Actually, it is also a platform issue. When you are working in print graphics, the chances are there is a mac in front of you. You can install and run gimp on a mac, but it runs under x-windows and does not play well with other programs or the native GUI. Most people are not going to run Linux just to run the gimp, especially when they already have a working environment. The gimp is a pretty nice application, it is functional and free, but when you compare it side-by-side to photoshop on a mac, well the non-native GUI and the relatively steep learning curve to become productive, combine to give it a reputation among graphics professionals as cludgy and unfinished. If the gimp ever takes off in market share it will be because linux has dominated, or because it has been popularized by the video editing market.
I've noticed some disturbing trends in Adobe's software over the last several years. They have been acting more and more like a mini-microsoft. All of their products are tied together and a number of features are tied to having a different Adobe application. They go out of their way to break compatibility in small ways with open standards and they seem to be moving more and more to windows as their primary platform. Look at Framemaker, the staple of tech writers everywhere. They cancelled the linux version, and mothballed the Solaris and Mac versions. How many writers out there are still running a three year old copy of Framemaker in Mac OSX's classic emulation environment?
I would not hold out too much hope for a Linux version of Photoshop any time soon. I predict Adobe will be late to this game.
I would, and I think I am, technically, sane. Picture this, your mother knows nothing about computers, has disposable income, and would like to look at web pages and exchange e-mail with all her friends. Maybe she is in a wheelchair and lives in a snowy climate. What do you do? You buy her an imac plug it into a DSL line or a cable modem, set it to auto-login and put big buttons on the desktop for her mail and web browser.
Maybe you have been running windows too long, some OS's don't need extra hardware or additional software to be secure. Her machine has been running faithfully for about five years now with no hacks and no viruses, thanks for asking. This study included machines across a range of uses, including home users.
OK, MAC=Mandatory Access Control, Message Authentication Code, or Media Access Control
Mac=abbreviation for Macintosh
Being less popular is a property that may make a system safer. But, less popular systems are not necessarily going to be safer. If windows 95 only has 1% of the market in 20 years, is it going to be safer that Mac OSX? Mac OSX has several security features that make it less exploitable than any current windows offering. It still has a long ways to go, and MS could make windows more secure than it in the future. Personally I'd like to see a system with easily configurable application specific priviledges. Your point about the statistics in this study not being well explained, or even given as raw data is well taken. Without the numbers, their study lacks credibility.
P.S. I'm not sure what you are talking about with the exploit, your description is a little fuzzy. I'm not sure changing your font size is a 'hack' or if that is what you are trying to say.
Well, Bush will continue to appoint people to important positions all around the country, who have poor qualifications, conflicts of interest, and will be sure to include him in lucrative business deals in the future. He will also sign everything the Republicans in congress hand him. He will also continue to piss off every other country and do things to make more people hate us so much that they are willing to die to kill some of us.
Kerry will refuse to sign everything the Republicans in congress hand him, and, with a little luck, the laws that take away our rights will never get passed. He will fire half the people Bush put in, and will appoint different people with dubious qualifications, conflicts of interest, and who are likely to include him in lucrative business deals in the future. He will likely only piss off half of the rest of the world, and may or may not make more people hate us so much they are willing to die to kill some of us.
I'm voting for Kerry because I never want to see a newspaper that says "Supreme Court Justice Ashcroft." Religious wackos who think drinking, dancing, and pornography should be illegal should not be appointed to any important positions.
Seriously folks, what does the patriot act allow the US government to do that it wasn't able to do before, just illegally?
The U.S. government is not (yet) a single entity. Sure maybe the CIA was illegally collecting this infomation before, but they sure didn't share it with the FBI, DHD, NSA, IRS, NAACP etc. Legalizing the data just makes the problem and abuses much, much more widespread.
These articles always turn into flame wars. For a little balance, the answer is yes, and no. The mac is better in some ways, worse in others. It is safer and probably more versatile, but at the same time, cannot deal with a few sites that are designed with only windows in mind.
this would affect the mac if it was worth the effort
I don't buy that argument. Most viruses are not written for profit, although that trend is slowly reversing. I'm sure if macs were as easy to propagate worms on, they would have worms written for them. Their architecture is just a little harder to target and Apple is a little more Johnny-on-the-spot about fixing potential exploits vectors.
Uh, there have been bugs in various MS email clients, none that recent.
Outlook is a disaster. Even it it was well written, it is just too juicy of a target given the monoculture. Deal with it. Windows, on the other hand, has plenty of capable and secure e-mail clients.
And the user interface of Microsoft Office is consistent across the suite.
Heh, I wish. It is not even consistent within one application. Innovation for Office for the last several years has consisted solely of innovating new ways to lock people in and make it too hard for them to switch to something else. Even so, the Mac version is much more capable than its windows counterpart.
Most MS applications have a good (if not consistent between all MS software) user interface.
No. Really, they don't. I use both a mac and a windows machine daily. The UI hooks and services provided by MacOS X, and the UI guidelines together result in much much better UIs on that platform. In fact I use a number of applications on both systems, and the difference is very clear. The mac provides much better feedback and is much more consistent. Menus are all designed the same way and most can hook into system services for universal spell checking, translations, accessing online dictionaries, graphing data, scripting etc. If I want to change preferences, I don't have to hunt for them, they are in the same place in the same menu in virtually every application. Also, the keyboard shortcuts are consistent across applications. Both windows and macs have a place in my workflow, but for good UIs and ease of use, windows is a clear loser.
Interesting that you use the term "cost" in your question as to whether it was worth it. For the money we have spent in the war we could have paid 99.99% of their population to just leave the country and then invaded. So far we have spent the equivalent (in terms of their average salary) about 3 million dollars per resident of Iraq. Would you move to Canada or Mexico for a few years while your corrupt government is eliminated for 3 million dollars? Just a thought.
I think I could have done this study with three chimps, a dart board and some peanut butter and still come up with more believable data.
Great, why don't you go over there and go door to door and sample more than 1000 homes. Oh wait, there is a WAR going on! It's fine to argue the statistics of the survey and say it could easily be wrong, but it is the best study I have seen to date. Please show me one other real attempt to find out these numbers that is more scientifically conducted.
after quoting a figure that is 3-10 times greater than other estimates
Yup, except did you see the methods used to obtain those previous estimates? They were based upon the reported deaths at some hospitals in the middle of a war. Others were just guesses based upon numbers reported by other news agencies or organizations. As far as I know this is the only actual attempt to find out the number of casualties via a scientific and peer reviewed method.
I sincerely hope that this study was intentionally skewed, or that it is a statistical aberration, or that there was a serious flaw in the methodology, but as of yet I have not seen any evidence that refutes this report, nor any credible counter reports. Please provide any real and reasoned refutation.
I agree that this report is not necessarily conclusive, it is however, as far as I can tell the only scientific study that has tried to find out these numbers. Several people have commented that other sites list much lower numbers, but they are all based upon estimates taken from media reports of confirmed dead. These people went there, polled households, and wrote up the numbers. Could they be wrong or intentionally skewed? Sure. But people like Mr. Worstall who you reference in your link really annoy me. He has nothing useful to contribute, he just points out that it is possible, within accepted scientific method, that this survey is just a statistical anomaly. Further, he complains that they rushed to get it out for political reasons. Well hmm, if you did a survey, the only survey done to date, and your results showed ten to twenty times the estimated figures (estimates that were really just guesses from reporters for the media), don't you think you would find it important enough to try to publish it quickly, especially when there is an election in the U.S. that might determine if another hundred thousand civilians are likely to be killed?
In the absence of any other study, this study looks to be the best estimate available. If someone thinks it is skewed, maybe they should present a reason why, and cite a more credible estimate.
Re:Americans talk about freedom
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the richest 3 million would be wealthy if they inherited little to nothing
you blame the school?
I blame the school, the schools available, the cost of higher education, the canceling of most programs that help fund college for the poor, the after hours programs, or lack thereof, the availability of mentors and the fact that the poor are the ones forced into crowded, dirty housing, with inadequate law enforcement, and lacking all the other benefits of privilege (books, computers, travel, etc.)
Thats a nice ideal
I'm glad you agree that it is ideal. Lets legislate that then.
Rember my teets & piss & shit thing?
Ummm, you're really on a piss and shit thing today, huh?
they have to take time from "normal life" to have kids
Well if we, as a society, are demanding extra duties of them, that we do not demand from men, why should they not be compensated? Perhaps you don't think procreation is a useful contribution, I'm not too fond of it myself, but the majority of society would disagree with you (and me).
Basically, the system is heavily weighted towards keeping the status quo, because it was, of course, made to do so by those in power. It is merely a matter of how much the people being dumped on are willing to put up with before forcibly rearranging the wealth. It has happened plenty of times, and will happen again. The people who founded this country thought that the best arrangement was to distribute power and wealth as much as possible, giving as much to individuals as possible. Since then it has slowly consolidated more and more into the hands of a few, who being no smarter or more clever than average, do not understand what history has repeatedly demonstrated will happen.
Re:Americans talk about freedom
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We will treat you regardless if you have insurance or lack of funds
Yup they sure will, and it is just fine if you, like a large percentage of Americans, plan to be in debt for your entire life and die owing money. That is not freedom.
If I were given enough money to survive off of welfare, why did I wast my time going to college and grad school and go to this work thing every day?
Did you read the links he posted? Here's a quick summary, rich people getting richer and don't have to work, poor people are getting poorer, even if they work hard. Have you looked at the census numbers? Of the richest 3 million people in the country, about 400 of them did not inherit their wealth from parents in the richest 3 million. Does that seem like a fair system to you? It is just like feudal Europe, you are born rich or poor, and that is how you will stay.
I don't feel that raising children deserves compensation either.
Really, so you feel that people should work for free, how communist of you. Our society is not structured to deal well with single parents, perhaps there should be birth licences, I'd like to see you get that legislation passed.
Unfortunately, its really easy for ignorant and uneducated and unskilled people to end up on welfare. And guess what? They are simply weaker people, and no matter what you give them they will always sink to the bottom.
Bullpucky. People are ignorant, uneducated, and unskilled, because our educational system has failed them, utterly. That is probably because it is weighted towards helping the wealthy and middle class, and largely ignores the poor. Again, did you read the reference links, people with money are four times more likely to get an education, than people without. That is not equal, it is very much the opposite.
the US may be really bad about protecting maternity leave rights, but ask any male thats been divorced how his rights were preserved.
So you're saying because men are treated badly by one aspect of our legal system, women should be punished by another, to make them equally miserable? My brother is a single parent with two little girls, his wife pays him child support most months, when she can afford it. The system often does discriminate against people in his situation, but not always, and it is getting better. How about if we solve both problems rather than keep them both.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the explosives fiasco already, although it would be nice to have some more detailed facts. It certainly demonstrates incompetence on either the administration or the military's part. I mean if you are told that there are thousands of pounds of explosives in a location, after you invade shouldn't you at least check to see if they are still there?
"Why would you risk waiting until the last second to vote?
Umm, all of us people in states that don't have early voting don't really have a choice. I think that is still most of them. Thirty two states offer some form of early voting, but only twenty-three, like Florida, offer early voting to all registered voters. Even in those states, it is not offered in all counties.
This should be a slashdot poll. Do you agree that "a paper ballot is a formula for disaster" when compared to the current, electronic voting machines? Then mail the results to this judge.
These debates always boil down to those who are willing to pirate and those who aren't, but we can mask it as a "Fair Use" or "Consumer Rights" issue to keep the post count rolling.
The issue is a company not acting in the best interests of it's customers out of fear of barratry. You say when I pay to get a channel for a limited amount of time, as is the case with pay-per-view, that it is wrong for me to make a copy and burn it to DVD. Why? It is legal and owners of VCRs can and do record shows for their own personal use. Well guess what? I went with a homemade solution to avoid just this crap. If I want to fast forward, or burn DVDs, well I can do so to my heart's content. I'd be a Tivo customer if they would build products that let me do what I want, without hassle.
If it's really great I'll buy it on DVD
And there you have hit upon the crux of the matter. You think paying for something twice, or three times, or maybe four, once they introduce the new better format that plays different commercials that you can't fast forward through, is a fair value. I do not. I don't mind paying to see something, or even watching commercials that sponsor it, but I'm not going to pay again and again and again. My backing up content, or recording it of the airwaves is fair-use, do you understand what fair means?
if that were my source for my understanding of Gore's claim
Care to provide your source? A reference? Anything?
he immediately went into the limelight, proclaiming American soldiers to be guilty of war crimes. Kerry is no hero.
Unless, of course American soldiers were guilty of war crimes, which they were. Don't believe me? Well, I have heard first hand accounts of some of the crap that went on over there from people who have been scarred ever since. Part of being a hero is telling the truth, even if it is not popular. Although I don't think Kerry is a hero, Vietnam was a huge mistake, and most people will agree that we never should have been there. Or do you think those millions of people around the country protesting were a bunch of ignorant druggies. Guess what, many of them, like Kerry, had just come back from there, and that is why they wanted the war to end.
Yeah, the Republican Party has its bouts of mud slinging. They have nothing as bad as what the pro-Kerry camp are pushing, though.
Bullpucky. They are every bit as bad. If you can vote for Bush after the things he has done, well unethical is the word that comes to mind, as does dishonourable, cowardly, and unamerican.
the origins of gasoline, and whether or not it funds terrorist groups.
Interesting, but having nothing to do with my point. He is indebted to, and has often worked for and accepted favors from a number of rich investors from a country that he, himself has stated is guilty of funding and sponsoring terrorism. Whether or not we buy much of our gas from them, is immaterial.
A larger percentage of Americans are jailed each year because every year, more and more things are declared jailable crimes.
Thank you captain obvious. But why are we making more and more things jail-able offenses, especially things that in most countries are considered either legal, or purely a heath concern? It is because if there isn't a war on something, like drugs, pornography, or terror (a mythical, unwinnable war) then there would not be any reason for the growth of the government and bureaucratic bodies. Bureaucracies will find any justification to grow, because people who seek power always want to accumulate more of it. It is part of human nature.
why these people are compelled to do these things.
People have always done these things, it is just that more things are illegal now. In fact so many things are illegal, you are doing one of them right now. If you would like to know which one, please hire a lawyer to pore through thousands of pages of federal, state, and local laws written largely in latin. Often the legal process functions in the reverse of it's intended order, find someone you wish to put in jail, then figure out which laws they are breaking.
Perhaps I was a little harsh. I did not mean to imply that the service was not useful, only that it is not a reasonable and scalable solution in the long term. Consolidating everyone's network to run through fewer large, robust networks, with filtering just makes larger grained targets. Soon, most ISPs will provide some level of DDoS protection, and DDoS attackers will have to become sneakier.
Hmm, they don't look too useful to me. They provide detection and advice as a service to help you withstand attacks and identify the source. Given that the source is usually a zombie army distributed across the globe, how does this help? Do you think that law enforcement can address the sources in a reasonable timeframe? This seems to be a service oriented company, that may provide useful advice, but does not seem to address the real problem, protecting the routing infrastructure that provides access to your services, and ensuring that normal, operational traffic is not interrupted. Look to service providers to begin offering DDoS protection as a feature, after integrating appropriate hardware solutions in their routing architectures. Several providers have announced these services, and limited trials are going on with many of them.
I have no idea what you are quoting in your first comment, certainly nothing I have written. I don't recall the EU ever dictating policy to the U.S. If anything they have been very restrained, and moderate in regard to our human rights violations, and our repeated violations of trade agreements with them.
Please read what Snopes has to say about the old Gore claiming to have invented the internet crap.
I am no champion of Kerry, or the Democrats, but to claim they are hate mongering (any more so that the Republican party) is just plain ignorant.
The Democrats are certainly more moderate, and less likely to start a war over religion, since their constituency includes a more diverse religious cross-section than the Republicans. The republican often talk about classes, as do the Democrats. Do you remember the Bush quote where he tells a room full of the ultra-rich upper class that while others call them the elite, he calls them his base? Well, that just does not resonate to well with me. Nor do his blatant connections with the Saudi Arabian royalty, or his families money having come from collusion with the Nazis. Likewise I'm not happy about having a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict with his finger on the button.
Maybe it is just me, but it seems like there are a lot of people I would trust more to run this country than Bush, even if they have to be chosen form the wealthiest 1%. Better yet, if we can pass the IRV bill, maybe we can get some real choices for office and elect someone, gasp, who has actually worked a real job once in their life.
we'll see a revolt in our lifetime
We would probably already have had one, if the government had not locked up all of the poor adult males. You don't think the war on drugs is really about helping people do you? Ever wonder why a larger percentage of Americans are locked up than any other industrialized nation (except China)?
we better get on the ball and let the British Houses and the EU have a voting seat in the United States
Well you are either being intentionally obtuse, or you are a complete moron. If you can't distinguish between fair representation of the people a government claims to represent and hold authority over, and foreign citizens who are represented by their own governments, you don't have much in the way of reasoning ability.
He (Gore) claims to have been responsible for the creation of the Internet
Wow, quoting that old FUD sure helps your credibility. Check your sources, stop believing chain-letters.
any of today's Christians to the Inquisitors shows a resounding ignorance of history.
Weren't you the one saying muslims had a more violent history than christians? You are a flip-flopper. Christians are historically violent and intolerant, and many are violent today. Claiming that muslims are more dangerous than christians is a logical fallacy. They can be made that way, however, by persecuting them. Of course we can make all red-sox fans violent by torturing and killing their families.
What's your point?
My points are that IRV voting is a better system than we have now, the electoral college is outdated and results in unfair representation, and that much of the republican party is facist, intolerant, and likely to cause much pain and suffering.
Yes. As far as christianity is concerned there were the crusades, the inquisitions, the subjugation of native people in the Americas, Africa, and southeast Asia as outstanding examples of it's historical violence. "Happy is he who dasheth his little ones upon the stones." Heck there was a KKK meeting not far from here just last month. Aren't you glad you travel in such distinguished company?
You have no idea why we went to Vietnam, do you? We were asked by the South Vietnamese government to help them fight off the Communist armies of the North Vietnamese. We basically got dragged into a civil war.
Actually, it was a lot closer to a pissing match between China and Russia and the U.S. Shortly after we arrived it was clear the majority of the people did not want us there, but we were too busy trying to "stop those commies" to care. After we killed a bunch of them they wanted us there much much less. We scheduled elections for Vietnam too you know. They were cancelled when MAC-V-SOG polls indicated ho-chi-mihn would likely be elected.
It didn't happen, and you have no proof that it did.
Human rights abuses, committed by soldiers in a war? Especially one where the enemy is routinely villianized by their superiors? No! I don't believe it. The abuses at Abu Gharabi do not have to be widespread, although they almost certainly were. One well known incident is plenty to give anyone with teen angst plenty of justification for hating Americans.
WWII was started by Germany, and that is why they were forced to carry the load for their reconstruction
WWII happened because the Germans had nothing to lose. After WWI they were forced to pay restitution for the damage done to such an extent that they needed a wheelbarrow full of paper currency to buy a loaf of bread. Welcome to history about to repeat itself, maybe you should have paid attention in class. I dare you to tell me with a straight face that the people who suffered under Sadaam's rule should be responsible for paying billions in restitution for his acts including over 200K to fricking Toys 'R' Us. Go ahead, say it. We have extracted over 50 billion from Iraq and divvied it up amongst companies and governments, not to mention the payola going to contrators misspending our tax dollars. Did you know Iraq just took out a loan to the tune of 500 million to keep paying? We took it all and then our puppet took out a loan on their behalf. No that won't make anyone resentful.
at least prove that you paid attention in history class.
I did, actually I often corrected my teachers since they only knew what was in our 10 year old text books (public school). Unfortunatly you seem to have a few big blanks in your book. Was it, perhaps, the reader's digest version?
Iran however, is in it up to their eyeballs, is building nuclear weapons (no doubt of that), and yet Bush went after Iraq.
Iran is pissed off and scared, as we would be if Saudi Arabia took over Mexico tomorrow to free them from their tyrannical leader, and decided to camp out while installing a puppet government. Iran may be building nuclear weapons, more likely, they have already purchased some nuclear weapons which they are keeping as a "just in case those American infidels invade us" contingency. Iran has been very open with U.N. inspectors, inviting them to view every step of their uranium refining process. They announced that they were going to do this eight years ago and have spent millions, probably billions, building a nuclear power reactor. Now, when they start to refine uranium necessary to make it work, Bush says it is all part of a plot to build weapons. If we didn't want them to refine uranium, maybe we should not have explicitly stated that they have the right to refine uranium in our non-proliferation treaty with them.
Thus far Iran is 100% within their rights, as far as refining uranium goes, not that that will stop war-mongers from using them as a boogey man to keep the American people scared. Not that it will stop Bush from invading them in his quest to get us all fricking killed. Bush would just love to invade because Iran would respond by launching long range missiles at our bases in Europe and we would have another world war on our hands, one we are almost certain to win, but that will keep him and his in power, kill off thousands of our soldiers, and make big profits.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it is also a platform issue. When you are working in print graphics, the chances are there is a mac in front of you. You can install and run gimp on a mac, but it runs under x-windows and does not play well with other programs or the native GUI. Most people are not going to run Linux just to run the gimp, especially when they already have a working environment. The gimp is a pretty nice application, it is functional and free, but when you compare it side-by-side to photoshop on a mac, well the non-native GUI and the relatively steep learning curve to become productive, combine to give it a reputation among graphics professionals as cludgy and unfinished. If the gimp ever takes off in market share it will be because linux has dominated, or because it has been popularized by the video editing market.
I would not hold out too much hope for a Linux version of Photoshop any time soon. I predict Adobe will be late to this game.
what sane person would do that
I would, and I think I am, technically, sane. Picture this, your mother knows nothing about computers, has disposable income, and would like to look at web pages and exchange e-mail with all her friends. Maybe she is in a wheelchair and lives in a snowy climate. What do you do? You buy her an imac plug it into a DSL line or a cable modem, set it to auto-login and put big buttons on the desktop for her mail and web browser.
Maybe you have been running windows too long, some OS's don't need extra hardware or additional software to be secure. Her machine has been running faithfully for about five years now with no hacks and no viruses, thanks for asking. This study included machines across a range of uses, including home users.
OK, MAC=Mandatory Access Control, Message Authentication Code, or Media Access Control
Mac=abbreviation for Macintosh
Being less popular is a property that may make a system safer. But, less popular systems are not necessarily going to be safer. If windows 95 only has 1% of the market in 20 years, is it going to be safer that Mac OSX? Mac OSX has several security features that make it less exploitable than any current windows offering. It still has a long ways to go, and MS could make windows more secure than it in the future. Personally I'd like to see a system with easily configurable application specific priviledges. Your point about the statistics in this study not being well explained, or even given as raw data is well taken. Without the numbers, their study lacks credibility.
P.S. I'm not sure what you are talking about with the exploit, your description is a little fuzzy. I'm not sure changing your font size is a 'hack' or if that is what you are trying to say.
what each candidate can most likely acomplish.
Well, Bush will continue to appoint people to important positions all around the country, who have poor qualifications, conflicts of interest, and will be sure to include him in lucrative business deals in the future. He will also sign everything the Republicans in congress hand him. He will also continue to piss off every other country and do things to make more people hate us so much that they are willing to die to kill some of us.
Kerry will refuse to sign everything the Republicans in congress hand him, and, with a little luck, the laws that take away our rights will never get passed. He will fire half the people Bush put in, and will appoint different people with dubious qualifications, conflicts of interest, and who are likely to include him in lucrative business deals in the future. He will likely only piss off half of the rest of the world, and may or may not make more people hate us so much they are willing to die to kill some of us.
I'm voting for Kerry because I never want to see a newspaper that says "Supreme Court Justice Ashcroft." Religious wackos who think drinking, dancing, and pornography should be illegal should not be appointed to any important positions.
Seriously folks, what does the patriot act allow the US government to do that it wasn't able to do before, just illegally?
The U.S. government is not (yet) a single entity. Sure maybe the CIA was illegally collecting this infomation before, but they sure didn't share it with the FBI, DHD, NSA, IRS, NAACP etc. Legalizing the data just makes the problem and abuses much, much more widespread.
Is a Mac 'superior' at surfing the Internet?
These articles always turn into flame wars. For a little balance, the answer is yes, and no. The mac is better in some ways, worse in others. It is safer and probably more versatile, but at the same time, cannot deal with a few sites that are designed with only windows in mind.
this would affect the mac if it was worth the effort
I don't buy that argument. Most viruses are not written for profit, although that trend is slowly reversing. I'm sure if macs were as easy to propagate worms on, they would have worms written for them. Their architecture is just a little harder to target and Apple is a little more Johnny-on-the-spot about fixing potential exploits vectors.
Uh, there have been bugs in various MS email clients, none that recent.
Outlook is a disaster. Even it it was well written, it is just too juicy of a target given the monoculture. Deal with it. Windows, on the other hand, has plenty of capable and secure e-mail clients.
And the user interface of Microsoft Office is consistent across the suite.
Heh, I wish. It is not even consistent within one application. Innovation for Office for the last several years has consisted solely of innovating new ways to lock people in and make it too hard for them to switch to something else. Even so, the Mac version is much more capable than its windows counterpart.
Most MS applications have a good (if not consistent between all MS software) user interface.
No. Really, they don't. I use both a mac and a windows machine daily. The UI hooks and services provided by MacOS X, and the UI guidelines together result in much much better UIs on that platform. In fact I use a number of applications on both systems, and the difference is very clear. The mac provides much better feedback and is much more consistent. Menus are all designed the same way and most can hook into system services for universal spell checking, translations, accessing online dictionaries, graphing data, scripting etc. If I want to change preferences, I don't have to hunt for them, they are in the same place in the same menu in virtually every application. Also, the keyboard shortcuts are consistent across applications. Both windows and macs have a place in my workflow, but for good UIs and ease of use, windows is a clear loser.
Interesting that you use the term "cost" in your question as to whether it was worth it. For the money we have spent in the war we could have paid 99.99% of their population to just leave the country and then invaded. So far we have spent the equivalent (in terms of their average salary) about 3 million dollars per resident of Iraq. Would you move to Canada or Mexico for a few years while your corrupt government is eliminated for 3 million dollars? Just a thought.
I think I could have done this study with three chimps, a dart board and some peanut butter and still come up with more believable data.
Great, why don't you go over there and go door to door and sample more than 1000 homes. Oh wait, there is a WAR going on! It's fine to argue the statistics of the survey and say it could easily be wrong, but it is the best study I have seen to date. Please show me one other real attempt to find out these numbers that is more scientifically conducted.
after quoting a figure that is 3-10 times greater than other estimates
Yup, except did you see the methods used to obtain those previous estimates? They were based upon the reported deaths at some hospitals in the middle of a war. Others were just guesses based upon numbers reported by other news agencies or organizations. As far as I know this is the only actual attempt to find out the number of casualties via a scientific and peer reviewed method.
I sincerely hope that this study was intentionally skewed, or that it is a statistical aberration, or that there was a serious flaw in the methodology, but as of yet I have not seen any evidence that refutes this report, nor any credible counter reports. Please provide any real and reasoned refutation.
I agree that this report is not necessarily conclusive, it is however, as far as I can tell the only scientific study that has tried to find out these numbers. Several people have commented that other sites list much lower numbers, but they are all based upon estimates taken from media reports of confirmed dead. These people went there, polled households, and wrote up the numbers. Could they be wrong or intentionally skewed? Sure. But people like Mr. Worstall who you reference in your link really annoy me. He has nothing useful to contribute, he just points out that it is possible, within accepted scientific method, that this survey is just a statistical anomaly. Further, he complains that they rushed to get it out for political reasons. Well hmm, if you did a survey, the only survey done to date, and your results showed ten to twenty times the estimated figures (estimates that were really just guesses from reporters for the media), don't you think you would find it important enough to try to publish it quickly, especially when there is an election in the U.S. that might determine if another hundred thousand civilians are likely to be killed?
In the absence of any other study, this study looks to be the best estimate available. If someone thinks it is skewed, maybe they should present a reason why, and cite a more credible estimate.
the richest 3 million would be wealthy if they inherited little to nothing
you blame the school?
I blame the school, the schools available, the cost of higher education, the canceling of most programs that help fund college for the poor, the after hours programs, or lack thereof, the availability of mentors and the fact that the poor are the ones forced into crowded, dirty housing, with inadequate law enforcement, and lacking all the other benefits of privilege (books, computers, travel, etc.)
Thats a nice ideal
I'm glad you agree that it is ideal. Lets legislate that then.
Rember my teets & piss & shit thing?
Ummm, you're really on a piss and shit thing today, huh?
they have to take time from "normal life" to have kids
Well if we, as a society, are demanding extra duties of them, that we do not demand from men, why should they not be compensated? Perhaps you don't think procreation is a useful contribution, I'm not too fond of it myself, but the majority of society would disagree with you (and me).
Basically, the system is heavily weighted towards keeping the status quo, because it was, of course, made to do so by those in power. It is merely a matter of how much the people being dumped on are willing to put up with before forcibly rearranging the wealth. It has happened plenty of times, and will happen again. The people who founded this country thought that the best arrangement was to distribute power and wealth as much as possible, giving as much to individuals as possible. Since then it has slowly consolidated more and more into the hands of a few, who being no smarter or more clever than average, do not understand what history has repeatedly demonstrated will happen.
We will treat you regardless if you have insurance or lack of funds
Yup they sure will, and it is just fine if you, like a large percentage of Americans, plan to be in debt for your entire life and die owing money. That is not freedom.
If I were given enough money to survive off of welfare, why did I wast my time going to college and grad school and go to this work thing every day?
Did you read the links he posted? Here's a quick summary, rich people getting richer and don't have to work, poor people are getting poorer, even if they work hard. Have you looked at the census numbers? Of the richest 3 million people in the country, about 400 of them did not inherit their wealth from parents in the richest 3 million. Does that seem like a fair system to you? It is just like feudal Europe, you are born rich or poor, and that is how you will stay.
I don't feel that raising children deserves compensation either.
Really, so you feel that people should work for free, how communist of you. Our society is not structured to deal well with single parents, perhaps there should be birth licences, I'd like to see you get that legislation passed.
Unfortunately, its really easy for ignorant and uneducated and unskilled people to end up on welfare. And guess what? They are simply weaker people, and no matter what you give them they will always sink to the bottom.
Bullpucky. People are ignorant, uneducated, and unskilled, because our educational system has failed them, utterly. That is probably because it is weighted towards helping the wealthy and middle class, and largely ignores the poor. Again, did you read the reference links, people with money are four times more likely to get an education, than people without. That is not equal, it is very much the opposite.
the US may be really bad about protecting maternity leave rights, but ask any male thats been divorced how his rights were preserved.
So you're saying because men are treated badly by one aspect of our legal system, women should be punished by another, to make them equally miserable? My brother is a single parent with two little girls, his wife pays him child support most months, when she can afford it. The system often does discriminate against people in his situation, but not always, and it is getting better. How about if we solve both problems rather than keep them both.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the explosives fiasco already, although it would be nice to have some more detailed facts. It certainly demonstrates incompetence on either the administration or the military's part. I mean if you are told that there are thousands of pounds of explosives in a location, after you invade shouldn't you at least check to see if they are still there?
"Why would you risk waiting until the last second to vote?
Umm, all of us people in states that don't have early voting don't really have a choice. I think that is still most of them. Thirty two states offer some form of early voting, but only twenty-three, like Florida, offer early voting to all registered voters. Even in those states, it is not offered in all counties.
This should be a slashdot poll. Do you agree that "a paper ballot is a formula for disaster" when compared to the current, electronic voting machines? Then mail the results to this judge.
These debates always boil down to those who are willing to pirate and those who aren't, but we can mask it as a "Fair Use" or "Consumer Rights" issue to keep the post count rolling.
The issue is a company not acting in the best interests of it's customers out of fear of barratry. You say when I pay to get a channel for a limited amount of time, as is the case with pay-per-view, that it is wrong for me to make a copy and burn it to DVD. Why? It is legal and owners of VCRs can and do record shows for their own personal use. Well guess what? I went with a homemade solution to avoid just this crap. If I want to fast forward, or burn DVDs, well I can do so to my heart's content. I'd be a Tivo customer if they would build products that let me do what I want, without hassle.
If it's really great I'll buy it on DVD
And there you have hit upon the crux of the matter. You think paying for something twice, or three times, or maybe four, once they introduce the new better format that plays different commercials that you can't fast forward through, is a fair value. I do not. I don't mind paying to see something, or even watching commercials that sponsor it, but I'm not going to pay again and again and again. My backing up content, or recording it of the airwaves is fair-use, do you understand what fair means?
Considering they are mostly windows machines, I think it would be very difficult to have root.
if that were my source for my understanding of Gore's claim
Care to provide your source? A reference? Anything?
he immediately went into the limelight, proclaiming American soldiers to be guilty of war crimes. Kerry is no hero.
Unless, of course American soldiers were guilty of war crimes, which they were. Don't believe me? Well, I have heard first hand accounts of some of the crap that went on over there from people who have been scarred ever since. Part of being a hero is telling the truth, even if it is not popular. Although I don't think Kerry is a hero, Vietnam was a huge mistake, and most people will agree that we never should have been there. Or do you think those millions of people around the country protesting were a bunch of ignorant druggies. Guess what, many of them, like Kerry, had just come back from there, and that is why they wanted the war to end.
Yeah, the Republican Party has its bouts of mud slinging. They have nothing as bad as what the pro-Kerry camp are pushing, though.
Bullpucky. They are every bit as bad. If you can vote for Bush after the things he has done, well unethical is the word that comes to mind, as does dishonourable, cowardly, and unamerican.
the origins of gasoline, and whether or not it funds terrorist groups.
Interesting, but having nothing to do with my point. He is indebted to, and has often worked for and accepted favors from a number of rich investors from a country that he, himself has stated is guilty of funding and sponsoring terrorism. Whether or not we buy much of our gas from them, is immaterial.
A larger percentage of Americans are jailed each year because every year, more and more things are declared jailable crimes.
Thank you captain obvious. But why are we making more and more things jail-able offenses, especially things that in most countries are considered either legal, or purely a heath concern? It is because if there isn't a war on something, like drugs, pornography, or terror (a mythical, unwinnable war) then there would not be any reason for the growth of the government and bureaucratic bodies. Bureaucracies will find any justification to grow, because people who seek power always want to accumulate more of it. It is part of human nature.
why these people are compelled to do these things.
People have always done these things, it is just that more things are illegal now. In fact so many things are illegal, you are doing one of them right now. If you would like to know which one, please hire a lawyer to pore through thousands of pages of federal, state, and local laws written largely in latin. Often the legal process functions in the reverse of it's intended order, find someone you wish to put in jail, then figure out which laws they are breaking.
Perhaps I was a little harsh. I did not mean to imply that the service was not useful, only that it is not a reasonable and scalable solution in the long term. Consolidating everyone's network to run through fewer large, robust networks, with filtering just makes larger grained targets. Soon, most ISPs will provide some level of DDoS protection, and DDoS attackers will have to become sneakier.
Hmm, they don't look too useful to me. They provide detection and advice as a service to help you withstand attacks and identify the source. Given that the source is usually a zombie army distributed across the globe, how does this help? Do you think that law enforcement can address the sources in a reasonable timeframe? This seems to be a service oriented company, that may provide useful advice, but does not seem to address the real problem, protecting the routing infrastructure that provides access to your services, and ensuring that normal, operational traffic is not interrupted. Look to service providers to begin offering DDoS protection as a feature, after integrating appropriate hardware solutions in their routing architectures. Several providers have announced these services, and limited trials are going on with many of them.
I have no idea what you are quoting in your first comment, certainly nothing I have written. I don't recall the EU ever dictating policy to the U.S. If anything they have been very restrained, and moderate in regard to our human rights violations, and our repeated violations of trade agreements with them.
Please read what Snopes has to say about the old Gore claiming to have invented the internet crap.
I am no champion of Kerry, or the Democrats, but to claim they are hate mongering (any more so that the Republican party) is just plain ignorant.
The Democrats are certainly more moderate, and less likely to start a war over religion, since their constituency includes a more diverse religious cross-section than the Republicans. The republican often talk about classes, as do the Democrats. Do you remember the Bush quote where he tells a room full of the ultra-rich upper class that while others call them the elite, he calls them his base? Well, that just does not resonate to well with me. Nor do his blatant connections with the Saudi Arabian royalty, or his families money having come from collusion with the Nazis. Likewise I'm not happy about having a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict with his finger on the button.
Maybe it is just me, but it seems like there are a lot of people I would trust more to run this country than Bush, even if they have to be chosen form the wealthiest 1%. Better yet, if we can pass the IRV bill, maybe we can get some real choices for office and elect someone, gasp, who has actually worked a real job once in their life.
we'll see a revolt in our lifetime
We would probably already have had one, if the government had not locked up all of the poor adult males. You don't think the war on drugs is really about helping people do you? Ever wonder why a larger percentage of Americans are locked up than any other industrialized nation (except China)?
we better get on the ball and let the British Houses and the EU have a voting seat in the United States
Well you are either being intentionally obtuse, or you are a complete moron. If you can't distinguish between fair representation of the people a government claims to represent and hold authority over, and foreign citizens who are represented by their own governments, you don't have much in the way of reasoning ability.
He (Gore) claims to have been responsible for the creation of the Internet
Wow, quoting that old FUD sure helps your credibility. Check your sources, stop believing chain-letters.
any of today's Christians to the Inquisitors shows a resounding ignorance of history.
Weren't you the one saying muslims had a more violent history than christians? You are a flip-flopper. Christians are historically violent and intolerant, and many are violent today. Claiming that muslims are more dangerous than christians is a logical fallacy. They can be made that way, however, by persecuting them. Of course we can make all red-sox fans violent by torturing and killing their families.
What's your point?
My points are that IRV voting is a better system than we have now, the electoral college is outdated and results in unfair representation, and that much of the republican party is facist, intolerant, and likely to cause much pain and suffering.
Are you familiar with the history of Islam?
Yes. As far as christianity is concerned there were the crusades, the inquisitions, the subjugation of native people in the Americas, Africa, and southeast Asia as outstanding examples of it's historical violence. "Happy is he who dasheth his little ones upon the stones." Heck there was a KKK meeting not far from here just last month. Aren't you glad you travel in such distinguished company?
You have no idea why we went to Vietnam, do you? We were asked by the South Vietnamese government to help them fight off the Communist armies of the North Vietnamese. We basically got dragged into a civil war.
Actually, it was a lot closer to a pissing match between China and Russia and the U.S. Shortly after we arrived it was clear the majority of the people did not want us there, but we were too busy trying to "stop those commies" to care. After we killed a bunch of them they wanted us there much much less. We scheduled elections for Vietnam too you know. They were cancelled when MAC-V-SOG polls indicated ho-chi-mihn would likely be elected.
It didn't happen, and you have no proof that it did.
Human rights abuses, committed by soldiers in a war? Especially one where the enemy is routinely villianized by their superiors? No! I don't believe it. The abuses at Abu Gharabi do not have to be widespread, although they almost certainly were. One well known incident is plenty to give anyone with teen angst plenty of justification for hating Americans.
WWII was started by Germany, and that is why they were forced to carry the load for their reconstruction
WWII happened because the Germans had nothing to lose. After WWI they were forced to pay restitution for the damage done to such an extent that they needed a wheelbarrow full of paper currency to buy a loaf of bread. Welcome to history about to repeat itself, maybe you should have paid attention in class. I dare you to tell me with a straight face that the people who suffered under Sadaam's rule should be responsible for paying billions in restitution for his acts including over 200K to fricking Toys 'R' Us. Go ahead, say it. We have extracted over 50 billion from Iraq and divvied it up amongst companies and governments, not to mention the payola going to contrators misspending our tax dollars. Did you know Iraq just took out a loan to the tune of 500 million to keep paying? We took it all and then our puppet took out a loan on their behalf. No that won't make anyone resentful.
at least prove that you paid attention in history class.
I did, actually I often corrected my teachers since they only knew what was in our 10 year old text books (public school). Unfortunatly you seem to have a few big blanks in your book. Was it, perhaps, the reader's digest version?
Iran however, is in it up to their eyeballs, is building nuclear weapons (no doubt of that), and yet Bush went after Iraq.
Iran is pissed off and scared, as we would be if Saudi Arabia took over Mexico tomorrow to free them from their tyrannical leader, and decided to camp out while installing a puppet government. Iran may be building nuclear weapons, more likely, they have already purchased some nuclear weapons which they are keeping as a "just in case those American infidels invade us" contingency. Iran has been very open with U.N. inspectors, inviting them to view every step of their uranium refining process. They announced that they were going to do this eight years ago and have spent millions, probably billions, building a nuclear power reactor. Now, when they start to refine uranium necessary to make it work, Bush says it is all part of a plot to build weapons. If we didn't want them to refine uranium, maybe we should not have explicitly stated that they have the right to refine uranium in our non-proliferation treaty with them.
Thus far Iran is 100% within their rights, as far as refining uranium goes, not that that will stop war-mongers from using them as a boogey man to keep the American people scared. Not that it will stop Bush from invading them in his quest to get us all fricking killed. Bush would just love to invade because Iran would respond by launching long range missiles at our bases in Europe and we would have another world war on our hands, one we are almost certain to win, but that will keep him and his in power, kill off thousands of our soldiers, and make big profits.