I support those that seek to preserve its place in the world. To that end, I support all of those great amendments that most of us love so much, and scratch my head when other people think they're being patriotic by trying to shout down other's voices.
I mean can't you at least *try* to make up a believable lie?!?
What's the point? I speak facts, and you choose to ignore any sort of context or causality because it's making you feel more righteous in your dislike for the CinC. I had an incredible dislike for the slick, weasly charlatan that had the job last time around, so I understand the frustration. And I think the current guy has had some of his world view stunted by the post-drinking-days comfort he found in religion. But that doesn't make clamping down on suicidal, murderous retro-medieval Islamo-fascism any less important, and at least he's stepping up.
You must be referring to the one that said he was sure the weapons were there, said there was a nuke program, specifically said that his administration's policy was to see Saddam removed... and either:
1) was lying about believing all of that, or
2) didn't have the backbone to do anything about it, even as Saddam was regularly shooting at the US air patrols enforcing the terms of his surrender following their ouster from Kuwait, among many other violations
He was probably too busy dealing with the terrorist attacks on the embassies in Africa, or the attack on the USS Cole... oh, wait, no, he wasn't busy doing anything along those lines, either.
Well, it's definitely a meaningless metaphor... but some people think it's meaningful, and what they usually mean when they (which is to say, people who don't actually ever DO anything that involves ballistics or consciously consider every day object trajectories) say a "ballistic trajectory" is "headed up, up, up, fast, fast, fast." They're not thinking about gravity, aerodynamics, friction, or any sort of actual reality - it's just a very poor metaphor, but they don't know that.
It's like people who say "I could care less" when they mean the exact opposite. They're just uttering phrases without any thought about the actual meaning of the words or the concepts/complexities that they represent. "Web 2.0" is pretty meaningless that way, too... since it implies there was a "1.0", which doesn't even make any contextual sense. Oh well.
OK, I'm not a theoretical physicist, more of the practical variety (I shoot things). Assuming we're talking about things happening down here on the planet, the term "ballistic" is generally meant to suggest "propelled with an impulse, and not guided" (like a kicked football, or a bullet). The trajectory of such items usually involves:
1) Slowing down
2) Dropping (literally) like a rock
That is not the mental image I'd like to paint of some exciting new IT initiative. Honestly. Might as well say, "We've got to get in on this now! Why, this technology's going postal!"
Jipahddis, establishing bases in Podjackistan
on
The Podjacker Threat
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The only reason this is amusing is that nothing came of it. It makes a scary headline, encourages ill-informed comments about an overseas financial system (bonus points: the currency is an awkward one to mentally associate with dollars or euros, etc), and (to the average reader) somehow makes technology people look bad. This was just a silly thing to report, period.
Considering that politicians made up the whole concept of "the terror network"
Huh. I guess the members of one of the largest terror networks would be annoyed to hear that they don't exist. Their main PR man was flacking on TV just yesterday, explaining how their leadership is still intact and that they're growing, world-wide, and that they are "at war with the West." Don't believe me, read the transcript and remember that these clowns have a large audience and do operate in concert with each other - though it's harder for them now, expressly because of actions taken against their financial and communications networks.
The chances of becoming a victim of terrorism are less than the chances of being hit by falling space debris.
But the chances of a large attack impacting your life, your job, your economy, your insurance rates... perhaps your food supply, or the stock market powering your retirement plan... that's 100% for anything even approaching what happened on 9/11. And that's the whole point of terrorism as a tactic - the results are intended to be well beyond the immediate damage done to individuals caught by a bomb, gas in a subway, etc.
So this is what it comes to... Instead of helping other countries push forward in mobile technology, or help improve/cheapen what they currently have, but no.. we have these wasting god knows how much $$$ just go make a phone to call a dog ffs ?
This reminds me of the scene in... was it "Animal House?" A group of students is planning an event of some sort, and the pious, liberal-guilt-New-England-sorority-type girl says something to the effect of, "I don't know how anyone can be planning a party when there are hungry people in the world!"
How can you be using a recent-vintage computer when other people have none? How can put hours of your life every year into learning how to use some shiny new disto or dev tool when you could be working in a soup kitchen or mowing lawns and sending the cash to the U.N.? How can software developers work to make domestic companies more producitve and less wasteful when there are whole villages with no software at all!
Don't you get it? Our economy's continual pursuit of newly leveraged technologies - even on relatively trivial things - is what makes our economy so good at making technology. And the largess that comes with that is one of the reasons that the U.S. (as an example) is such a large donor of development and relief materials, funds, and expertise throughout the world. Do you really think that someone who decides to buy a tracking device for their dog is suddenly faced with the dilemma of whether to do that, or go ahead and send the $300 off to Feed The Children, or invest in micro-finance for a village in one of the 'stans? No, that person is already putting money/time into those things, or isn't. The same people that come up with a way to produce cooler things bought and paid for by our economy are in a better position to sell deritive things, cheaply, to those markets in the world that haven't yet come become as productive.
wasting god knows how much $$$ just go make a phone to call a dog
Next time (so you can be consistent) that you see some kid putting up 50 photocopied posters about her lost dog, tell her that she should be ashamed of wasting paper and toner when there are poor countries in the world that can barely afford to print up local-language directions to go with the medical supply shipment they just received from the US.
They just find it very hard to recognize the same natural voice command in audio that goes over the phone, so you'd have to re-teach the dog to react to the phone commands just the same as to normal ones.
I don't think this matters (or is even necessarily true). My dogs recognize, I think, the cadence of my voice and command, which is why they react to my voice even under all sorts of different acoustic situations. They hear my voice through fog, over hills, echoing down an alley, over two-way radios, and even over the phone (we've tried this) and respond splendidly. They know the pattern of a familiar voice's commands, in much the same way we do. At least, the better developed dogs do... and I think they're all pretty similar along those lines. Their ability to wisely act on a command will vary hugely by breed, but they know what they're hearing, especially if regularly challenged under different circumstances.
I don't know if there would be this level of complaining and problems with M$ if they innovated, did right by their customers, and honestly tried to put out a good product.
So, you're saying they never innovate, ever? They have no happy customers? They never try to put out a good product? You know that's not the case. Now, how about if they - even by your standards - made a good faith effort to do everything you think they should to make their software more innovative, and better. How about even cheaper! Then what? You'd have even less incentive for competition to form, and even less reason for other companies or projects to exist. Then you'd have everything you'd like about MS software, but people would still complain that they're too big. They can't win, in your world. If they're not very good at something, they get yelled at. If they're too good, they get punished for being successful.
they are big and have moeny for now but there are a lot of unhappy people with their product just waiting for a true viable alternative at the desktop to come along.
Apple? Or, how about the endless parade of stories here on slashdot about various companies, grandmas, and governments firing up Linux distros for their desktops? There are choices, which is what makes this nonsense in Korea nothing more than a sleazy little money grab... with ugly implications for a software developer's right to put whatever features into an O/S they think should be there. No bundled IM client allowed? What? Who cares? Anyone hip enough to want to use IM is going to take the two minutes required to download whatever client they want regardless. Regulating that through government action is absurd.
So, when the Toyota of the desktop computing world finially is ready to step it up they will slowly be able to nick away at M$ and for similar management thinking as GM.
So, that means you're against what Korea just did, right? Because if MS's own lack of quality is inevitably going to make it fail up against better software vendors, we certainly don't need governments telling them how to build specific features in their O/S, right? Your take on it is that the market is going to either cause MS to do better, or make them go away... so why get the government involved in the software market's preferences?
Um, you write that with a certain air of irony, as if it weren't true. Honestly, I'm not sure I get your point. A tool is a tool is a tool. Guns, knives, matches, thumb drives, digital cameras... they're all useless without humans picking them up to make them do something. Digital cameras don't store data, people store data on digital cameras.
Why not just repeat this article on a regular basis, updating a list of things with some sort of commonly used comm port/interface and simple file-system storage? Right now it's phones, PDAs, pens, music widgets, camerads, fobs... but next it will be eyeglasses, shoes, student ID cards, car keys, fake fingernails, or someday your pre-frontal cortex. This article is mostly about how you can't trust people you can't trust. Cameras don't have much to do with it, per se. If cameras provided a way around an established lack of trust, then we'd have an article to read.
One of the requirements to recieve federal funding is to "uphold the United States Constitution", and yes that means free speech as well.
Are you forgetting "Freedome of Assembly," as also guaranteed in the constitution? Private groups (like clubs, churches, schools, etc) form exactly because they have some particular framework/worldview/goal/creed in common. If every school was exactly the same, and operated according to exactly the same requirements, we'd be... well, worse off.
Heh, sorry, poor Canadian here... I thought the First Amendment of your nation's Constitution was the right to Freedom of Speech? Must have been somewhere else I guess...
I feel sorry for you if you can't, in Canada, form a private organization or institution, and then say (and enforce) what are the terms under which someone can join or use that entity. A private school is a product, and one of the things they're selling is the understanding that their students are expected to conduct themselves in a certain way, or they're no longer students. You don't have to like that particular aspect of the organization, but you're welcome to go patronize another, instead.
You're focusing on Freedom of Speech, and forgetting about Freedom of Assembly. The student can say anything he wants - his speech is not limited in any way. But if he happens to want a relationship with that particular private institution, he's got to agree to its terms... or go elsewhere - he's got thousands of schools to choose from. But if you don't let the school organize itself around guiding principles to which their students can be expected to adhere, then you're violating the school's own liberty to do its intellectual business in the manner it sees fit.
This is just as important for other school policies. Let's say a different private school makes absolute tolerance for anything anyone says a requirement for students. Great, that's the atmosphere of that school, and that's part of their product. But if another school wants prospective students to agree that they won't hold skinhead marches on campus, etc., that's between the school and the student and the payment of tuition as part of an agreement.
So the administration didn't like it and came down on this individual like a tonne of bricks.
Yup, just like they say they will - an action that new students of that private organization state that they understand.
That's crap. I hope the appeal is successful.
The only thing that should be successful should be a longer-term changing of the school's policy if most of its staff and customers (the students) think that's the way it should be. But if the people running the school don't think so, then they'll either find new customers that agree with them, or they'll go out of business. That's a far better approach than screwing with constitutionally protected things like freedom of assembly.
"Why would I want to join a club that would have me as a member?"
-Grouch Marx (paraphrased)
Corporations (especially MS) deserve all the poisonous rhetoric we can throw at them. Lucky for them since they are above the law that's pretty much all we can do to them. If my neighbor acted like your typical corporation they would be committed or jailed.
So, if you instead bought a brand new, high-tech entertainment appliance from the little one-man shop down the street (you know, where he hand-makes video game hardware from minerals that he mines and refines himself, and for which he writed all the software), and it was defective... what would you do? Perhaps, take it back and ask for your money back? Of course, the little video game shopkeeper would be happy to help out. Unless of course he died the night before... oh well.
So, how about if he takes on a partner to help him out? I know, that's evil, evil, evil. Because in order to make sure that their growing enterprise can interact with the bank they use to cash your check, and the vendors they use to help them with supplies, and to make sure that their operation can survive without them personally, and keep paying their employees (and their debts), etc... they incorporate. Good ideas and businesses often reach past the interests, attention, or even lifespan of those that start them.
they are above the law
What nonsense. Really, you should read the news at least once a year, perhaps. Even if you just do it long enough to follow up on the corporate executives that lose everything and go to jail for being fraudulant... or to understand that many companies can't make products (or sometimes, even stop making products) without fantastic government involvement. You might even want to check up on how well AT&T is doing, running all of the country's telecommunications... oh, wait. It's BS to compare a corporate entity (or a church, or a university, or a Boy Scout troop, or a non-profit eco-activist organization) to an individual because it's not an individual. It's a chartered organization subject to all sorts of laws, and sure as hell not above them.
We just want what we paid for and we expect it to work like they told us.
Or what? You'll just return your Xbox to Best Buy for a refund? Fine, because you can. What do you do when the produce you buy from the little farmer's market around the corner is defective? Do you try to put together a class action suit that will only make a bunch of lawyers rich? How about you just don't buy stuff from companies you don't like, and intelligently pursuade others to do the same (hint: better if you don't start out by actually lying about things, but more on that later).
lawsuits are the only tools we have left
Again: just don't give them your money. You know, just like people stopped giving money to AT&T's hardware people because they didn't like much like their products and business practices, and now Lucent is a pale shadow of its former self, with virtually no influence in the market... and better companies have lured away its customers. Vote with your wallet - you have choices.
no human being feels as much of a sense of entitlement as a corporation does
Never actually worked for or with a larger company, have you? The struggle to compete with other companies to make better, cheaper, or different products is instense. Every day is a fight to make sure that they don't lose customers, and instead find more. Just what do you think a corporation is? Right now, I'm working in a company of about 300 people. There's no sense of entitlement, not among the management, the investors, or us worker bees. Every meeting, every customer interaction, every hunk of software we write or web site we operate - all of it is a scramble to make sure we are offering something better than what our competition delivers. Do we set up offices where the locations make the most sense (in terms of space costs, tax rates, etc)? Yes. Just like everyone does, business or personal.
Slashdot Mirror
Same goes for a gun - it does not matter that it can protect, it still is built with the purpose of ending life.
Yup, and that's still an amoral fact. The question is why the capacity to end a life is being used or threatened. I've personally used one in self defense, have you? The person in question was beligerant, trying to beat down a door and threatening my wife and I at 3:00AM. Is it evil to stop that, or evil to be the person threatening other people? Deciding to "turn the other cheek" so that you don't have to use force to stop someone is nonsense. If I had allowed the guy in question to hit me over the head with a steel pipe, I would have redeemed myself in your eyes, I suppose... but my inaction would have also condemned my wife to the same fate. But, as long as we don't point a gun at a violent guy, we're being saints, right? Is that all that matters to you? If I could have solved the same problem with a big knife (which can also cut up vegetables... but I suppose that's also a form of violence, right?) would that have passed your test?
Or, is there any chance that it comes down to choices and actions, and not the tool? A gun hurls a small bit of metal at high speeds when you choose to do so. Driving a car involves hurling a HUGE piece of metal down the road, and kills far, far more people in this country than guns. Evil, evil cars!
No, in this case, the retailers with things to sell ARE the consumers. They are consuming the service that PG is offering, just like they consume print ads in local papers, TV ads, and the services of their employees.
To the extent that a retailer can't succeed in the long term without, themselves, dealing honestly with their customers, they won't do a lot of business with a service that somehow pollutes that environment. There will always be exceptions - just like there are now with Google ads, or print ads, or a jillion other promotional channels. PG (and PW) are just sales vehicles. They are not some non-profit consumer advocacy groups, or some neo-socialist entities trying to spare plasma TV purchasers from having to see the manufacturers and retailers of the products the end users are frantically shopping for make a profit and stay in business. There are people who still fall for the "we've got some extra electronics in the back of our delivery van" scam, too, so if the PG venue becomes obviously tawdry, it won't be obvious to some people, but it will be to most. So the retailers using it (consuming it) will either ask for changes, force change by taking their business elsewhere, or it will just fade away.
who am I kidding, if they are shelling out $485 mil they plan on raping folks for everything they got in any way they can.
It's free. It has substantial (and probably overwhelming in the long term, Google-wise) competition. Companies can choose to have their items not listed there, and can pay money to sweeten things. Visitors can simply go away. How is this rape? Why does any merger/acquisition instantly turn into something Eeeeevil from the slashdot group-think perspective? I'm genuinely curious. This is a lot more benign than the "new product" news in pretty much every techie print magazine (almost universally regurgitated press releases, and in no way objective). Someone who's out there trying to find a thumbdrive for $0.05 cheaper than the next web site is already hoping for a too-good-to-be-true "find" on the web. Lack of critical thinking on the part of lazy consumers doesn't equate to rape of anybody.
a new space thruster. Plasma Double Layers, first discovered by Australian researchers Christine Charles and Rod Boswell, may help to develop
Anyone else notice that these names seem like code references for the Rosecrutians and Roswell? Duh. I've seen TV, I know what's going on, here.
The people being picked up are patriots
Categorically saying they are patriots is just as silly as saying, categorically, that they are not.
thought the carnot heat engine was a perpetual motion machine. Input = output
Nope! Read the article you linked to. Carnot's theorm indicates that no engine operating between to heat resevoirs can be more efficient than his... but that doesn't mean there's no loss in the system. On the face of it, such a thing would require no gravity present, no friction in the system, literally perfect heat trapping, etc. The theories are that those things are impossible, and so with the Carnot engine, we're talking about degrees of efficiency, not perfection in efficiency. No free lunch!
There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, an honest politician, or perfect encryption. All three exist in theory, but never in reality.
Well, let's see. The perpetual motion machine doesn't exist, in theory, because the laws of thermodynamics and whatnot essentially rule it out. Of course, it may exist in somebody's theory, but their theory would be at odds with actual, working theories that correspond with reality.
You're closer to the mark when it comes to the honest politicians. I think the measure there should be "honest enough," or at least "honest about his/her opinions/policies when it comes to what we're actually talking about." No one, ever, is 100% honest. Civilization couldn't exist without a certain amount of fluff, white lies ("really, honey, you look great in that dress," or "some day, New Orleans will be just like it was before the storm"), and safety-minded subterfuge.
Perfect encryption? Don't know enough about it. But I know we can do better in talking about it than to use slightly off-balance analogies from other disciplines. It's probably far more useful, anyway, to talk in terms of how imperfectly normal human users use even the "perfect" tools we have for other purposes. That's where stuff always breaks down: GIGO.
What is a hypothosis? It is a belief.
A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on observation, that - by its very nature - is shaped in such a way that it can be tested, and proven or disproven. Religious belief is, by its nature, held without any consideration of reality... and in fact it's usually considered a sign of weakness in one's faith to actually pursue actual truth - because that challenges the foundation of the religion in question. When an entire way of life is built up around fiction, the only way to preserve it is to make questioning the story the one thing that's not allowed.
Science, on the other hand, is - at its core - the process of seeking reality, causality, and re-examining the answers over and over again (with a willingness to change your view as soon as new information presents itself). You're suggesting that, rather than new information, students of science should take into account new (to them, perhaps) fiction that is by its nature untestable, unverifiable, and doesn't actually shed any light on the nature of the universe, or on one's self. Myth-making has no place in a science classroom.
as well as FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. He was convinced that OBL was in fact responsible.
Have you actually listened to Freeh talk about that period? He was, and is, furious that they weren't allowed to actually do anything meaningful about the intelligence they were coming across. They weren't allowed to work directly with the CIA or DOD, and his specific recommendation was to do essentially what Bush finally did do once the shock of 9/11 cast off any ridiculous worries that getting our intelligence agencies working together would be somehow Eeeevil.
The arrest and subsequent prosecution of a number of the perpetrators in the Embassy bombings are, of course, also nothing.
Essentially, yes. Nothing. After-the-fact, criminal-case type handling of the stupid pawns that carry this stuff out does virtually nothing to stop the organizations that work to fund them and train them. That was exactly Freeh's point, too. Those groups, and the states that fund and harbor them, have to be dealt with preemptively. You can't criminally prosecute your way back from hundreds, thousands, or worse dead. Countries like Iran (with a president that refers blythely to wiping Israel off the map) that gleefully pump money into Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Queda - or, places like Syria that aren't going to stop funneling cash, loonies, and weapons into places like Iraq just because the FBI issues warrants - are completely outside the reach of the law enforcement. Clinton knew that, too - but didn't have the political capital or stomach to actually act.
you extremist right wing nutjobs
What makes you think I'm extreme, or right wing? You can sling around "nutjob" all you want, since I can just consider the source. But at least "right wing" is reasonable identifiable in pretty specific terms, just like "socialist left" or "liberal pacifist" are. But you're not even using labels that match what you're hearing, so there's not much point lecturing.
defending terrorists yet claiming patriotism
Defending terrorists? You're not even being lucid, here. Patriotism? Some people use that word to mean "dedication to the principles upon which this country was founded" and "pride in its successes", while other people are trying, very oddly, to redefine it as "anything that runs counter to what the other political party is doing, even if opposing it is irrational on the face of it." I'm a patriot because I find that our country is, on balance, a better and more liberty-minded place than any that history has ever produced or sustained, and I support those that seek to preserve its place in the world. To that end, I support all of those great amendments that most of us love so much, and scratch my head when other people think they're being patriotic by trying to shout down other's voices.
I mean can't you at least *try* to make up a believable lie?!?
What's the point? I speak facts, and you choose to ignore any sort of context or causality because it's making you feel more righteous in your dislike for the CinC. I had an incredible dislike for the slick, weasly charlatan that had the job last time around, so I understand the frustration. And I think the current guy has had some of his world view stunted by the post-drinking-days comfort he found in religion. But that doesn't make clamping down on suicidal, murderous retro-medieval Islamo-fascism any less important, and at least he's stepping up.
Does that mean it will only display content from MoveOn.org?
You must be referring to the one that said he was sure the weapons were there, said there was a nuke program, specifically said that his administration's policy was to see Saddam removed... and either:
1) was lying about believing all of that, or
2) didn't have the backbone to do anything about it, even as Saddam was regularly shooting at the US air patrols enforcing the terms of his surrender following their ouster from Kuwait, among many other violations
He was probably too busy dealing with the terrorist attacks on the embassies in Africa, or the attack on the USS Cole... oh, wait, no, he wasn't busy doing anything along those lines, either.
Well, it's definitely a meaningless metaphor... but some people think it's meaningful, and what they usually mean when they (which is to say, people who don't actually ever DO anything that involves ballistics or consciously consider every day object trajectories) say a "ballistic trajectory" is "headed up, up, up, fast, fast, fast." They're not thinking about gravity, aerodynamics, friction, or any sort of actual reality - it's just a very poor metaphor, but they don't know that.
It's like people who say "I could care less" when they mean the exact opposite. They're just uttering phrases without any thought about the actual meaning of the words or the concepts/complexities that they represent. "Web 2.0" is pretty meaningless that way, too... since it implies there was a "1.0", which doesn't even make any contextual sense. Oh well.
OK, I'm not a theoretical physicist, more of the practical variety (I shoot things). Assuming we're talking about things happening down here on the planet, the term "ballistic" is generally meant to suggest "propelled with an impulse, and not guided" (like a kicked football, or a bullet). The trajectory of such items usually involves:
1) Slowing down
2) Dropping (literally) like a rock
That is not the mental image I'd like to paint of some exciting new IT initiative. Honestly. Might as well say, "We've got to get in on this now! Why, this technology's going postal!"
Enough.
The only reason this is amusing is that nothing came of it. It makes a scary headline, encourages ill-informed comments about an overseas financial system (bonus points: the currency is an awkward one to mentally associate with dollars or euros, etc), and (to the average reader) somehow makes technology people look bad. This was just a silly thing to report, period.
No, really.
Considering that politicians made up the whole concept of "the terror network"
Huh. I guess the members of one of the largest terror networks would be annoyed to hear that they don't exist. Their main PR man was flacking on TV just yesterday, explaining how their leadership is still intact and that they're growing, world-wide, and that they are "at war with the West." Don't believe me, read the transcript and remember that these clowns have a large audience and do operate in concert with each other - though it's harder for them now, expressly because of actions taken against their financial and communications networks.
The chances of becoming a victim of terrorism are less than the chances of being hit by falling space debris.
But the chances of a large attack impacting your life, your job, your economy, your insurance rates... perhaps your food supply, or the stock market powering your retirement plan... that's 100% for anything even approaching what happened on 9/11. And that's the whole point of terrorism as a tactic - the results are intended to be well beyond the immediate damage done to individuals caught by a bomb, gas in a subway, etc.
So this is what it comes to... Instead of helping other countries push forward in mobile technology, or help improve/cheapen what they currently have, but no.. we have these wasting god knows how much $$$ just go make a phone to call a dog ffs ?
This reminds me of the scene in... was it "Animal House?" A group of students is planning an event of some sort, and the pious, liberal-guilt-New-England-sorority-type girl says something to the effect of, "I don't know how anyone can be planning a party when there are hungry people in the world!"
How can you be using a recent-vintage computer when other people have none? How can put hours of your life every year into learning how to use some shiny new disto or dev tool when you could be working in a soup kitchen or mowing lawns and sending the cash to the U.N.? How can software developers work to make domestic companies more producitve and less wasteful when there are whole villages with no software at all!
Don't you get it? Our economy's continual pursuit of newly leveraged technologies - even on relatively trivial things - is what makes our economy so good at making technology. And the largess that comes with that is one of the reasons that the U.S. (as an example) is such a large donor of development and relief materials, funds, and expertise throughout the world. Do you really think that someone who decides to buy a tracking device for their dog is suddenly faced with the dilemma of whether to do that, or go ahead and send the $300 off to Feed The Children, or invest in micro-finance for a village in one of the 'stans? No, that person is already putting money/time into those things, or isn't. The same people that come up with a way to produce cooler things bought and paid for by our economy are in a better position to sell deritive things, cheaply, to those markets in the world that haven't yet come become as productive.
wasting god knows how much $$$ just go make a phone to call a dog
Next time (so you can be consistent) that you see some kid putting up 50 photocopied posters about her lost dog, tell her that she should be ashamed of wasting paper and toner when there are poor countries in the world that can barely afford to print up local-language directions to go with the medical supply shipment they just received from the US.
They just find it very hard to recognize the same natural voice command in audio that goes over the phone, so you'd have to re-teach the dog to react to the phone commands just the same as to normal ones.
I don't think this matters (or is even necessarily true). My dogs recognize, I think, the cadence of my voice and command, which is why they react to my voice even under all sorts of different acoustic situations. They hear my voice through fog, over hills, echoing down an alley, over two-way radios, and even over the phone (we've tried this) and respond splendidly. They know the pattern of a familiar voice's commands, in much the same way we do. At least, the better developed dogs do... and I think they're all pretty similar along those lines. Their ability to wisely act on a command will vary hugely by breed, but they know what they're hearing, especially if regularly challenged under different circumstances.
I don't know if there would be this level of complaining and problems with M$ if they innovated, did right by their customers, and honestly tried to put out a good product.
So, you're saying they never innovate, ever? They have no happy customers? They never try to put out a good product? You know that's not the case. Now, how about if they - even by your standards - made a good faith effort to do everything you think they should to make their software more innovative, and better. How about even cheaper! Then what? You'd have even less incentive for competition to form, and even less reason for other companies or projects to exist. Then you'd have everything you'd like about MS software, but people would still complain that they're too big. They can't win, in your world. If they're not very good at something, they get yelled at. If they're too good, they get punished for being successful.
they are big and have moeny for now but there are a lot of unhappy people with their product just waiting for a true viable alternative at the desktop to come along.
Apple? Or, how about the endless parade of stories here on slashdot about various companies, grandmas, and governments firing up Linux distros for their desktops? There are choices, which is what makes this nonsense in Korea nothing more than a sleazy little money grab... with ugly implications for a software developer's right to put whatever features into an O/S they think should be there. No bundled IM client allowed? What? Who cares? Anyone hip enough to want to use IM is going to take the two minutes required to download whatever client they want regardless. Regulating that through government action is absurd.
So, when the Toyota of the desktop computing world finially is ready to step it up they will slowly be able to nick away at M$ and for similar management thinking as GM.
So, that means you're against what Korea just did, right? Because if MS's own lack of quality is inevitably going to make it fail up against better software vendors, we certainly don't need governments telling them how to build specific features in their O/S, right? Your take on it is that the market is going to either cause MS to do better, or make them go away... so why get the government involved in the software market's preferences?
Guns don't kill people, per se. People do.
Um, you write that with a certain air of irony, as if it weren't true. Honestly, I'm not sure I get your point. A tool is a tool is a tool. Guns, knives, matches, thumb drives, digital cameras... they're all useless without humans picking them up to make them do something. Digital cameras don't store data, people store data on digital cameras.
Why not just repeat this article on a regular basis, updating a list of things with some sort of commonly used comm port/interface and simple file-system storage? Right now it's phones, PDAs, pens, music widgets, camerads, fobs... but next it will be eyeglasses, shoes, student ID cards, car keys, fake fingernails, or someday your pre-frontal cortex. This article is mostly about how you can't trust people you can't trust. Cameras don't have much to do with it, per se. If cameras provided a way around an established lack of trust, then we'd have an article to read.
One of the requirements to recieve federal funding is to "uphold the United States Constitution", and yes that means free speech as well.
Are you forgetting "Freedome of Assembly," as also guaranteed in the constitution? Private groups (like clubs, churches, schools, etc) form exactly because they have some particular framework/worldview/goal/creed in common. If every school was exactly the same, and operated according to exactly the same requirements, we'd be... well, worse off.
Heh, sorry, poor Canadian here... I thought the First Amendment of your nation's Constitution was the right to Freedom of Speech? Must have been somewhere else I guess...
I feel sorry for you if you can't, in Canada, form a private organization or institution, and then say (and enforce) what are the terms under which someone can join or use that entity. A private school is a product, and one of the things they're selling is the understanding that their students are expected to conduct themselves in a certain way, or they're no longer students. You don't have to like that particular aspect of the organization, but you're welcome to go patronize another, instead.
You're focusing on Freedom of Speech, and forgetting about Freedom of Assembly. The student can say anything he wants - his speech is not limited in any way. But if he happens to want a relationship with that particular private institution, he's got to agree to its terms... or go elsewhere - he's got thousands of schools to choose from. But if you don't let the school organize itself around guiding principles to which their students can be expected to adhere, then you're violating the school's own liberty to do its intellectual business in the manner it sees fit.
This is just as important for other school policies. Let's say a different private school makes absolute tolerance for anything anyone says a requirement for students. Great, that's the atmosphere of that school, and that's part of their product. But if another school wants prospective students to agree that they won't hold skinhead marches on campus, etc., that's between the school and the student and the payment of tuition as part of an agreement.
So the administration didn't like it and came down on this individual like a tonne of bricks.
Yup, just like they say they will - an action that new students of that private organization state that they understand.
That's crap. I hope the appeal is successful.
The only thing that should be successful should be a longer-term changing of the school's policy if most of its staff and customers (the students) think that's the way it should be. But if the people running the school don't think so, then they'll either find new customers that agree with them, or they'll go out of business. That's a far better approach than screwing with constitutionally protected things like freedom of assembly.
"Why would I want to join a club that would have me as a member?"
-Grouch Marx (paraphrased)
Corporations (especially MS) deserve all the poisonous rhetoric we can throw at them. Lucky for them since they are above the law that's pretty much all we can do to them. If my neighbor acted like your typical corporation they would be committed or jailed.
So, if you instead bought a brand new, high-tech entertainment appliance from the little one-man shop down the street (you know, where he hand-makes video game hardware from minerals that he mines and refines himself, and for which he writed all the software), and it was defective... what would you do? Perhaps, take it back and ask for your money back? Of course, the little video game shopkeeper would be happy to help out. Unless of course he died the night before... oh well.
So, how about if he takes on a partner to help him out? I know, that's evil, evil, evil. Because in order to make sure that their growing enterprise can interact with the bank they use to cash your check, and the vendors they use to help them with supplies, and to make sure that their operation can survive without them personally, and keep paying their employees (and their debts), etc... they incorporate. Good ideas and businesses often reach past the interests, attention, or even lifespan of those that start them.
they are above the law
What nonsense. Really, you should read the news at least once a year, perhaps. Even if you just do it long enough to follow up on the corporate executives that lose everything and go to jail for being fraudulant... or to understand that many companies can't make products (or sometimes, even stop making products) without fantastic government involvement. You might even want to check up on how well AT&T is doing, running all of the country's telecommunications... oh, wait. It's BS to compare a corporate entity (or a church, or a university, or a Boy Scout troop, or a non-profit eco-activist organization) to an individual because it's not an individual. It's a chartered organization subject to all sorts of laws, and sure as hell not above them.
We just want what we paid for and we expect it to work like they told us.
Or what? You'll just return your Xbox to Best Buy for a refund? Fine, because you can. What do you do when the produce you buy from the little farmer's market around the corner is defective? Do you try to put together a class action suit that will only make a bunch of lawyers rich? How about you just don't buy stuff from companies you don't like, and intelligently pursuade others to do the same (hint: better if you don't start out by actually lying about things, but more on that later).
lawsuits are the only tools we have left
Again: just don't give them your money. You know, just like people stopped giving money to AT&T's hardware people because they didn't like much like their products and business practices, and now Lucent is a pale shadow of its former self, with virtually no influence in the market... and better companies have lured away its customers. Vote with your wallet - you have choices.
no human being feels as much of a sense of entitlement as a corporation does
Never actually worked for or with a larger company, have you? The struggle to compete with other companies to make better, cheaper, or different products is instense. Every day is a fight to make sure that they don't lose customers, and instead find more. Just what do you think a corporation is? Right now, I'm working in a company of about 300 people. There's no sense of entitlement, not among the management, the investors, or us worker bees. Every meeting, every customer interaction, every hunk of software we write or web site we operate - all of it is a scramble to make sure we are offering something better than what our competition delivers. Do we set up offices where the locations make the most sense (in terms of space costs, tax rates, etc)? Yes. Just like everyone does, business or personal.