24 hours is nonsense. I'd say 24 days for the basics and 24 months for a better mastery of the basics is a more reasonable estimate. Unix is *not* KDE and how to burn a CD or play a game in KDE. Unix is posix, bash, sed, awk, perl, vim, and so on.
Speaking of the MIT laptop - the next half-of-the-world-hardware-standard should be the next how-things-should-be-standard. I have gone open source lately and by that I don't mean openoffice.org instead of MS-Office or gnome/kde instead of windows explorer, but I mean real gnu just how the unix culture intended it to be. I think it's ludicrous that people switch to a *nix and try to run it like a windows, that'd be too dumb and missing the point on unix. Windows may be good for dummies but people shouldn't be encouraged to remain dummies for decades, and open source shouldn't try to imitate that encouragement. For example, any computer user worth his salt and intending to use a computer for longer than a couple of months should pretty soon be starting to learn how to use LaTeX, and use that instead of MSWord and Powerpoint especially that it's simpler and far better. Same can be said for project R and sqlite instead of Excel and Access - both are once known simpler and far better. Add Perl to that, and with CTAN, CRAN and CPAN, and within a few months I'd kick any MS user's ass with my $100 laptop. Those are simple things, teach them to high school kids, just the basics of them, no need for abstract deep stuff for large scale programming at this point, and I'm sure they'd pick them up more easily than I did. My favourite stuff right now are stuff that I know for sure would run on the simplest hardware out there, be stable, fast and secure (no data loss or erros), and I don't need to worry about upgrading to what nonsense Mircosoft is trying to sell me next nor the hardware I need to run it.
That's nonsense. Open source is world-based, *not* US-based. And if you're worried about the trade deficit perhaps it's time you do something about your Microsoft-lenient corporate-whore "patriotic" president; Clinton left you in a much better situation.
Slashdot seems to be falling victim to a pattern of trolltastic, usenet-like article submissions and unfortuntely many of those have been passed by editors and published on the site. The post itself is usually in stark contrast with the real content of the news they refer to. In some of those recent examples:
Something needs to be done about this. I don't read rightwing blogs because I don't need their lies, I prefer my news to be reliable and not twisted and if slashdot continues like this it will be pretty unfortunate.
I have seen a lot of such trolltastic rightwing article posts lately and the editors seem either oblivious to them or otherwise. If you can remember some more of them then do post links in your reply to this post.
Had 60 million Americans been living next to Germany it would've swept through them just as easily. Enough with the bullshit.
"Unfortunately, very few among the general population in Western Europe and the US seem to know that historians do not debate whether the war was won by the Soviet or Anglo-Saxon effort, but on how long the Soviet victory would have been postponed if the landing at the beach in Normandy, France, had not taken place. How many know that at the time of the celebrated landing, in June 1944, four-fifths of the German forces were on the Eastern front, trying in vain to stop the mounting Red Army offensive? How many of those Western European international relations or history students know that 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in this war, compared to the 295,000 Americans killed mostly in the war against Japan and the 380,000 British civilians and soldiers killed on both fronts?" http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/GF02Dh03.html (nevermind that this is a japanese source, this is a well-established historical fact beyond dispute that I just cited the first I found on googling it, I've long known it and read it in Western publications, ask any respected Western historian or google for it)
The Americans, as usual, came late to the party and stole the photo-op. Enough with the bullshit. The Americans were essentially insignificant in the war against Germany. Their most significant contribution were the war crimes of firebombing the civilian population of Tokyo where 100,000 civilians died in 1 night (Watch 11 lessons from the life of Robert McNamara where he himself tells in detail how he carried out that plan and cites that number of 100,000 civilians burned alive in 1 night) and then the dropping of two nuclear bombs over civilian japanese populations. And then they dare put the Germans officials on trial for war crimes and call Germany "evil"! Such bullshit!
I have been modded down the other day for stating the truth about Churchill - you guys live in bullshit tales about history and don't like to hear the truth. I bothers me much how there can be such bullshit about a history so recent and such persistent belief in lies amongst the mass population even though historians are in no debate about the issues.
What you guys are missing out on is that it's a whole different definition of what's foolish and smart that the rich have. What's smart for the average and poor guy is actually considered very foolish by the rich, and vice versa. This is a classic reason why some people will never get rich, because the harder they try to be smart (poor smart) the more it'll be certain that they'll forever be poor. The poor and the rich just have totally different value systems and therefore definitions of what's smart and foolish.
Yes, a trade embargo against food and medicine are GOOD, let those stinkin' socialists and their kids starve, be ill and die, because the USA *must* always be right:
This excerpt is from a 2002 Oxfam report entitled Cuba: Social Policy at the Crossroads: Maintaining Priorities, Transforming Practice ""Cuba's achievements in social development are impressive given the
size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development
index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be
the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba]
demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if
they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy."" -- the United Nations, April 11, 2000
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/sfeature/sf_vi ews_uriarte.html
That's the whole idea. What makes me fume about those idiots is that they are assertive about their idiocy. You don't need to point out their critical fallacies to them, they themselves will do it and do it flamboyantly and shockingly. They already know they're wrong yet they push their wrong and want the whole world to drop what's right and go along with them. For example, you'd hope to point out to them, like you said, that science is about the natural explanation of phenomena and that their arguments are besides science, well, guess what, in their friggin' words they explicitly say that they want science to be "logical", not "natural". Some elected dipshits from Kansas want to redefine science. Their new version (of science standards) changes the very definition of science from "seeking natural explanations" to "seeking logical explanations." - it's what they've written and said, and it's what those elected officials are doing.
The world does not look at this with laughter, it looks at it with deep familiar concern, this is no joke or thing for laughter, and it's not a new thing nor a new concern, the world has always been concerned about what the American corrupt politicians elected by an idiot American majority are inflicting on it. We know that there are liberal Americans and we love them, but we know for sure they're not in the majority and that the majority of Americans know they're wrong in this US vs World thing and yet persist. This is why we - to use your word - "hate" you, Americans, and you deserve it - we love American liberals but we "hate" the average American, and yes, not me, the world does from the finest of the European wine-sipping oversexed erudite elite to the most deprived illiterate starving orphan in some barren eighth-world shithole, on average the world "hates" the average American. And don't bullshit us, this Kansas board is elected, and it isn't an exceptional case, we know it too well and for too long to be fooled; Bush has been elected twice now and the US liberals have done everything reasonable and within their breathes in 2000 and yet again in 2004 to make it clear to Americans in no ambiguous terms why he's a piece of shit. But no, the average American voter consents to hating the gays, the abortionists and everything else be damned, 'the world may "go fuck itself" as long as I get my 2 litres of Coke at walmart for 69 cents and cheap petrol for my big huge SUV'.
And watch how I'll get modded down by dipshits for saying this - those modders know it's true that the world friggin' "hates" the American majority for this very same reason as the Kansas ID case multiplied by many other concerns from economic sanctions and wars against already poor nations to fighting socialism and promoting social injustice so on, and those self-righteous pieces of shit don't stop yapping "why do they hate us?!" on TV and in print and yet I'll get modded down for saying this. The modders who'll mod this a down think it's unacceptable for someone to say "ouch" when beaten up or being concerned for the beaten up, they don't like to hear it - beating up the poor and weak itself doesn't offend them but it offends them when the poor and weak cry in pain.
"If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs." - Ah, utilitarian truth! How marvellous! We don't want a truth that's reallly true by itself, but a truth that serves what we want. It goes like this "What will happen if this is true? Oh shit! It will lead to things we won't like! No, it can't be true then! Let's choose a truth that leads to what we like!"
I think you're right, there's a huge, huge tremendous conflict of interests here. How huge? well, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment money, that huge! Even for a whole university department that's a lot. I remember the impression I was left with when I witnessed a couple of professors I studied under go out of their way to secure just half a million of grant money for their department - I was thinking at the time that there was really no money in Academia. The ironic thing is they cite the hundreds of millions of investments as backup for his claims, well, in fact, that's a huge big problem for the credibility of his claims!
The other point is that quantum theory, as I've heard, is one of the best supported theories in science. It is true that any theory that lasts long enough is due for a major, radical revision, usually by a obscure outsider, but still, I doubt it would be this. Einstein did indeed turn physics on its head, but he sure wasn't trying to sell anything.
Like they say, the 'proof is in the pudding' - until this is widely replicated, there's nothing to get excited about.
"Jim Breyer is not against monopolies, he is just against monopolies that others have."
Thank you! And in other news, see this...
Wal-Mart Says 30% Market Share Too Big
In a deliciously ironic turn of events, Wal-Mart has called on the British government to intervene in the growing market dominance of rival retailer Tesco.
In comments to the London Sunday Times, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott suggests that having more than 30 percent of the market in one category is too much. "As you get over 30% and higher I am sure there is a point where government is compelled to intervene," he said. "At some point the government has to look at it."
Tesco, which operates superstores similar to Wal-Mart's, is Britain's largest retailer. The company also has a substantial international presence and ranks as the world's sixth largest retail chain with $51 billion in revenue last year.
Scott's call for government intervention was prompted by figures released last week showing that Tesco now captures 31 percent of UK grocery sales, up from 28 percent last year. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart's share of the British food market (through its Asda subsidiary) has fallen from 27 to 17 percent.
In the U.S., small business owners and community activists who favor vigorous enforcement of antitrust policies were delighted by Wal-Mart's move. However, the company has not yet said whether it plans to ask the federal government to intervene in its own growing market dominance.
Wal-Mart has about one-third of the U.S. market for numerous household staples, such as toothpaste, diapers, and shampoo. According to industry analysts at Retail Forward, Wal-Mart is on track to control 35 percent of the U.S. grocery market within the next few yeas.
FYI - Ayn Rand, the darling of the idiotic US right, is not taken seriously by any serious scholar of any field. You might've as well quoted Deepak Chopra. Go read someone worth citing and come back..:-)
Re:Churchill was flawed, but who isn't ?
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And you're either a liar if you claim you have a doctoral degree, or if you really do you're a big shame on the state of higher education for lacking the critical faculties to respond when other point out your critical fallacies with anything other than concluding with an ad hominem. End of discussion.
Everything I have written about you can find everywhere if you cared. Even those who stand up for Churchill don't deny his faults "Much has been made of the implicit hypocrisy of Churchill in declaring such sweeping rights of self-determination which in no way affected his attitude toward the British Empire. This criticism is certainly valid..." http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cf m?pageid=281 "
Read his book "The River War - An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan (1902)" in which he admires the efficiency of a European power at wiping out the "barbarians" and "savages" that dared resist it and defend themselves "Thus ended the battle of Omdurman--the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians. Within the space of five hours the strongest and best-armed savage army yet arrayed against a modern European Power had been destroyed and dispersed, with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk, and insignificant loss to the victors." http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/et ext-project/history/riverwar/leftframe.html
If you find "hatred" in what I said, it is Churchill you hate!
The Nazis and Soviets had their faults, no doubt, but Churchill's "evil empire" rhetoric was bullshit! Hitler was no less "evil" than Churchill was, by any means. In fact, man for man and cause for cause, Hitler is far more respectable than that patrician pig.
Re:Churchill was flawed, but who isn't ?
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"It scares me that there are people who think the systematic and sanctioned extermination of a race of people (the jews in this case, but the specifics don't really matter, the crime is the same) is not evil in every sense and nuance of the word. Germany at the time *was* an evil place to be, no inverted commas are required. More equitable. Right." - And they turned the jews into soap too. right? What nonsense! The "extermination" tale as popularly told is one of the big sensationalist lies of the century and it is frightening that there are so many idiots in this world who would uphold it as unquestionable. Why is it illegal for historical scholars in many countries to question it? Why is it illegal for them to exercise their skepticism, a required duty for a scholar and the essence of a scholarship, and debate the evidence for and against in search for a truth? Can a true tale not uphold itself? There are many Jewish historians who denounce the big lie, you can find them if you cared for historical truth.
"... or Lady Aston and Mr Churchill: "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your drink" "Madam, if you were my wife I would drink it." - why are you citing this? he was a rhetorical clown. When Churchill was enjoying his drunken jokes with the ladies of high society there were millions of hungry people on the streets of England. Here's something more worthwhile of admiration if you thought the role of a politician was any more than to entertain http://hitler.org/speeches/12-10-40.html
"As for your last points, I have never (ever) even *heard* of anyone taking the word 'common' as an insult apart from on soap operas in the middle of a screaming row, and I grew up in a Northern city. We weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination - my father worked on the docks, my mother in various office-jobs. I was hardly a poster-boy for a class-warrior, but I studied hard, got into a good (free) school, went to (free) university, and did a (free) doctoral degree. As someone who ought to be railing against the man (according to your model) I think you're just plain wrong. Any medical/dental care I ever needed was free, and I never considered myself 'beneath' anyone. There is no class-distinction in any of the above, and I've never felt myself to be a member of this lower-class of which you speak." - exactly! and that is something you should be thankful for, and not take for granted, because this is what the achievement of all those who fought for a more equitable society in England has given you, a free education and free healthcare. I have lived in Northen cities, I have talked to many old people who remember those times before the NHS and the welfare state.
"Of course there were always those wealthier than I in the UK, but hell, it's only money. There are people wealthier than I in the USA, too! Having *lived* and *worked* in a Northern city, where the vote has always been for socialist labour in my lifetime, I don't think my 'who cares' attitude is atypical. This is not the "incredible poverty" you portray - in fact having now lived in California for a while, I'd say the British system is better - we don't have a significant underclass (like the mexican itinerant workers) as California has. Unemployment in Britain is currently 4.7%, Unemployment in the USA is currently 5.5% (both seasonally-unadjusted figures)." I find it astounding that someone with a doctoral degree would make the mistake of reponding to a "portrayal" of England during the first half of the 20th century by giving statistics from the "current" 21st century! You have the threat of European socialism to thank for how good you're having it right now.
I had been a lifetime half-admirer and reader of Churchill's material, and I say half-admirer because I think he's way overrated, and especially the Nobel prize - I think it's ludicrous that he was awarded a Nobel prize in literature before far more deserving thinkers such as Sartre, Steinbeck, Becket, and Camus. Let's be frank, I have respect for the Nobel prizes in the hard sciences but other 'soft' prizes get meddled in politics too often. Martin Heidegger, a giant of the century and a father of its thought, was never awarded the Nobel prize due to his Nazi affiliation. Where's Churchill amongst the scholars of literature and humanities? Who cites him with any seriousness? I can say with near certainty that I have never heard one serious scholar citing Churchill as anything other than a political or popular figure; his literature might've not existed as far as serious literature itself is concerned. Compare that to Heidegger who's almost inescapable in terms of his significant and valuable contribution. In this time, when the rotten social and imperialist politics of Churchill are being revived by the American merchants of death and widespread poverty, I can only voice my strongest condemnation for what he was and what he stood for.
I know I'll be modded down to oblivion for saying this, but fuck it! There you go: Enough with the "evil empire" nonsense, you sound like a fool parrotting the propaganda of 19th century mercantile imperialists- the victors' history and blind nationalism of the fools may have made Churchill a superstar, but in reality he was a stuck-up pig of the upper-classes. You should know that it was the electoral defeat of Churchill that gave the UK its National Health Service, and India its independence. Churchill was a rich imperialist pig who had little care for the natives of the colonies or even the poor of his own nation. Churchill was a pig who waxed lyrical over the mass slaughter of the Sudanese by the machine guns of the British empire (read his friggin' war correspondence from 1899), and admired the Italians for their imperialist 'rape of Ethiopia'. Churchill was a duplicitous pig who claimed he was fighting for the freedom of the people in Eastern Europe who were in the way of the Nazis but had to be contractually arm-twisted by Roosevelt, very much, the liberal president, to extend that same freedom to the people of the Earth under the British empire; read about the friggin Atlantic charter, Churchill insisted that the right for self-determination applied to those about to be under the German empire but *not* to those under the British empire, read about the friggin' Atlantic charter, this was at the height of his 'freedom' rhetoric. I have pride in many, many things British, but Churchill, what he stood for, and his "evil empire" rhetoric is *not* one of them. Here's what the leader of the so-called "evil empire" said about Britain of the day " She controls sixteen million square miles. In India, for example, a hundred million colonial workers with a wretched standard of living must labor for her. One might think, perhaps, that at least in England itself every person must have his share of these riches. By no means! In that country class distinction is the crassest imaginable. There is poverty - incredible poverty - on the one side, and equally incredible wealth on the other... The workmen of that country which possesses more than one-sixth of the globe and of the world's natural resources dwell in misery, and the masses of the people are poorly clad.. In a country which ought to have more than enough bread and every sort of fruit, we find millions of the lower classes who have not even enough to fill their stomachs, and go about hungry." I assume you have not talked to British men and women old enough and from a "common" background who remember being born into that widespread poverty. This is the legacy of Churchill and the social system he defended, the word "common" in the UK is almost an insult - you're either one of the privileged very few, or you're a "commoner", one of the vast mass of society regarded undeserving; I remember telling a girl she had a common name, meaning very frequent, and she thought I was insulting her - this was the social system Churchill was defending! And thank history for the threat of "evil empires" of socialist Germany and communist Soviets that fought for a more equitable world without whom those in control of democracies in the West would not have cared for the masses of "common" people.
OSLO, Norway (Feb. 20) - Things probably would have gone better without Coke for a codfish that swallowed a soda can.
Stig Skaar and his family in western Norway found a slightly dented but intact Coca-Cola can inside the stomach of the fish, media reported Friday.
''I could see something wasn't right,'' Skaar was quoted as saying by his local newspaper, Marsteinen, in the western Norway town of Austevoll, some 185 miles west of Oslo.
The fish, caught in the waters off Norway's western coast, was long and skinny and weighed just a few pounds - far less than the 22 pounds a healthy cod of that length should weigh.
The empty soda can filled the fish's entire stomach, leaving no room for real food.
''It's completely unbelievable that he got the whole thing down,'' Skaar said.
Bergens Tidende, the newspaper in the nearby city of Bergen, reported that cod are notorious for their voracious and indiscriminate appetites.
For example, cods in Norwegian waters have swallowed an 11-pound otter and six frozen hamburger patties, the paper said.
Well it has to be said, Gnome looks far more corporate and professional in its restrained, no-nonsense look. KDE on the otherhand has that consumer, incurable-featuritis, gimme-galore look and feel of late 1990s.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;75408 4996;fp;16;fpid;0
It's unofficial: Microsoft bets business on Linux
Rodney Gedda
04/11/2005 08:31:35
The next time Bill Gates sends an e-mail through Microsoft's shiny new Wireless LAN it will be passed through a behind-the-scenes Linux-based network appliance.
Earlier this year Microsoft and Aruba Networks jointly announced the two companies will work to replace Microsoft's existing Cisco wireless network with Aruba's centrally-managed infrastructure, which eliminates the need for individual changes on the access points.
Aruba Networks was selected to provide the networking equipment for what is considered to be one of the world's largest next-generation wireless LANs, serving more than 25,000 simultaneous users a day in some 60 countries. According to an Aruba press statement, Microsoft's new WLAN will be deployed in 277 buildings covering more than 17 million square feet using Aruba mobility controllers, mobility software and some 5000 wireless access points.
What the press statement didn't mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its "Get the Facts" marketing campaign.
Mark Robards, Aruba Network's Asia-Pacific vice president, said the company's mobility controller switches provide integrated security, including a firewall, VPN, and hardware encryption, and they are "all Linux-based".
Robards said the network rollout with Microsoft is going well and is likely to take two years to complete and will contain as many as 7000 access points. Indeed, Aruba is recruiting Linux developers to work on its mobility controller software. In an advertisement on the company's Web site, Aruba is seeking a senior Linux software engineer with "expert knowledge of Linux and extensive Linux kernel experience".
Sunjeev Pandey, senior director of Microsoft IT, said the company is "pleased to be partnering with Aruba in the upgrade of Microsoft's next-generation wireless LAN".
"This partnership will allow Microsoft to leverage a cutting-edge wireless and mobility platform that provides us the scalability, performance and security that our environment demands," Pandey said.
Pandey's appraisal of Aruba's technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft's "Get the Facts" rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure, and higher-performing choice over Linux.
Well it's simple, Microsoft shouldn't have dared to threaten a whole entire nation. I'm sure that *responsible* governments everywhere will have their eyes wide open now and take cue from this threat. Switching to OSS should be a national priority and a cause of activism for every concerned citizen worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
24 hours is nonsense. I'd say 24 days for the basics and 24 months for a better mastery of the basics is a more reasonable estimate. Unix is *not* KDE and how to burn a CD or play a game in KDE. Unix is posix, bash, sed, awk, perl, vim, and so on.
Speaking of the MIT laptop - the next half-of-the-world-hardware-standard should be the next how-things-should-be-standard.
I have gone open source lately and by that I don't mean openoffice.org instead of MS-Office or gnome/kde instead of windows explorer, but I mean real gnu just how the unix culture intended it to be. I think it's ludicrous that people switch to a *nix and try to run it like a windows, that'd be too dumb and missing the point on unix. Windows may be good for dummies but people shouldn't be encouraged to remain dummies for decades, and open source shouldn't try to imitate that encouragement.
For example, any computer user worth his salt and intending to use a computer for longer than a couple of months should pretty soon be starting to learn how to use LaTeX, and use that instead of MSWord and Powerpoint especially that it's simpler and far better. Same can be said for project R and sqlite instead of Excel and Access - both are once known simpler and far better. Add Perl to that, and with CTAN, CRAN and CPAN, and within a few months I'd kick any MS user's ass with my $100 laptop. Those are simple things, teach them to high school kids, just the basics of them, no need for abstract deep stuff for large scale programming at this point, and I'm sure they'd pick them up more easily than I did.
My favourite stuff right now are stuff that I know for sure would run on the simplest hardware out there, be stable, fast and secure (no data loss or erros), and I don't need to worry about upgrading to what nonsense Mircosoft is trying to sell me next nor the hardware I need to run it.
That's nonsense. Open source is world-based, *not* US-based. And if you're worried about the trade deficit perhaps it's time you do something about your Microsoft-lenient corporate-whore "patriotic" president; Clinton left you in a much better situation.
or a sentence; open Source is the future, it's inevitable.
Slashdot seems to be falling victim to a pattern of trolltastic, usenet-like article submissions and unfortuntely many of those have been passed by editors and published on the site. The post itself is usually in stark contrast with the real content of the news they refer to. In some of those recent examples:
6 16230&from=rss1 2/2027218&tid=126&tid=14
- democrats hate freedom of speech http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/03/1
- Korean Lab Worker Forced to Donate Her Own Eggs (meaning: those stem cell research are babykilling backstabbing immoral bunch) http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/
- This article post above that's striving to reach a conclusion that global warming is in much debate and CO2 is pretty innocent
Something needs to be done about this. I don't read rightwing blogs because I don't need their lies, I prefer my news to be reliable and not twisted and if slashdot continues like this it will be pretty unfortunate.
I have seen a lot of such trolltastic rightwing article posts lately and the editors seem either oblivious to them or otherwise. If you can remember some more of them then do post links in your reply to this post.
Had 60 million Americans been living next to Germany it would've swept through them just as easily. Enough with the bullshit.
"Unfortunately, very few among the general population in Western Europe and the US seem to know that historians do not debate whether the war was won by the Soviet or Anglo-Saxon effort, but on how long the Soviet victory would have been postponed if the landing at the beach in Normandy, France, had not taken place. How many know that at the time of the celebrated landing, in June 1944, four-fifths of the German forces were on the Eastern front, trying in vain to stop the mounting Red Army offensive? How many of those Western European international relations or history students know that 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in this war, compared to the 295,000 Americans killed mostly in the war against Japan and the 380,000 British civilians and soldiers killed on both fronts?" http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/GF02Dh03.html (nevermind that this is a japanese source, this is a well-established historical fact beyond dispute that I just cited the first I found on googling it, I've long known it and read it in Western publications, ask any respected Western historian or google for it)
The Americans, as usual, came late to the party and stole the photo-op. Enough with the bullshit. The Americans were essentially insignificant in the war against Germany. Their most significant contribution were the war crimes of firebombing the civilian population of Tokyo where 100,000 civilians died in 1 night (Watch 11 lessons from the life of Robert McNamara where he himself tells in detail how he carried out that plan and cites that number of 100,000 civilians burned alive in 1 night) and then the dropping of two nuclear bombs over civilian japanese populations. And then they dare put the Germans officials on trial for war crimes and call Germany "evil"! Such bullshit!
I have been modded down the other day for stating the truth about Churchill - you guys live in bullshit tales about history and don't like to hear the truth. I bothers me much how there can be such bullshit about a history so recent and such persistent belief in lies amongst the mass population even though historians are in no debate about the issues.
What you guys are missing out on is that it's a whole different definition of what's foolish and smart that the rich have. What's smart for the average and poor guy is actually considered very foolish by the rich, and vice versa. This is a classic reason why some people will never get rich, because the harder they try to be smart (poor smart) the more it'll be certain that they'll forever be poor. The poor and the rich just have totally different value systems and therefore definitions of what's smart and foolish.
Yes, a trade embargo against food and medicine are GOOD, let those stinkin' socialists and their kids starve, be ill and die, because the USA *must* always be right: This excerpt is from a 2002 Oxfam report entitled Cuba: Social Policy at the Crossroads: Maintaining Priorities, Transforming Practice ""Cuba's achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy."" -- the United Nations, April 11, 2000 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/sfeature/sf_vi ews_uriarte.html
That's the whole idea. What makes me fume about those idiots is that they are assertive about their idiocy. You don't need to point out their critical fallacies to them, they themselves will do it and do it flamboyantly and shockingly. They already know they're wrong yet they push their wrong and want the whole world to drop what's right and go along with them. For example, you'd hope to point out to them, like you said, that science is about the natural explanation of phenomena and that their arguments are besides science, well, guess what, in their friggin' words they explicitly say that they want science to be "logical", not "natural". Some elected dipshits from Kansas want to redefine science. Their new version (of science standards) changes the very definition of science from "seeking natural explanations" to "seeking logical explanations." - it's what they've written and said, and it's what those elected officials are doing.
The world does not look at this with laughter, it looks at it with deep familiar concern, this is no joke or thing for laughter, and it's not a new thing nor a new concern, the world has always been concerned about what the American corrupt politicians elected by an idiot American majority are inflicting on it. We know that there are liberal Americans and we love them, but we know for sure they're not in the majority and that the majority of Americans know they're wrong in this US vs World thing and yet persist. This is why we - to use your word - "hate" you, Americans, and you deserve it - we love American liberals but we "hate" the average American, and yes, not me, the world does from the finest of the European wine-sipping oversexed erudite elite to the most deprived illiterate starving orphan in some barren eighth-world shithole, on average the world "hates" the average American. And don't bullshit us, this Kansas board is elected, and it isn't an exceptional case, we know it too well and for too long to be fooled; Bush has been elected twice now and the US liberals have done everything reasonable and within their breathes in 2000 and yet again in 2004 to make it clear to Americans in no ambiguous terms why he's a piece of shit. But no, the average American voter consents to hating the gays, the abortionists and everything else be damned, 'the world may "go fuck itself" as long as I get my 2 litres of Coke at walmart for 69 cents and cheap petrol for my big huge SUV'.
And watch how I'll get modded down by dipshits for saying this - those modders know it's true that the world friggin' "hates" the American majority for this very same reason as the Kansas ID case multiplied by many other concerns from economic sanctions and wars against already poor nations to fighting socialism and promoting social injustice so on, and those self-righteous pieces of shit don't stop yapping "why do they hate us?!" on TV and in print and yet I'll get modded down for saying this. The modders who'll mod this a down think it's unacceptable for someone to say "ouch" when beaten up or being concerned for the beaten up, they don't like to hear it - beating up the poor and weak itself doesn't offend them but it offends them when the poor and weak cry in pain.
For a moment I thought it was saying Groklaw. I'm glad Groklaw isn't shutting down.
"If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs." - Ah, utilitarian truth! How marvellous! We don't want a truth that's reallly true by itself, but a truth that serves what we want. It goes like this "What will happen if this is true? Oh shit! It will lead to things we won't like! No, it can't be true then! Let's choose a truth that leads to what we like!"
I think you're right, there's a huge, huge tremendous conflict of interests here. How huge? well, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment money, that huge! Even for a whole university department that's a lot. I remember the impression I was left with when I witnessed a couple of professors I studied under go out of their way to secure just half a million of grant money for their department - I was thinking at the time that there was really no money in Academia. The ironic thing is they cite the hundreds of millions of investments as backup for his claims, well, in fact, that's a huge big problem for the credibility of his claims!
The other point is that quantum theory, as I've heard, is one of the best supported theories in science. It is true that any theory that lasts long enough is due for a major, radical revision, usually by a obscure outsider, but still, I doubt it would be this. Einstein did indeed turn physics on its head, but he sure wasn't trying to sell anything.
Like they say, the 'proof is in the pudding' - until this is widely replicated, there's nothing to get excited about.
"Jim Breyer is not against monopolies, he is just against monopolies that others have."
i d=313
Thank you! And in other news, see this...
Wal-Mart Says 30% Market Share Too Big
In a deliciously ironic turn of events, Wal-Mart has called on the British government to intervene in the growing market dominance of rival retailer Tesco.
In comments to the London Sunday Times, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott suggests that having more than 30 percent of the market in one category is too much. "As you get over 30% and higher I am sure there is a point where government is compelled to intervene," he said. "At some point the government has to look at it."
Tesco, which operates superstores similar to Wal-Mart's, is Britain's largest retailer. The company also has a substantial international presence and ranks as the world's sixth largest retail chain with $51 billion in revenue last year.
Scott's call for government intervention was prompted by figures released last week showing that Tesco now captures 31 percent of UK grocery sales, up from 28 percent last year. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart's share of the British food market (through its Asda subsidiary) has fallen from 27 to 17 percent.
In the U.S., small business owners and community activists who favor vigorous enforcement of antitrust policies were delighted by Wal-Mart's move. However, the company has not yet said whether it plans to ask the federal government to intervene in its own growing market dominance.
Wal-Mart has about one-third of the U.S. market for numerous household staples, such as toothpaste, diapers, and shampoo. According to industry analysts at Retail Forward, Wal-Mart is on track to control 35 percent of the U.S. grocery market within the next few yeas.
http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_slug.php?slug
FYI - Ayn Rand, the darling of the idiotic US right, is not taken seriously by any serious scholar of any field. You might've as well quoted Deepak Chopra. Go read someone worth citing and come back.. :-)
And you're either a liar if you claim you have a doctoral degree, or if you really do you're a big shame on the state of higher education for lacking the critical faculties to respond when other point out your critical fallacies with anything other than concluding with an ad hominem. End of discussion.
What hatred?!
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t ext-project/history/riverwar/leftframe.html
Everything I have written about you can find everywhere if you cared. Even those who stand up for Churchill don't deny his faults "Much has been made of the implicit hypocrisy of Churchill in declaring such sweeping rights of self-determination which in no way affected his attitude toward the British Empire. This criticism is certainly valid..." http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.c
Read his book "The River War - An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan (1902)" in which he admires the efficiency of a European power at wiping out the "barbarians" and "savages" that dared resist it and defend themselves "Thus ended the battle of Omdurman--the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians. Within the space of five hours the strongest and best-armed savage army yet arrayed against a modern European Power had been destroyed and dispersed, with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk, and insignificant loss to the victors." http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/e
If you find "hatred" in what I said, it is Churchill you hate!
The Nazis and Soviets had their faults, no doubt, but Churchill's "evil empire" rhetoric was bullshit! Hitler was no less "evil" than Churchill was, by any means. In fact, man for man and cause for cause, Hitler is far more respectable than that patrician pig.
"It scares me that there are people who think the systematic and sanctioned extermination of a race of people (the jews in this case, but the specifics don't really matter, the crime is the same) is not evil in every sense and nuance of the word. Germany at the time *was* an evil place to be, no inverted commas are required. More equitable. Right." - And they turned the jews into soap too. right? What nonsense! The "extermination" tale as popularly told is one of the big sensationalist lies of the century and it is frightening that there are so many idiots in this world who would uphold it as unquestionable. Why is it illegal for historical scholars in many countries to question it? Why is it illegal for them to exercise their skepticism, a required duty for a scholar and the essence of a scholarship, and debate the evidence for and against in search for a truth? Can a true tale not uphold itself? There are many Jewish historians who denounce the big lie, you can find them if you cared for historical truth.
"... or Lady Aston and Mr Churchill: "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your drink" "Madam, if you were my wife I would drink it." - why are you citing this? he was a rhetorical clown. When Churchill was enjoying his drunken jokes with the ladies of high society there were millions of hungry people on the streets of England. Here's something more worthwhile of admiration if you thought the role of a politician was any more than to entertain http://hitler.org/speeches/12-10-40.html
"As for your last points, I have never (ever) even *heard* of anyone taking the word 'common' as an insult apart from on soap operas in the middle of a screaming row, and I grew up in a Northern city. We weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination - my father worked on the docks, my mother in various office-jobs. I was hardly a poster-boy for a class-warrior, but I studied hard, got into a good (free) school, went to (free) university, and did a (free) doctoral degree. As someone who ought to be railing against the man (according to your model) I think you're just plain wrong. Any medical/dental care I ever needed was free, and I never considered myself 'beneath' anyone. There is no class-distinction in any of the above, and I've never felt myself to be a member of this lower-class of which you speak." - exactly! and that is something you should be thankful for, and not take for granted, because this is what the achievement of all those who fought for a more equitable society in England has given you, a free education and free healthcare. I have lived in Northen cities, I have talked to many old people who remember those times before the NHS and the welfare state.
"Of course there were always those wealthier than I in the UK, but hell, it's only money. There are people wealthier than I in the USA, too! Having *lived* and *worked* in a Northern city, where the vote has always been for socialist labour in my lifetime, I don't think my 'who cares' attitude is atypical. This is not the "incredible poverty" you portray - in fact having now lived in California for a while, I'd say the British system is better - we don't have a significant underclass (like the mexican itinerant workers) as California has. Unemployment in Britain is currently 4.7%, Unemployment in the USA is currently 5.5% (both seasonally-unadjusted figures)." I find it astounding that someone with a doctoral degree would make the mistake of reponding to a "portrayal" of England during the first half of the 20th century by giving statistics from the "current" 21st century! You have the threat of European socialism to thank for how good you're having it right now.
I had been a lifetime half-admirer and reader of Churchill's material, and I say half-admirer because I think he's way overrated, and especially the Nobel prize - I think it's ludicrous that he was awarded a Nobel prize in literature before far more deserving thinkers such as Sartre, Steinbeck, Becket, and Camus. Let's be frank, I have respect for the Nobel prizes in the hard sciences but other 'soft' prizes get meddled in politics too often. Martin Heidegger, a giant of the century and a father of its thought, was never awarded the Nobel prize due to his Nazi affiliation. Where's Churchill amongst the scholars of literature and humanities? Who cites him with any seriousness? I can say with near certainty that I have never heard one serious scholar citing Churchill as anything other than a political or popular figure; his literature might've not existed as far as serious literature itself is concerned. Compare that to Heidegger who's almost inescapable in terms of his significant and valuable contribution.
In this time, when the rotten social and imperialist politics of Churchill are being revived by the American merchants of death and widespread poverty, I can only voice my strongest condemnation for what he was and what he stood for.
I know I'll be modded down to oblivion for saying this, but fuck it! There you go: Enough with the "evil empire" nonsense, you sound like a fool parrotting the propaganda of 19th century mercantile imperialists- the victors' history and blind nationalism of the fools may have made Churchill a superstar, but in reality he was a stuck-up pig of the upper-classes. You should know that it was the electoral defeat of Churchill that gave the UK its National Health Service, and India its independence. Churchill was a rich imperialist pig who had little care for the natives of the colonies or even the poor of his own nation. Churchill was a pig who waxed lyrical over the mass slaughter of the Sudanese by the machine guns of the British empire (read his friggin' war correspondence from 1899), and admired the Italians for their imperialist 'rape of Ethiopia'. Churchill was a duplicitous pig who claimed he was fighting for the freedom of the people in Eastern Europe who were in the way of the Nazis but had to be contractually arm-twisted by Roosevelt, very much, the liberal president, to extend that same freedom to the people of the Earth under the British empire; read about the friggin Atlantic charter, Churchill insisted that the right for self-determination applied to those about to be under the German empire but *not* to those under the British empire, read about the friggin' Atlantic charter, this was at the height of his 'freedom' rhetoric. I have pride in many, many things British, but Churchill, what he stood for, and his "evil empire" rhetoric is *not* one of them. Here's what the leader of the so-called "evil empire" said about Britain of the day " She controls sixteen million square miles. In India, for example, a hundred million colonial workers with a wretched standard of living must labor for her. One might think, perhaps, that at least in England itself every person must have his share of these riches. By no means! In that country class distinction is the crassest imaginable. There is poverty - incredible poverty - on the one side, and equally incredible wealth on the other... The workmen of that country which possesses more than one-sixth of the globe and of the world's natural resources dwell in misery, and the masses of the people are poorly clad.. In a country which ought to have more than enough bread and every sort of fruit, we find millions of the lower classes who have not even enough to fill their stomachs, and go about hungry." I assume you have not talked to British men and women old enough and from a "common" background who remember being born into that widespread poverty. This is the legacy of Churchill and the social system he defended, the word "common" in the UK is almost an insult - you're either one of the privileged very few, or you're a "commoner", one of the vast mass of society regarded undeserving; I remember telling a girl she had a common name, meaning very frequent, and she thought I was insulting her - this was the social system Churchill was defending! And thank history for the threat of "evil empires" of socialist Germany and communist Soviets that fought for a more equitable world without whom those in control of democracies in the West would not have cared for the masses of "common" people.
"What would the affect be on sea life?"
Not much, they've always liked Coke :
OSLO, Norway (Feb. 20) - Things probably would have gone better without Coke for a codfish that swallowed a soda can.
Stig Skaar and his family in western Norway found a slightly dented but intact Coca-Cola can inside the stomach of the fish, media reported Friday.
''I could see something wasn't right,'' Skaar was quoted as saying by his local newspaper, Marsteinen, in the western Norway town of Austevoll, some 185 miles west of Oslo.
The fish, caught in the waters off Norway's western coast, was long and skinny and weighed just a few pounds - far less than the 22 pounds a healthy cod of that length should weigh.
The empty soda can filled the fish's entire stomach, leaving no room for real food.
''It's completely unbelievable that he got the whole thing down,'' Skaar said.
Bergens Tidende, the newspaper in the nearby city of Bergen, reported that cod are notorious for their voracious and indiscriminate appetites.
For example, cods in Norwegian waters have swallowed an 11-pound otter and six frozen hamburger patties, the paper said.
All this talks reminds me of the Pepsi fish!
Well it has to be said, Gnome looks far more corporate and professional in its restrained, no-nonsense look. KDE on the otherhand has that consumer, incurable-featuritis, gimme-galore look and feel of late 1990s.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;75408 4996;fp;16;fpid;0
It's unofficial: Microsoft bets business on Linux
Rodney Gedda
04/11/2005 08:31:35
The next time Bill Gates sends an e-mail through Microsoft's shiny new Wireless LAN it will be passed through a behind-the-scenes Linux-based network appliance.
Earlier this year Microsoft and Aruba Networks jointly announced the two companies will work to replace Microsoft's existing Cisco wireless network with Aruba's centrally-managed infrastructure, which eliminates the need for individual changes on the access points.
Aruba Networks was selected to provide the networking equipment for what is considered to be one of the world's largest next-generation wireless LANs, serving more than 25,000 simultaneous users a day in some 60 countries. According to an Aruba press statement, Microsoft's new WLAN will be deployed in 277 buildings covering more than 17 million square feet using Aruba mobility controllers, mobility software and some 5000 wireless access points.
What the press statement didn't mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its "Get the Facts" marketing campaign.
Mark Robards, Aruba Network's Asia-Pacific vice president, said the company's mobility controller switches provide integrated security, including a firewall, VPN, and hardware encryption, and they are "all Linux-based".
Robards said the network rollout with Microsoft is going well and is likely to take two years to complete and will contain as many as 7000 access points. Indeed, Aruba is recruiting Linux developers to work on its mobility controller software. In an advertisement on the company's Web site, Aruba is seeking a senior Linux software engineer with "expert knowledge of Linux and extensive Linux kernel experience".
Sunjeev Pandey, senior director of Microsoft IT, said the company is "pleased to be partnering with Aruba in the upgrade of Microsoft's next-generation wireless LAN".
"This partnership will allow Microsoft to leverage a cutting-edge wireless and mobility platform that provides us the scalability, performance and security that our environment demands," Pandey said.
Pandey's appraisal of Aruba's technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft's "Get the Facts" rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure, and higher-performing choice over Linux.
Well it's simple, Microsoft shouldn't have dared to threaten a whole entire nation. I'm sure that *responsible* governments everywhere will have their eyes wide open now and take cue from this threat. Switching to OSS should be a national priority and a cause of activism for every concerned citizen worldwide.
It's war! In full heat and full charge! Whomever threw the first chair spilt the bad blood!