... as long as you live in the desert. This is a great idea, if they pull it off. Clean, reliable, and fast as hell. While it's not (well, probably not) feasible in 'regular' climates (like Ontario, or the prairies, or even the mid west) where sunshine isn't a guarantee - it could be a step in the right direction for self-sufficient transportation infrastructure. When you push the technology envelope, everyone wins.
Now, how long before bureaucracy clouds over this idea?
Define "regular" climates? Deserts make up between 20% (hot) to 35% (hot and cold) percent of the worlds land mass. I would consider either of those numbers to be pretty "regular". Having lived in both climates myself, we need to stop thinking as either of them being the "norm". "Think globally, act locally" has never meant more.
This "web browser for everything" cloud model keeps coming up. It will not work. Again.
Reason 1: As soon as the "cloud" is unavailable, you are screwed.
Reason 2: It does nothing for anyone who has real work to do. People still need to do complex design documents including diagrams, charts, tables, etc. Why would I want to spend time in one app (ArgoUML, Dia, Viso) creating a diagram to then upload it to a browser so it can be in the final doc product?
Reason 3: For anything more serious than a shopping list, I do not trust an advertising company to be the primary repository for my data.
In principle, I agree with you. However, this tends to be a point people love to make and its largely unfair. The government's primary job is to secure the country and enforce rule of law. If we do not have the bigger stick, other countries will take advantage of the situation (as they did in WWI and WWII). Furthermore, not only do you need a big stick, but you need the stick to be big enough that anyone looking at you will decide attacking is a really bad idea. If the stick is not large enough by a wide enough margin, you run the risk of facing an attacker who "thinks" they may be able to win. If that happens, a potentially adversary may attack. While you will probably win, enough damage will be done to significantly hurt both sides, again making you a target for another (now) larger fish who is not yet hurt.
I hate having to make this argument because it makes me feel like an apologist for government spending, which I am clearly not. I was against a full war in Afghanistan and vehemently opposed to going into Iraq. However, you can bet your arse that while we cut our military, other countries will increase theirs. The Chinese Yellow Book flat out claims that they expect a conflict with the United States in the near future. And that is only what has been publicly stated, never mind what gets discussed behind closed doors.
The bottom line is that the government has access to intelligence that we do not. The people asking for the fighter jets and tanks are charged with defending this country - something they take very seriously. There are certainly cases of waste that can be eliminated, but if the military needs more tanks or offensive satellite capability, I would gladly shoulder that burden. The alternative is figuring out how to organize militia's equipped with.22 caliber sports rifles to repel a well armed invading country who STILL has tanks and jets and helicopters.
Systems containing classified data are NEVER connected to the internet. Any classified data that was siphoned off was left their either maliciously or through stupidity by someone on the inside. In either case, if this really did happen, the person should be tried for treason. Not only are these other networks locked down from the internet, they are also locked down physically - kept away from windows, often in a vault and physical access is tightly controlled.
Any other data that was acquired was probably crap. I strongly suspect that this is another case of fear mongering by an organization trying to get additional funding.
The alternative, which is almost too scary for me to consider, is that we have changed our practices and now leave sensitive information critical to our defense on unprotected systems.
Several people mentioned this, so I will reply to it here. Several companies have done this including the ones that publish Candybar and Shapeshifter. If you read Apple's copyright terms closely, they specifically limit reverse engineering binary executables. I researched the terms of their copyright in detail before publishing the application. I had at one point, also reverse engineered the binary used to display the boot panel (displaying the progress bar on bootup) and figured out how to splice another PDF into the executable for display. After investigating their license and determining that the function would have represented a breach, I pulled it from the final product.
In summary, I carefully researched their license and am not in breach in any way. Get your facts before spouting crap.
Try reading my post before replying next time. I was talking about licensing terms when dealing with software. In that case, yes, you DO have to pay me. If you firmly do not believe that to be the case, post your address. I'll be by later to start picking up some of your belongings that I like. Property protection is a basic tenet of civilization. I will reiterate, if you do not like a license, find a free alternative. I use k3b and k9copy to back up my home collections and do DVD authoring because I am unwilling to accept the licensing terms of other software. It does not give me the right to steal alternatives.
I understand your sentiments, and largely agree. However, the fact remains that the activities were illegal. I really have mixed feelings on this pirate bay fiasco, but I will attempt to explain:
Firstly, if people do not like the licensing (or copyright) terms of either music or software, do not fucking use it. Its that simple. Because you disagree with the copyright terms, you do not have some God given right to just take it. If I walk into the parking lot at the end of the day, and see someone trying to steal my motorcycle "because they like it and think they should have it", you can bet that I will beat the ever loving shit out of them and then call the police. Pick one of the thousands of artists that publish under creative commons and start listening to their stuff. For software, find a free or open alternative. Vote with your wallet.
I have software released under a restrictive license (iThemeOS) that I sell and other software (jarhunt) that is released under the GPL that anyone is free to use, modify, or redistribute. Anyone is welcome to the latter, whereas I expect to be paid for the former. I know for fact that iThemeOS is cracked on dozens of site, including TPB. Every person who has downloaded and used it has stolen 9 dollars from me. With hundreds or thousands of people having done it, I am out thousands of dollars that I would have otherwise had. I spent the time reverse engineering where Apple puts the icons and how the caches work. If you do not want to pay me for the product that I built and licensed, you DO NOT HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO TAKE IT! Either figure it out for yourself and do it by hand or go without. Its that simple.
What REALLY pisses me off is that the recording industry is getting compensated "for their losses" while I just sit here and stew. I am seriously considering calling a lawyer on principle.
As an IT Manager for a small company, I have no reason to move off of XP. Until I am forced, I will not migrate to Vista or 7. There just is no compelling reason to do so. More and more I seek to take functionality AWAY from the desktop.
I suspect that I am going to get karmically beaten up for this, but here goes...
People keep trying to move applications from the desktop to the web. In many cases, the web is the right medium for those apps. In most though, its not. My general rule of thumb is this: When trying to develop something as a web app, if you find that you are trying to reproduce desktop app behavior, you are doing the wrong thing.
Eventually, we are going to have to pay the piper (in terms of maintenance cost) for web apps with all the convoluted hacks necessary to make them look and feel like desktop apps. Let's start collectively applying some common sense - the web when its the right thing, and the desktop where it fits best.
'Although there is no suggestion that Microsoft's failed bid will be resurrected, the two companies are believed to be discussing ways they can link up to combat the growing power of their chief rival, Google.
"Their" chief rival... Really? Microsoft is primarily an OS/Office suite vendor. If you had to define the essence of their core business model - that's it. I never understood why Microsoft has singled out Google as an enemy that has to be defeated, as opposed to someone to collaborate with. Yahoo, well, that makes perfect sense - Google has been beating the pants off of them for years. However, Microsoft's shareholders would be better served if they focused on making OS and productivity software that does not suck, as opposed to spending millions of dollars indexing and storing data to make an inferior product to dump more marketing dollars on to compete with a company operating in a different market segment. Why go through all that effort to reinvent the wheel?
It sure must be nice for Ballmer to have a stockpile of money worthy of Scrooge McDuck to piss away on pet projects...
The behavior is interesting because it is shown with common chimpanzees as well. Bonobos use sex for EVERYTHING (greeting, conflict resolution, etc.) and never form permanent relationships, therefore the behavior in that species is not really newsworthy.
Ok, I'll bite. First, do address your comments about our president not being a citizen. This is patently a false roumor: Snopes
Secondly, you are right, we were attacked first, by a FRACKING terrorist organization! Not the Afgan government and certainly not the Iraqis. Our country would be in an infinitely stronger diplomatic, security, and financial position if we tackled the problem through diplomacy, covert operations, and sanctions against countries supporting terrorist activities. Instead, we opted for a dick-wagging contest resulting in thousands of lost lives, billions of dollars expended, and our international credibility and goodwill pissed away.
I agree with you that Pelosi and Reid are idiots. Its sad that the democrats do not have better leadership in congress right now and I think it will probably cost them. However, I have heard rumblings from the right lately about Obama being a one termer. I suspect this is because he scares the shit of them because he is articulate and intelligently tackles problems. How could you possibly say worst president of all time?!?
It goes to show the lack of class in the man and his administration. The two gifts mentioned from the British were classy gifts, and were well thought out.
The gifts from the Obama administration don't have a clue what class is.
Expect more of the same until we impeach and fire this clown of a president.
I am not entirely sure what you are saying? Do you not recall Bush? The tool that gave Angela Merkel (the prime minister of Germany) a back massage at a meeting? How about the time he winked at the Queen of England? Or when he addressed a room full of donors by saying something to the effect of: "Quite an impressive room of people here, the haves, and the have mores...". The same guy who got us involved in two wars and ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
And YOU have the gall to call Obama a "clown of a president" who needs to be impeached? Seriously? If you were marked troll, I would have let your comments go and not even read your post. The fact that somehow, you ended up listed as insightful absolutely astounds me. Given the stark contrast of character between the two men, a grass roots community organizer vs. a man who shirked his military duties, you must need a wheelbarrow to carry your balls around in.
Finally, as a general rule, anyone who finds a need to use the term "class" in the same context you did in your post typically has none themselves.
OMFG. I looks like a horrid cross between Best Buy and Walmart. Just judging by the pictures, the store layout does not appear as if it will convey any of the welcoming experience that the Apple stores do. If nothing else, the shopping cart plays right into the stereo type. Additionally, much like with their software, crap is strewn everywhere with no apparent rhyme or reason and it looks as if things will be difficult to find.
I am not sure how you got modded insightful. Linux, in terms of the kernel, is in fact a monolithic structure but has nothing to do with the API/lib/small packages that can be chained together that the OP was talking about. Linux in the GNU/Linux sense (a distribution), is in fact composed from many small libraries that each perform a specific function well.
Regarding your point about how the app was built: How do you draw a distinction between the Windows, Linux, and UNIX builds of Firefox? I'll help you - each version is a port using libraries on the system that it is ported to. Those dependencies do in fact have an impact on compilation, how the memory map is built, and how well the application performs.
Also - the optimization process differences are significantly more complicated than you implied. I strongly suspect, although am not positive because I have never built it from source or examined how an RPM was built, that the Linux Firefox build was done with at least -O2 or -O3 flags. The difference that FP was talking about was PGO (Profile Guided Optimization), which is more involved (and thus better performance gains) than just turning on the default compiler optimizations.
I think you are missing the point of KDE. The KDE development model has always been this way - its sort of their essence. If you want a desktop environment that improves through smaller iterations over time (as opposed to large jumps), you (and any organization sharing your concerns) should consider moving to Gnome.
Neither model is more technically correct. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. KDE tends to have periods of time where it is broken, immediately following a large jump (such as 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4). Gnome on the other hand, often hits a period of time where it looks archaic when compared to the latest and greatest jump from KDE (and then eventually catches up). Its all a matter of taste.
This is an exiting opportunity for GNOME. I wonder if they'll embrace it and make the Linux desktop go forward."
I do not think that having multiple desktops and libraries are a bad thing, by any means. Firstly, without competition, things tend to languish. Granted KDE still has to compete with OS X and Windows, but having another competitor never hurts. If nothing else, Gnome and the Gtk+ toolkit would offer yet another flavor of experience for people with those specific tastes. Gnome has always felt a little more UNIXy to me.
With (obviously) enough people willing to work on and develop both projects, why not let them/encourage them to do so? Also, there is nothing stopping you from running your Gnome apps under KDE and your KDE apps under Gnome. With the cost of hard drive space today, why not?
As an (undergraduate) trained anthropologist, I am always skeptical of announcements like this. The locals may have skewed Margret Mead's research for her book Coming of Age in Samoa (a very well respected and renowned anthropologist):
The truth is that accurately studying other cultures is difficult. I have not read the original journal article, but I would take this with a grain of salt.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
This has cropped up several times and is a fallacy. The pope, and the catholic church's official position is that god created everything through evolution. Pope John Paul stated it in 1996 and Benedict just re-iterated it again in 2007 as evidenced here. Please, get your facts straight before making emotional arguments.
Man, I'm glad somebody else here isn't taking crazy pills. I mean, behavior profiling is wrong?! If we shouldn't make judgments about people based on their behavior, what exactly should we use?
If by behavior you mean "someone got caught by the x-ray machine trying to sneak a bomb onto a plane", then I whole heartedly agree with you. However, if by behavior you mean shaking someone down for "looking suspicious" without any evidence other than your "magical-and-not-released-to-the-public-for-the-publics-own-safety" snake-oil method of determining that someone "looks" suspicious, then I call bullshit. I would rather see (if I had no other choice) security checks at airports stepped up for EVERYONE even more than their current levels than remaining quiet while the government tells us that they have developed new studies (that they will not release) that allow them to determine who to detain before they have actually committed a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
... as long as you live in the desert. This is a great idea, if they pull it off. Clean, reliable, and fast as hell. While it's not (well, probably not) feasible in 'regular' climates (like Ontario, or the prairies, or even the mid west) where sunshine isn't a guarantee - it could be a step in the right direction for self-sufficient transportation infrastructure. When you push the technology envelope, everyone wins. Now, how long before bureaucracy clouds over this idea?
Define "regular" climates? Deserts make up between 20% (hot) to 35% (hot and cold) percent of the worlds land mass. I would consider either of those numbers to be pretty "regular". Having lived in both climates myself, we need to stop thinking as either of them being the "norm". "Think globally, act locally" has never meant more.
For 27 Billion I would rather have robot cars that drive themselves.
Great! For safety reasons, we'll just make them bigger, longer, sit multiple people, and ride on tracks. Will that work for you?
This "web browser for everything" cloud model keeps coming up. It will not work. Again.
Reason 1: As soon as the "cloud" is unavailable, you are screwed.
Reason 2: It does nothing for anyone who has real work to do. People still need to do complex design documents including diagrams, charts, tables, etc. Why would I want to spend time in one app (ArgoUML, Dia, Viso) creating a diagram to then upload it to a browser so it can be in the final doc product?
Reason 3: For anything more serious than a shopping list, I do not trust an advertising company to be the primary repository for my data.
Shouldn't you be off saving lives instead of posting to Slashdot? /hypocrite
;-)
I know, I know. I need to get back to work too
In principle, I agree with you. However, this tends to be a point people love to make and its largely unfair. The government's primary job is to secure the country and enforce rule of law. If we do not have the bigger stick, other countries will take advantage of the situation (as they did in WWI and WWII). Furthermore, not only do you need a big stick, but you need the stick to be big enough that anyone looking at you will decide attacking is a really bad idea. If the stick is not large enough by a wide enough margin, you run the risk of facing an attacker who "thinks" they may be able to win. If that happens, a potentially adversary may attack. While you will probably win, enough damage will be done to significantly hurt both sides, again making you a target for another (now) larger fish who is not yet hurt.
.22 caliber sports rifles to repel a well armed invading country who STILL has tanks and jets and helicopters.
I hate having to make this argument because it makes me feel like an apologist for government spending, which I am clearly not. I was against a full war in Afghanistan and vehemently opposed to going into Iraq. However, you can bet your arse that while we cut our military, other countries will increase theirs. The Chinese Yellow Book flat out claims that they expect a conflict with the United States in the near future. And that is only what has been publicly stated, never mind what gets discussed behind closed doors.
The bottom line is that the government has access to intelligence that we do not. The people asking for the fighter jets and tanks are charged with defending this country - something they take very seriously. There are certainly cases of waste that can be eliminated, but if the military needs more tanks or offensive satellite capability, I would gladly shoulder that burden. The alternative is figuring out how to organize militia's equipped with
Systems containing classified data are NEVER connected to the internet. Any classified data that was siphoned off was left their either maliciously or through stupidity by someone on the inside. In either case, if this really did happen, the person should be tried for treason. Not only are these other networks locked down from the internet, they are also locked down physically - kept away from windows, often in a vault and physical access is tightly controlled.
Any other data that was acquired was probably crap. I strongly suspect that this is another case of fear mongering by an organization trying to get additional funding.
The alternative, which is almost too scary for me to consider, is that we have changed our practices and now leave sensitive information critical to our defense on unprotected systems.
Several people mentioned this, so I will reply to it here. Several companies have done this including the ones that publish Candybar and Shapeshifter. If you read Apple's copyright terms closely, they specifically limit reverse engineering binary executables. I researched the terms of their copyright in detail before publishing the application. I had at one point, also reverse engineered the binary used to display the boot panel (displaying the progress bar on bootup) and figured out how to splice another PDF into the executable for display. After investigating their license and determining that the function would have represented a breach, I pulled it from the final product.
In summary, I carefully researched their license and am not in breach in any way. Get your facts before spouting crap.
Try reading my post before replying next time. I was talking about licensing terms when dealing with software. In that case, yes, you DO have to pay me. If you firmly do not believe that to be the case, post your address. I'll be by later to start picking up some of your belongings that I like. Property protection is a basic tenet of civilization. I will reiterate, if you do not like a license, find a free alternative. I use k3b and k9copy to back up my home collections and do DVD authoring because I am unwilling to accept the licensing terms of other software. It does not give me the right to steal alternatives.
I understand your sentiments, and largely agree. However, the fact remains that the activities were illegal. I really have mixed feelings on this pirate bay fiasco, but I will attempt to explain:
Firstly, if people do not like the licensing (or copyright) terms of either music or software, do not fucking use it. Its that simple. Because you disagree with the copyright terms, you do not have some God given right to just take it. If I walk into the parking lot at the end of the day, and see someone trying to steal my motorcycle "because they like it and think they should have it", you can bet that I will beat the ever loving shit out of them and then call the police. Pick one of the thousands of artists that publish under creative commons and start listening to their stuff. For software, find a free or open alternative. Vote with your wallet.
I have software released under a restrictive license (iThemeOS) that I sell and other software (jarhunt) that is released under the GPL that anyone is free to use, modify, or redistribute. Anyone is welcome to the latter, whereas I expect to be paid for the former. I know for fact that iThemeOS is cracked on dozens of site, including TPB. Every person who has downloaded and used it has stolen 9 dollars from me. With hundreds or thousands of people having done it, I am out thousands of dollars that I would have otherwise had. I spent the time reverse engineering where Apple puts the icons and how the caches work. If you do not want to pay me for the product that I built and licensed, you DO NOT HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO TAKE IT! Either figure it out for yourself and do it by hand or go without. Its that simple.
What REALLY pisses me off is that the recording industry is getting compensated "for their losses" while I just sit here and stew. I am seriously considering calling a lawyer on principle.
I once had an office mate that LOVED Kenny G. I think those were pretty horrific conditions...
As an IT Manager for a small company, I have no reason to move off of XP. Until I am forced, I will not migrate to Vista or 7. There just is no compelling reason to do so. More and more I seek to take functionality AWAY from the desktop.
I suspect that I am going to get karmically beaten up for this, but here goes...
People keep trying to move applications from the desktop to the web. In many cases, the web is the right medium for those apps. In most though, its not. My general rule of thumb is this: When trying to develop something as a web app, if you find that you are trying to reproduce desktop app behavior, you are doing the wrong thing.
Eventually, we are going to have to pay the piper (in terms of maintenance cost) for web apps with all the convoluted hacks necessary to make them look and feel like desktop apps. Let's start collectively applying some common sense - the web when its the right thing, and the desktop where it fits best.
'Although there is no suggestion that Microsoft's failed bid will be resurrected, the two companies are believed to be discussing ways they can link up to combat the growing power of their chief rival, Google.
"Their" chief rival... Really? Microsoft is primarily an OS/Office suite vendor. If you had to define the essence of their core business model - that's it. I never understood why Microsoft has singled out Google as an enemy that has to be defeated, as opposed to someone to collaborate with. Yahoo, well, that makes perfect sense - Google has been beating the pants off of them for years. However, Microsoft's shareholders would be better served if they focused on making OS and productivity software that does not suck, as opposed to spending millions of dollars indexing and storing data to make an inferior product to dump more marketing dollars on to compete with a company operating in a different market segment. Why go through all that effort to reinvent the wheel?
It sure must be nice for Ballmer to have a stockpile of money worthy of Scrooge McDuck to piss away on pet projects...
The behavior is interesting because it is shown with common chimpanzees as well. Bonobos use sex for EVERYTHING (greeting, conflict resolution, etc.) and never form permanent relationships, therefore the behavior in that species is not really newsworthy.
Bonobo Social Behavior
Ok, I'll bite. First, do address your comments about our president not being a citizen. This is patently a false roumor: Snopes
Secondly, you are right, we were attacked first, by a FRACKING terrorist organization! Not the Afgan government and certainly not the Iraqis. Our country would be in an infinitely stronger diplomatic, security, and financial position if we tackled the problem through diplomacy, covert operations, and sanctions against countries supporting terrorist activities. Instead, we opted for a dick-wagging contest resulting in thousands of lost lives, billions of dollars expended, and our international credibility and goodwill pissed away.
I agree with you that Pelosi and Reid are idiots. Its sad that the democrats do not have better leadership in congress right now and I think it will probably cost them. However, I have heard rumblings from the right lately about Obama being a one termer. I suspect this is because he scares the shit of them because he is articulate and intelligently tackles problems. How could you possibly say worst president of all time?!?
It goes to show the lack of class in the man and his administration. The two gifts mentioned from the British were classy gifts, and were well thought out.
The gifts from the Obama administration don't have a clue what class is.
Expect more of the same until we impeach and fire this clown of a president.
I am not entirely sure what you are saying? Do you not recall Bush? The tool that gave Angela Merkel (the prime minister of Germany) a back massage at a meeting? How about the time he winked at the Queen of England? Or when he addressed a room full of donors by saying something to the effect of: "Quite an impressive room of people here, the haves, and the have mores...". The same guy who got us involved in two wars and ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
And YOU have the gall to call Obama a "clown of a president" who needs to be impeached? Seriously? If you were marked troll, I would have let your comments go and not even read your post. The fact that somehow, you ended up listed as insightful absolutely astounds me. Given the stark contrast of character between the two men, a grass roots community organizer vs. a man who shirked his military duties, you must need a wheelbarrow to carry your balls around in.
Finally, as a general rule, anyone who finds a need to use the term "class" in the same context you did in your post typically has none themselves.
OMFG. I looks like a horrid cross between Best Buy and Walmart. Just judging by the pictures, the store layout does not appear as if it will convey any of the welcoming experience that the Apple stores do. If nothing else, the shopping cart plays right into the stereo type. Additionally, much like with their software, crap is strewn everywhere with no apparent rhyme or reason and it looks as if things will be difficult to find.
:)
This should be a blast to watch
I am not sure how you got modded insightful. Linux, in terms of the kernel, is in fact a monolithic structure but has nothing to do with the API/lib/small packages that can be chained together that the OP was talking about. Linux in the GNU/Linux sense (a distribution), is in fact composed from many small libraries that each perform a specific function well.
Regarding your point about how the app was built: How do you draw a distinction between the Windows, Linux, and UNIX builds of Firefox? I'll help you - each version is a port using libraries on the system that it is ported to. Those dependencies do in fact have an impact on compilation, how the memory map is built, and how well the application performs.
Also - the optimization process differences are significantly more complicated than you implied. I strongly suspect, although am not positive because I have never built it from source or examined how an RPM was built, that the Linux Firefox build was done with at least -O2 or -O3 flags. The difference that FP was talking about was PGO (Profile Guided Optimization), which is more involved (and thus better performance gains) than just turning on the default compiler optimizations.
Microsoft, huh? So its pretty easy to use?
I think you are missing the point of KDE. The KDE development model has always been this way - its sort of their essence. If you want a desktop environment that improves through smaller iterations over time (as opposed to large jumps), you (and any organization sharing your concerns) should consider moving to Gnome. Neither model is more technically correct. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. KDE tends to have periods of time where it is broken, immediately following a large jump (such as 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4). Gnome on the other hand, often hits a period of time where it looks archaic when compared to the latest and greatest jump from KDE (and then eventually catches up). Its all a matter of taste.
This is an exiting opportunity for GNOME. I wonder if they'll embrace it and make the Linux desktop go forward."
I do not think that having multiple desktops and libraries are a bad thing, by any means. Firstly, without competition, things tend to languish. Granted KDE still has to compete with OS X and Windows, but having another competitor never hurts. If nothing else, Gnome and the Gtk+ toolkit would offer yet another flavor of experience for people with those specific tastes. Gnome has always felt a little more UNIXy to me.
With (obviously) enough people willing to work on and develop both projects, why not let them/encourage them to do so? Also, there is nothing stopping you from running your Gnome apps under KDE and your KDE apps under Gnome. With the cost of hard drive space today, why not?
That really IS horrible. I did not know that anyone was actually using Vista. - Steve J.
As an (undergraduate) trained anthropologist, I am always skeptical of announcements like this. The locals may have skewed Margret Mead's research for her book Coming of Age in Samoa (a very well respected and renowned anthropologist):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa
Additionally, we also have the Eskimo/words for snowflake issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
The truth is that accurately studying other cultures is difficult. I have not read the original journal article, but I would take this with a grain of salt.
Am I the only one who noticed that one of the images looked EXACTLY like a Honda Accord advert?!? Spooky.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
This has cropped up several times and is a fallacy. The pope, and the catholic church's official position is that god created everything through evolution. Pope John Paul stated it in 1996 and Benedict just re-iterated it again in 2007 as evidenced here. Please, get your facts straight before making emotional arguments.
Man, I'm glad somebody else here isn't taking crazy pills. I mean, behavior profiling is wrong?! If we shouldn't make judgments about people based on their behavior, what exactly should we use?
If by behavior you mean "someone got caught by the x-ray machine trying to sneak a bomb onto a plane", then I whole heartedly agree with you. However, if by behavior you mean shaking someone down for "looking suspicious" without any evidence other than your "magical-and-not-released-to-the-public-for-the-publics-own-safety" snake-oil method of determining that someone "looks" suspicious, then I call bullshit. I would rather see (if I had no other choice) security checks at airports stepped up for EVERYONE even more than their current levels than remaining quiet while the government tells us that they have developed new studies (that they will not release) that allow them to determine who to detain before they have actually committed a crime.
Stop being so damned afraid of your own shadow.