Yeah, I use KDE 4.4 under Arch Linux, and it's seriously awesome.
Going back to Windows afterwards is just painful *sigh*. Even something as simple as split views and tabs in Dolphin is so much better. Urgh. Why can't Windows implement that =). Heck, even Putty doesn't have tabs...haha...
Also, it's "dual".
I have to agree with an earlier poster though, some things like dual-monitor setups on Windows are just easier - they Just Work. So features, yeah, KDE, but polish, Windows. Just my 2c.
Huh, which politican said this? You don't mean Tony "mad monk" Abbott, do you?
And yeah, I agree, if you need a filter to protect your children from "finding" child pornography, something in your household is seriously stuffed up. It's not our fault you're a lazy/incompetent parent).
You don't "accidetanlly" find this stuff, ok (although with Australia's dodgy definition of child porn, I can see this changing - heck, I've seen friends with joke emails filled with naked Simpsons characters, that would apparently now count as child pornography - gross, and poor taste, but illegal? I mean, really...).
Now, I don't support chlid pornography any more than the next person, but this just sounds like some more ridiculous pandering to the religious right, and stupid government posturing that will only waste our (taxpayer's) money. I mean, yes, I know we Christians have a reputation to maintain, of being all show and bluster, and nothing more, but this is getting absurd.
Firstly, what idiot carrying actual child pornography is going to tick yes on the form, then brazenly hand over his laptop? It'll be encrypted, for crying out loud, or they'll just sent it over the damn network, why on earth would they store it in the clear on their laptop. And yes, say they are completely retarded and didn't know how to go to www.truecrypt.org, at the very least bury it deep within the filesystem, it's not exactly going to be on their desktop in a folder entitled "CHILD PORNOGRAPHY - CUSTOM OFFICIALS, DO NOT LOOK HERE" is it, now?
If you look at this SMH article (as a background, SMH is a fairly left-wing paper, normally)
they ask the very good question of why the heck does it say "pornography", as opposed to "child pornography"? It's like they wanted to make it intentionally vague, and catch out people who were not carrying illegal material as well. Seriously, pornography may be a terrible evil and all, but it's hardly your right to impose your own moral values on the public to this level.
And if you read the comments, one apt observers notes it'll probably be the customs officials themselves who'll make a copy of and distribute this stuff ("normal" pornography), that is. Seriously, if you know the sort of people that work these jobs...probably a bit like those clowns at the TSA, who beat each other up, over jokes about the size of their you-know-whats...
This is nearly as hypocritical, and pathetically absurd as say, Thailand's whole two-faced "we're prudes" on the one hand, yet we allow a thriving s*x industry on the other. I mean, they make pornography illegal (http://www.thaipulse.com/cautions/laws-against-pornography-and-indecency/), and then basically have legallised child prostitution? These people are a joke. It's nearly as bad as their whole barbaric Lèse majesté laws - all bluster and face, and no real substance underneath.
Have any Australians actually encountered this policy? Experiences? Next time I fly, if it weren't for their rumoured lack of a sense of humour, even if I don't actually possess any pornography, I'd be sorely tempted to write something vaguely amusing on the form, or possibly boot up my laptop, and play one of those indecent scat videos. I'm sure the Slashdot community would be happy to suggest things to play here...lol.
You realise it's these "kooks" that gave us the OSS legacy we're using now, right?
And now little punks like you are using that legacy, and telling them to bugger off...
I would have thought your parents would have taught you better.
Look, I think Stallman and co are seriously wacky as much as the next person, but it's actually thanks to people like him that the FSF and OSS even got off the ground. So I think we should at least give them credit for that. And it's a real shame when grassroots people like him, or say, all those civil liberties groups, whom us mainstream people love to write off as crazy hippies - we reap all the benefits of all their campaigning and what not, then act like ungrateful brats to them.
It's not to say you can't make fun of them, or say they're a bit loopy, but saying we should "jettison" them? Are you willing to jettison all the work they've done as well, and go back to a Windows and Apple only world? Heck, even Slashdot runs on OSS...willing to give that up?
Yes, but people like you don't seem to realise, this isn't about the actual code for the H264 encoders/decoders. These have already been written by OSS coders, with just the specs and without having access to any of the code made by proprietary companies.
It's about the patents that are behind it - and then we open the whole can of worms on software patents. So no, it's not about people being compensated for their work, it's about corporations having large portfolios of patents, which they can use to bully anybody who tries to write their own H264 decoder. That's why we have the freedom to install codec outside the US, but inside the US, well, you have to use our servers outside your lovely country *grins*.
Actually, there is. If you're short-sighted, you won't see that.
The MPEG-LA isn't a charity, and they'd nothing better than to lock people in, and then do a switch and change a la GIF.
That's not a bad thing, by any means - they have to make a living, after all (or rather, a living for all the corporations that have a patent in their patent pool)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA
However, it's people like you who will condemn us to being locked in to these corporations. It's people that are a bit more long-sighted that gave us things like Linux, the BSDs, the GNU toolchain, and other OSS. Heck, even Apache and Perl, on which this site run wouldn't be around. We'd still be stuck with proprietary OSes, and applications stacks, and paying through our nose for everything we wanted to do or run on our systems. Competition is a good thing *grins*. Heck, even Google releases a stackload of software for free, do you think it could do that if everything was patent encumbered?
Well, the point I made, which you seem to wilfully ignore is that it's not giving up freedom - it's about trusting in God to make your life better. From our perspective, we're not giving up anything - sure, we "give up" adultery, or we "give up" murder and false testimony, but from our perspective, these are all bad things we're casting out.
And guess what, nobody can *force* you to be a Christian. Heck, even if I held a gun to your head, and said, proclaim Christ, it still wouldn't have one whit of difference on what you felt in your heart.
So in answer to your question, no, it's not about "giving" up anything *shrugs*, it's just about listening to somebody older and wiser, somebody from whom you can walk away at any time. Like I said before, it's not even like a parent, who can ground you - you're free to walk away at any time, with no real consequences, except of course, losing God, I guess. And suffering the consequences of your actions (e.g. casual sex, or murder, or lying), although I suppose if you feel nothing about those things, then that won't affect you anyway.
And I am sorry to hear you stopped being a Christian from a young age. However, I might point out that I was never a Christian from my parents as such - my parents are quiet atheisth, my father militantly so. However, I chose Christianity, after a long consideration of many religions, because I found it the best way to explain that thing which all my education could not (I'm an engineer) - the human condition.
Christianity for me has never been about accepting things without question - that's a common myth perpetuated by atheists...lol. In fact, I'd allege it's many of them who don't want to, for reasons of their own, think deeply about these things - questions about their morality, or about what life is about. These are questions that Christians, or people of any faith, really, would constantly question. Our God teaches us to question these things - in fact, he encourages it. If you read the bible, the bible is full of people challenging God. Wrongly, often, but still, they challenge him. Even Abram, patriarch of the Israelites, doubted God (Gen 15), and asked for proof. He didn't need it, and in fact, it should have been insulting to God, but He did give it to him, in the form of a convenantal ceremony.
And the bible I know *is* the same, from Genesis through to Revelations. It's called biblical theology, and if you really did know as much about the Christianity that you claim you used to know, then you would know that. God still is a vengeful God - but he is also a loving God. I don't think the two are necessarily orthogonal. People might like to take Jesus, and claim him as their own, as some kind of mushy, hugs all around kind of guy, but he's also a judging Lord - in fact it'll be Jesus himself who will judge those on the last day (those who should be with him, and those who shouldn't). He's actually a pretty terrifying guy, if you actually read the bible. And if you actually read the Gospels carefully, you'll see he talks a lot about judgement there as well.
So on the whole, God is pretty consistent - in the OT, he was actually very loving and forgiving, it's just the Israelites were pretty screwed up. And in the NT, he's still loving, but also still the hard, Just God he was before.
Because justice, really, when you think about it, is hard and unrelenting - it's ok when somebody else is being judged, but when you're up on the stand yourself you want to say, "Gee, gosh, God, can you let me off this once, just turn a blind eye, ok?". It'd be like saying, I wish for a court system that would be fair and just to everybody else, but for me, can you just let me off the hook, all the time please? I'd certainly have no faith in a system like that. So while it is hard, sometimes you have to be adult and accept what comes.
Then we come to your gross misunderstanding of Hell, limbo, all that. Limbo isn't in the bible - go look it up. For me, it's very simple - Heaven is God's glory, Hell, if you act
Actually, it is by *definition* an ad hominem attack - you can argue till your'e blue in the face, but you are in effect linking character attacks directly with the actual argument inself, rather than arguing the merits of what's actually being discussed.
And also, let's clear up what happened. There's been a severe lack of investigative journalism that's happened here. There wasn't a coverup, in the case of Ratzinger. Gross misunderstandings, and a media blow-up, yes, but not a coverup.
There's a defense of him here - sure, you could argue it's biased, but it seems a little bit more researched than a lot of the other rot I've seen around, as well as compared to your rambling post about stuffed Pedobears, and claims of them writing a sorry letter...
There's no *grand conspiracy*, they didn't ' "sit" on cases. There's people being human and misundestanding each other - nobody was "shuffled" off anywhere, and the police were involved..
*shakes heads*. You honestly have no idea what you're talking about. You don't like God because he restricts your freedoms? Like a child who cries out, "But no, I want to do that! Now!". That's fine, you're entitled to those views, and I can respect that.
However, I'm going to provide you with a little insight into how Christians thing, so you don't come across as so ignorant. You see, for people who believe in God, a part of that is believing that he has their interests at heart - where their interests refers to their growth as a person. So let's take the sex before marriage thing, or really, adultery as we call it - a Christian honestly and sincerely believes that sex outside of marriage is damaging, that a casual approach to sex, as something that's done purely to sate your own lusts is very bad for you, and damages your ability to love. So we don't see it so much as curtailing our freedoms, as more a parent saying, "Please don't do that, you're hurting yourself". That's not to say we don't rebel. Pftt, I have heaps *grins*. But at the end of the day, the whole *point* of Christianity is that you believe it helps you, and that God knows best.
The moment I stop believe that, is the moment I stop being a Christian. And that's my choice *shrugs*. God gave us all free will. And the thing is, unlike your parent he's not going to smack you, or ground you, or cut you off. He's just going to say, "That's really sad", and let you walk away.
And atheist are undoubtedly going to do the whole "He's evil, he'll condemn you to hell!" speech. He'll do no such thing. Hell is just the absence of God - this next part is my view - the fire, the brimstone, the lake of unending fire are just a metaphor for what it's like for a Christian to be without God. Because think about it - all those descriptions of Hell came from *Christians*, not atheists. So really, think about it - your'e an atheist, and God's just said, Ok fine, you can go. What's the big deal? Do you really want to be in heaven singing spiritual hymns for all eternity to a God you don't believe in? I somehow doubt it. So what' the big deal?
He's not evil, he's just written a whole bunch of things in a book that he thinks will do you good. And really, when you boil it down, a lot of that is good wisdom. If you don't try to willfully misinterpret it, or do the whole "Let's refer to random Deuteronomy or Leviticus verses without understanding their context" game, then it actually makes a whole lot of sense. Sure, your life might be more "boring", in a sense, but you trade it off for a much better life down the track.
Ok, what exactly is it with all the Catholic-bashing on this forum, seriously? *sigh*. You have to love Slashdot. I'm not even Catholic, I don't even particularly like them (as a faith, I mean, I have nothing against Catholics people per se), and even I'm finding the vitriol and ranting on this thread a bit distasteful.
Firstly, who here has actually read the f-ing speech huh? I bet you none.
I'm having a bit of trouble finding a full transcript, but from what I can see, nothing he said was particularly controversial. A bit empty, and sappy, in my opinion, but hardly anything earth-shattering. I mean, saying the Internet needs a soul, and encouraging Catholics to promote the truth and human diginity online? You consider that some weird take-over-the-world conspiracy? And searching back through what else he's said on the Internet, apparently from last year, around May:
It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbors and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” he said last May.
“Friendship is a great human good, but it would be emptied of its ultimate value if it were to be understood as an end to itself.”It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbors and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” he said last May.
“Friendship is a great human good, but it would be emptied of its ultimate value if it were to be understood as an end to itself.”
And you bring up the whole "molesting children" thing to his arguments. That's an ad-hominem argument if ever I saw one. I mean, if we Slashdot people are really as reasonable and calmly rational as we try to purport to be, really...? Look, if he personally attacked children, yeah, sure, I'd think twice. But he's been in the job for what, a few years? And from all reports, and through trawling through what he's said/done, he is trying to shine line on the despicable things that happened. Maybe not fast enough *shrugs*. I'm not a victim, so I don't have much voice here, nor am I going to claim that I understand their pain - any words I can offer are pretty empty, and I suspect that applies to most of Slashdot. That's something for the victims, courts and church to sort out, and I really do hope it gets sorted out soon.
But at the end of the day, if you're going to attack the Pope, or the Catholics, you attack them on a discussion centred around child-abuse scandals. Why would you use a discussion forum where we're trying to dissect what he's said as your personal soap-box to rant and rave?
And if anybody manages to find a full transcript of what he said, please post it up, because I think it might clear a lot of the venom and raving on this thread
As somebody who lives in Australia, I have to say you probably have no idea what you're talking about...haha
That, or you bought into Telstra's reality distortion field. That 100Mbps service they're offering in Melbourne, is available to a very small minority only - it's available to about a million people in total, I believe, but most of those won't get anywhere near those speeds.
Also, the demand for it is terrible, probably because of the abysmal pricing. Basically, you have to get it in a cable bundle (with their c*appy tv offering), on a 24 month contract, which costs $169 for 50 Gb per month, or $269 for 100 Gb per month. And that includes both uploads and downloads. So no, I doubt it's really "available" in any sense for the majority of people.
What I should have done is differentiate between Chinese culture, that's been there for thousands of years, and the mentality from PRC, post=Cultural Revolution. That's what I mean by the "culture" endemic on the mainland.
Also, this isn't a racial thing (I hope not, at any rate, or I'm pretty screwed) but just different systems, which promote different ways of succeeding. Back home, perhaps that's what you have to do to excel. See comment by AzureDiamond below.
Cheating is certainly not as endemic from those countries. Just look at some of the other comments from other Australians here, my experience isn't exactly unique.
And using the link that you posted yourself:
" Students who speak English as a second language have been shown to commit academic dishonesty more and are more likely to be caught than native speakers, since they will often not want to rewrite sources in their own words, fearing that the meaning of the sentence will be lost through poor paraphrasing skills.[27] In the University of California system, international students make up 10% of the student body but comprise 47% of academic dishonesty cases.[28]"
Mainland Chinese students probably represent a sizeable majority of international students here in Australia, particularly from non-English speaking countries. Hence why they are so well-represented in academic dishonesty cases here, and have their reputation, deserved or not.
And no, it's not exactly racist. Firstly, I'm Chinese. *grins*. It's like Cohen making jokes about Jews *rolls eyes*. Seriously though, I don't think it's anything to do with our race - at least I hope not. And it's not "cultural" in the sense of Chinese culture, which any Chinese will proudly tell you is thousands of years old. However, it might be cultural in the sense that it's just a mentality from PRC, post Cultural Revolution - that anything goes. And that things like plagiarism are ok.
Also, I have to agree with the earlier poster, that part of it might just be desperation - English isn't their first language, and the only way they can see an out, at least to them, is to either copy, or pay somebody to do their essay. I remember back when I was in Chinese school, and I had to sit exams there...lol, I was a joke. I didn't copy, but I basically remember handing in exams with swathes and swathes of blank squares. Pretty humiliating, and I can see that the temptation would be strong. Still, as my parents would tell me, I didn't have the ruthless drive to succeed that a normal, good little filial Chinese boy from the mainland would.
And the business thing, political-correctness aside and all, there's a reason Chinese is famous for KIRF (http://www.engadget.com/tag/kirf). And that even Chinese nationals are worried to do business with them, for fear of their designs being stolen. And that the PRC has a reputation for endemic corruption and graft.
As sad as it is, I think I have to agree with many of the above commentators. There does seem to be a strange lack of morals in people from the PRC, particularly the students. In Australian universities, rightly or wrongly, they have something of a reputation for being underhanded, plagiarising cheats who you really, really do not want to have in your group assignments. That's not to say they're the only one's doing it, far from it, but they definitely have that reputation. Maybe things have changed, I don't know.
In terms of the underlying reason, It could be for any number of reasons. Maybe they find the language hard? *shrugs*. But then students from other countries don't resort to cheating. Or maybe they don't quite understand what exactly plagiarism is? I don't know. I doubt it. Maybe they don't know how to reference? I worked in one group where they basically copied entire paragraphs, word for word, from our mentor's project (submitted the year before). They didn't even both to change the product names to match what we were doing. And when I confronted them, they didn't seem particularly repentant, more annoyed they got caught. Heck, I've seen them submit in Wikipedia articles as their project, formatting unchanged.
I really don't think it's a cultural thing as such. True, Confucianism does have its weird quirks. But to argue that we have no morals is a little unfair. However, my father taught me a saying when we were young, I probably can't even write the characters anymore...haha...disgraceful, but basically, it went along the lines of when your wealth is short, your morals are correspondingly short. Maybe that's it. But I doubt most of the international students arriving here are exactly "poor", by any definition.
I suspect it's really just a "win at any costs" culture endemic on the mainland, combined with their infamous mercenariness. Even in business, from what I've heard, you really, really want to be careful dealing with them. They'll screw you over nine ways to Sunday, and sell their own grandmother to make a buck. *sigh*. It really is sad to see, but maybe things will change, as they get wealthier?
Err, yeah, but there's a world of difference between "punching a senator" in the face, and cracking jokes about him. Sorry, but that's just a ridiculous comparison and makes no sense.
And let's not spread fallacies here - the Lese Majeste law isn't really about threats, but also about anything that's considered disparaging in general. It's about violating the *dignity* of a sovereign or head of state.
Quite frankly, I'm going to get out there and say I think it's just plain ridiculous, and shows how backward and outdated Thailand is (and before you cry claims of racism, racism, my family is from SE Asia). I can make a website senatorconroy-is-an-idiot.com.au, and put anything I want there (within reason, of course - say, no child porn or hate speech), and nobody's going to be kicking down any doors.
Some hippy idiot throws a shoe at John Howard. Admittedly, the man's throwing abilities is an embarrassment to aussies everywhere, but even then, Howard laughs it off, and says "he's never be on my team (i.e. cricket). Even George Bush brushed off the whole shoeing thing.
With your second point, I have no love for Thaksin, but I don't really find him much worse than any of the other tin-pot dictators in the region. And the last few leaders in Thailand have all been outsed for corruption or various other crimes. Sorry, but basically, they're all wrong, ok, so trying to paint the current regime as anything other than militarily-imposed dictatoriship is just dishonest.
Firstly, your "sweaty linux nerds" comment was completely pointless, and paints you as a little bit shallow and bigoted. I *work* with Linux in my day-to-day job, not sure if that qualifies me as one of your "sweaty linux nerds". It's just a petty little insult that's unneeded. Also, this is a bit archaic, but normally we refer to it as animals that "sweat", human beings are said to "perspire".
Back to the main point, YouTube commands a large percentage of mindshare. Sorry, let me rephrase, YouTube *dominates* the online video market. Combined with Google Video, they pretty much wipe the market.
This is from 2008, but I doubt it's changed much, if anything, it probably dominates more:
If they changed, and combined this with a "use Google Chrome, or ChromeFrame", and they introduced the codec into Chromium as an auto-update, I'm pretty sure the market penetration of VP8 would escalate quite quickly. Realistically, they'd probably phase it in, much as they did with dropping IE6 support.
Ok, the apologists are just getting ridiculous now
.
I heard somebody above write it's not illegal to carry an AK-47 or RPG in Iraq. I can't verify that, perhaps somebody else can.
.
Let's just say, for arguments sake that by some weird stretch, these people weren't AIF insurgents, but were say, I don't know, normal mums and dads walking their kids to work.
Sure, I can believe Iraq might be a pretty lawless place. I haven't been there myself recently. But in what universe is it considered smartto carry a frickin RPG or assault-rifle and walk down the street? What, you're going to protect yourself against armed insurgents with those? *sigh*. Brilliant, just brilliant, there's a bunch of terrorists running around killing people, and the US military is running a land-battle against them to wipe them out, and you come up with the brilliant idea of protecting yourself by carrying the same weapons the terrorists are carrying.
And I see all these people hold up the van as a smoking gun. Guys, you drive a frigging van into an area that just got strafed by a gunship, with combatants still on the ground. Hell, if there was a firefight and the van got hit by small-arms fire from the insurgent's side, I can bet you Wikileaks and the liberal apologists wouldn't' exactly be in arms over it. Sure, I can believe that the van was unrelated to the AIF, and it tragic and terrible what happened, but in my books what they did falls under the "possibly well-intentioned but very, very stupid" category.
I think there must be something funky in your setup. Like, really...lol. Chrome is blazing fast where I am - on work computers, on my laptop (under both Windows 7 and Arch Linux). Firefox, on the other hand, feature-packed as it can be, is a bloated nightmare, chewing up RAM, and lagging like molasses. It's fine when your number of tabs is low (I think I'm not the only one, popular consensus with me is on this, pretty much everybody that tries it finds Chrome to be faster - feature-lacking yeah, but synthetic benchmarks as well as user experiences all show it to be meaningfully more performant.
Well, actually, stealing usually involves depriving somebody of property. So something like shoplifting is "stealing".
What's actually happening here is copyright infringement, they're just throwing around the stealing word to try and make it sound melodromatic.
See, that's where I take issue at those stupid anti-piracy videos they force us to watch at the cinemas. I watch a lot of movies - I probably hit the cinemas around once a week. Basically, I watch everything that comes out. I've racked up so many Greater Union Cinebuzz points, I could watch a month of free movies. But still, I'm forced to watch idiotic advertisements that try to equate copyright infringement with breaking into a car, or stealing a handbag? And a whole bunch of other ads for restaurants, cleaning services, and cinemas advertising. Come on...I paid money to see this damn movie, so I shouldn't have to sit there watching ads - it wastes my time, and it's actually annoying how inaccurate and farcial their propaganda is. And my friends that pirate movies (or heck, I've downloaded movies before, to be honest) - guess what, no long ads, no stupid inaccurate propaganda at the beginning.
And don't get me started on buying DVDs. There's these stupid long ads I have to sit through telling me how bad piracy is. I bought your stupid friggin DVD, ok, so yes, I'm bloody supporting you. Then there's all this ridiculousness with new budget DVDs not having subtitles - I'm hearing impaired, how bloody hard is it to put stupid English subtitles on your film? That's half the reason I like to buy DVDs. Instead, other people who download the MKV get a nice film experience, with no unskippable ads, they can watch it on anything they like, and guess what - some nice fellow transcripted subtitles for that "pirated" movie. I mean...seriously...the frigging pirates get a better experience than me, who just forked out $30 for your stupid DVD.
Cheers,
Victor
I'm going to have to agree with the parent. We used to share our school bus with different high school. I went to James Ruse, basically a selective school, where kids sit an entrance test to get in - think nerdy kids, essentially the top of their state (I was the exception *grins*, I was just lucky). Then the other school on the bus was Gilroy, a local independent Catholic school.
So we'd get tools on the bus, year 7 Gilroy kids who did stupid things like trip other people over, steal their wallets, spit, annoy the driver, that sort of thing. There was one bunch who kept bugging my friends and I because hey, we went to Ruse. One day, one of the Prefects from Gilroy picked up one of their kids, dragged him by the shirt back to us, and said "Apologise." I said, seriously, it's ok, but the prefect didn't relent. The kid grinned like an idiot, till he realised the prefect was serious. To this day, I'm grateful to that guy, for actually being responsible, because all the stupidity toned down after that.
Moral of the story, kids will be kids, they do stupid things. And a bit of jostling around isn't going to kill them. Sometimes you just need to show them you're not going to bend over every time.
And a few years later, those idiotic year 7's decided to put their bags down the middle of the bus, so people would trip over them walking in to the bus. So I walked over, grabbed all the bags, and threw them about 15m out the front door. The bus driver certainly didn't try to stop me. They were being complete tools to him as well.
Like it or not, for small things, you just have to teach your kids to be less of a wimp. I mean, there is a line - and I think here, what happened was serious enough that somebody should have stepped in. But if some kid flicks a rubber-band at another kid, that's not a reason to call in a teacher - you walk over to the kid, and tell him to stop it, and if he doesn't or says make me, say you'll rain nine kinds of s*it down on him if he doesn't. Bullies look for soft targets, they're not going to risk having their nose bloodied just so they can flick rubberbands or stuff grass down somebody's shirt.
The issue here is, what exactly is "safely shutting down the car". I can think of many cases where shutting down the car would *not* be a good idea. So I suppose the issue is, how much of the systems are critical and not, and is there some kind of mostly-manual fallback you can switch to, so the driver can at least control the vehicle?
I also work for an IB, although not in a client-facing area. Still, I'm not enough of a prat to intentionally start posting privileged info or restricted info on a public forum, or even a private form for that matter.
When we first interned, they told us there were restrictions on the sort of trading we could do on our own (e.g. have to disclose to the bank, must hold for 30 days etc.). A lot of people whined at the time, but look, seriously, you're working full-time for a IB, it's not like you really need to do day-trading on the side to put bread on the table.
For fun, sure, but how the heck do you find time during the day to do any serious trading, on your own account? And you're risking a lot, who's not to say that something you overhear at work won't influence your personal trading decisions, whether subconsciously or not. Or maybe a post-it note you saw on somebody else's desk? A little trading for fun, maybe, but I certainly wouldn't put the house on it, or start leveraging for it. So if I lose, meh, it's just pocket change.
It's the same reason I don't use FB, or put drunken photos of myself on Twitpics (well, fine I don't drink but meh, you get the idea). Civil rights or not, I don't want a Google search for my name by a HR hack to turn up something bad.
Err, because Bush and his ilk saw the world in a very black-and-white world, and thought Saddam Hussein was an evil twat, who should be removed? And unlike Kim Il Jong, they could probably do it (or so they thought) quickly and easily, without risk of nuclear recriminations? And because Hussein was universally hated by pretty much everybody in his country for raping, pillaging, and gassing his way across the land?
Slashdot Mirror
heya,
Yeah, I use KDE 4.4 under Arch Linux, and it's seriously awesome.
Going back to Windows afterwards is just painful *sigh*. Even something as simple as split views and tabs in Dolphin is so much better. Urgh. Why can't Windows implement that =). Heck, even Putty doesn't have tabs...haha...
Also, it's "dual".
I have to agree with an earlier poster though, some things like dual-monitor setups on Windows are just easier - they Just Work. So features, yeah, KDE, but polish, Windows. Just my 2c.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
The quote is "there is a danger".
(Sorry, I couldn't let that slide...haha...cue http://xkcd.com/386/...still, damn good reference *grins*).
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Huh, which politican said this? You don't mean Tony "mad monk" Abbott, do you?
And yeah, I agree, if you need a filter to protect your children from "finding" child pornography, something in your household is seriously stuffed up. It's not our fault you're a lazy/incompetent parent).
You don't "accidetanlly" find this stuff, ok (although with Australia's dodgy definition of child porn, I can see this changing - heck, I've seen friends with joke emails filled with naked Simpsons characters, that would apparently now count as child pornography - gross, and poor taste, but illegal? I mean, really...).
cheers,
Victor
heya,
As an Australian, I have to say...what the? This is the first I've heard of this, but it sounds bloody ridiculous.
I mean, seriously, this would be the same Labor party that say....just had their road/transport minister resign for visiting gay s*x clubs?
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ncl=dm89TYq5QNgdQeMwGfI6gmxCykKlM&topic=h
Now, I don't support chlid pornography any more than the next person, but this just sounds like some more ridiculous pandering to the religious right, and stupid government posturing that will only waste our (taxpayer's) money. I mean, yes, I know we Christians have a reputation to maintain, of being all show and bluster, and nothing more, but this is getting absurd.
Firstly, what idiot carrying actual child pornography is going to tick yes on the form, then brazenly hand over his laptop? It'll be encrypted, for crying out loud, or they'll just sent it over the damn network, why on earth would they store it in the clear on their laptop. And yes, say they are completely retarded and didn't know how to go to www.truecrypt.org, at the very least bury it deep within the filesystem, it's not exactly going to be on their desktop in a folder entitled "CHILD PORNOGRAPHY - CUSTOM OFFICIALS, DO NOT LOOK HERE" is it, now?
If you look at this SMH article (as a background, SMH is a fairly left-wing paper, normally)
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/travellers-to-be-searched-for-porn-20100520-vh09.html
they ask the very good question of why the heck does it say "pornography", as opposed to "child pornography"? It's like they wanted to make it intentionally vague, and catch out people who were not carrying illegal material as well. Seriously, pornography may be a terrible evil and all, but it's hardly your right to impose your own moral values on the public to this level.
And if you read the comments, one apt observers notes it'll probably be the customs officials themselves who'll make a copy of and distribute this stuff ("normal" pornography), that is. Seriously, if you know the sort of people that work these jobs...probably a bit like those clowns at the TSA, who beat each other up, over jokes about the size of their you-know-whats...
This is nearly as hypocritical, and pathetically absurd as say, Thailand's whole two-faced "we're prudes" on the one hand, yet we allow a thriving s*x industry on the other. I mean, they make pornography illegal (http://www.thaipulse.com/cautions/laws-against-pornography-and-indecency/), and then basically have legallised child prostitution? These people are a joke. It's nearly as bad as their whole barbaric Lèse majesté laws - all bluster and face, and no real substance underneath.
Have any Australians actually encountered this policy? Experiences? Next time I fly, if it weren't for their rumoured lack of a sense of humour, even if I don't actually possess any pornography, I'd be sorely tempted to write something vaguely amusing on the form, or possibly boot up my laptop, and play one of those indecent scat videos. I'm sure the Slashdot community would be happy to suggest things to play here...lol.
Cheers,
Victor
You realise it's these "kooks" that gave us the OSS legacy we're using now, right?
And now little punks like you are using that legacy, and telling them to bugger off...
I would have thought your parents would have taught you better.
Look, I think Stallman and co are seriously wacky as much as the next person, but it's actually thanks to people like him that the FSF and OSS even got off the ground. So I think we should at least give them credit for that. And it's a real shame when grassroots people like him, or say, all those civil liberties groups, whom us mainstream people love to write off as crazy hippies - we reap all the benefits of all their campaigning and what not, then act like ungrateful brats to them.
It's not to say you can't make fun of them, or say they're a bit loopy, but saying we should "jettison" them? Are you willing to jettison all the work they've done as well, and go back to a Windows and Apple only world? Heck, even Slashdot runs on OSS...willing to give that up?
Cheers, Victor
Yes, but people like you don't seem to realise, this isn't about the actual code for the H264 encoders/decoders. These have already been written by OSS coders, with just the specs and without having access to any of the code made by proprietary companies.
It's about the patents that are behind it - and then we open the whole can of worms on software patents. So no, it's not about people being compensated for their work, it's about corporations having large portfolios of patents, which they can use to bully anybody who tries to write their own H264 decoder. That's why we have the freedom to install codec outside the US, but inside the US, well, you have to use our servers outside your lovely country *grins*.
Cheers, Victor
Actually, there is. If you're short-sighted, you won't see that.
The MPEG-LA isn't a charity, and they'd nothing better than to lock people in, and then do a switch and change a la GIF.
That's not a bad thing, by any means - they have to make a living, after all (or rather, a living for all the corporations that have a patent in their patent pool)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA
However, it's people like you who will condemn us to being locked in to these corporations. It's people that are a bit more long-sighted that gave us things like Linux, the BSDs, the GNU toolchain, and other OSS. Heck, even Apache and Perl, on which this site run wouldn't be around. We'd still be stuck with proprietary OSes, and applications stacks, and paying through our nose for everything we wanted to do or run on our systems. Competition is a good thing *grins*. Heck, even Google releases a stackload of software for free, do you think it could do that if everything was patent encumbered?
. Cheers, Victor
Well, the point I made, which you seem to wilfully ignore is that it's not giving up freedom - it's about trusting in God to make your life better. From our perspective, we're not giving up anything - sure, we "give up" adultery, or we "give up" murder and false testimony, but from our perspective, these are all bad things we're casting out.
And guess what, nobody can *force* you to be a Christian. Heck, even if I held a gun to your head, and said, proclaim Christ, it still wouldn't have one whit of difference on what you felt in your heart.
So in answer to your question, no, it's not about "giving" up anything *shrugs*, it's just about listening to somebody older and wiser, somebody from whom you can walk away at any time. Like I said before, it's not even like a parent, who can ground you - you're free to walk away at any time, with no real consequences, except of course, losing God, I guess. And suffering the consequences of your actions (e.g. casual sex, or murder, or lying), although I suppose if you feel nothing about those things, then that won't affect you anyway.
And I am sorry to hear you stopped being a Christian from a young age. However, I might point out that I was never a Christian from my parents as such - my parents are quiet atheisth, my father militantly so. However, I chose Christianity, after a long consideration of many religions, because I found it the best way to explain that thing which all my education could not (I'm an engineer) - the human condition.
Christianity for me has never been about accepting things without question - that's a common myth perpetuated by atheists...lol. In fact, I'd allege it's many of them who don't want to, for reasons of their own, think deeply about these things - questions about their morality, or about what life is about. These are questions that Christians, or people of any faith, really, would constantly question. Our God teaches us to question these things - in fact, he encourages it. If you read the bible, the bible is full of people challenging God. Wrongly, often, but still, they challenge him. Even Abram, patriarch of the Israelites, doubted God (Gen 15), and asked for proof. He didn't need it, and in fact, it should have been insulting to God, but He did give it to him, in the form of a convenantal ceremony.
And the bible I know *is* the same, from Genesis through to Revelations. It's called biblical theology, and if you really did know as much about the Christianity that you claim you used to know, then you would know that. God still is a vengeful God - but he is also a loving God. I don't think the two are necessarily orthogonal. People might like to take Jesus, and claim him as their own, as some kind of mushy, hugs all around kind of guy, but he's also a judging Lord - in fact it'll be Jesus himself who will judge those on the last day (those who should be with him, and those who shouldn't). He's actually a pretty terrifying guy, if you actually read the bible. And if you actually read the Gospels carefully, you'll see he talks a lot about judgement there as well.
So on the whole, God is pretty consistent - in the OT, he was actually very loving and forgiving, it's just the Israelites were pretty screwed up. And in the NT, he's still loving, but also still the hard, Just God he was before.
Because justice, really, when you think about it, is hard and unrelenting - it's ok when somebody else is being judged, but when you're up on the stand yourself you want to say, "Gee, gosh, God, can you let me off this once, just turn a blind eye, ok?". It'd be like saying, I wish for a court system that would be fair and just to everybody else, but for me, can you just let me off the hook, all the time please? I'd certainly have no faith in a system like that. So while it is hard, sometimes you have to be adult and accept what comes.
Then we come to your gross misunderstanding of Hell, limbo, all that. Limbo isn't in the bible - go look it up. For me, it's very simple - Heaven is God's glory, Hell, if you act
Sorry, forgot the link:
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/opinion/x457996301/Drummey-In-defense-of-Pope-Benedict
heya,
Actually, it is by *definition* an ad hominem attack - you can argue till your'e blue in the face, but you are in effect linking character attacks directly with the actual argument inself, rather than arguing the merits of what's actually being discussed.
And also, let's clear up what happened. There's been a severe lack of investigative journalism that's happened here. There wasn't a coverup, in the case of Ratzinger. Gross misunderstandings, and a media blow-up, yes, but not a coverup.
There's a defense of him here - sure, you could argue it's biased, but it seems a little bit more researched than a lot of the other rot I've seen around, as well as compared to your rambling post about stuffed Pedobears, and claims of them writing a sorry letter...
There's no *grand conspiracy*, they didn't ' "sit" on cases. There's people being human and misundestanding each other - nobody was "shuffled" off anywhere, and the police were involved..
Cheers, Victor
heya,
*shakes heads*. You honestly have no idea what you're talking about. You don't like God because he restricts your freedoms? Like a child who cries out, "But no, I want to do that! Now!". That's fine, you're entitled to those views, and I can respect that.
However, I'm going to provide you with a little insight into how Christians thing, so you don't come across as so ignorant. You see, for people who believe in God, a part of that is believing that he has their interests at heart - where their interests refers to their growth as a person. So let's take the sex before marriage thing, or really, adultery as we call it - a Christian honestly and sincerely believes that sex outside of marriage is damaging, that a casual approach to sex, as something that's done purely to sate your own lusts is very bad for you, and damages your ability to love. So we don't see it so much as curtailing our freedoms, as more a parent saying, "Please don't do that, you're hurting yourself". That's not to say we don't rebel. Pftt, I have heaps *grins*. But at the end of the day, the whole *point* of Christianity is that you believe it helps you, and that God knows best.
The moment I stop believe that, is the moment I stop being a Christian. And that's my choice *shrugs*. God gave us all free will. And the thing is, unlike your parent he's not going to smack you, or ground you, or cut you off. He's just going to say, "That's really sad", and let you walk away.
And atheist are undoubtedly going to do the whole "He's evil, he'll condemn you to hell!" speech. He'll do no such thing. Hell is just the absence of God - this next part is my view - the fire, the brimstone, the lake of unending fire are just a metaphor for what it's like for a Christian to be without God. Because think about it - all those descriptions of Hell came from *Christians*, not atheists. So really, think about it - your'e an atheist, and God's just said, Ok fine, you can go. What's the big deal? Do you really want to be in heaven singing spiritual hymns for all eternity to a God you don't believe in? I somehow doubt it. So what' the big deal?
He's not evil, he's just written a whole bunch of things in a book that he thinks will do you good. And really, when you boil it down, a lot of that is good wisdom. If you don't try to willfully misinterpret it, or do the whole "Let's refer to random Deuteronomy or Leviticus verses without understanding their context" game, then it actually makes a whole lot of sense. Sure, your life might be more "boring", in a sense, but you trade it off for a much better life down the track.
Cheers, Victor
Ok, what exactly is it with all the Catholic-bashing on this forum, seriously? *sigh*. You have to love Slashdot. I'm not even Catholic, I don't even particularly like them (as a faith, I mean, I have nothing against Catholics people per se), and even I'm finding the vitriol and ranting on this thread a bit distasteful.
Firstly, who here has actually read the f-ing speech huh? I bet you none.
I'm having a bit of trouble finding a full transcript, but from what I can see, nothing he said was particularly controversial. A bit empty, and sappy, in my opinion, but hardly anything earth-shattering. I mean, saying the Internet needs a soul, and encouraging Catholics to promote the truth and human diginity online? You consider that some weird take-over-the-world conspiracy? And searching back through what else he's said on the Internet, apparently from last year, around May:
It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbors and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” he said last May.
“Friendship is a great human good, but it would be emptied of its ultimate value if it were to be understood as an end to itself.”It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbors and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” he said last May.
“Friendship is a great human good, but it would be emptied of its ultimate value if it were to be understood as an end to itself.”
http://www.tonic.com/article/pope-benedict-facebook-internet/
And you bring up the whole "molesting children" thing to his arguments. That's an ad-hominem argument if ever I saw one. I mean, if we Slashdot people are really as reasonable and calmly rational as we try to purport to be, really...? Look, if he personally attacked children, yeah, sure, I'd think twice. But he's been in the job for what, a few years? And from all reports, and through trawling through what he's said/done, he is trying to shine line on the despicable things that happened. Maybe not fast enough *shrugs*. I'm not a victim, so I don't have much voice here, nor am I going to claim that I understand their pain - any words I can offer are pretty empty, and I suspect that applies to most of Slashdot. That's something for the victims, courts and church to sort out, and I really do hope it gets sorted out soon.
But at the end of the day, if you're going to attack the Pope, or the Catholics, you attack them on a discussion centred around child-abuse scandals. Why would you use a discussion forum where we're trying to dissect what he's said as your personal soap-box to rant and rave?
And if anybody manages to find a full transcript of what he said, please post it up, because I think it might clear a lot of the venom and raving on this thread
Cheers, Victor
As somebody who lives in Australia, I have to say you probably have no idea what you're talking about...haha
That, or you bought into Telstra's reality distortion field. That 100Mbps service they're offering in Melbourne, is available to a very small minority only - it's available to about a million people in total, I believe, but most of those won't get anywhere near those speeds.
http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://1268174866621
Also, the demand for it is terrible, probably because of the abysmal pricing. Basically, you have to get it in a cable bundle (with their c*appy tv offering), on a 24 month contract, which costs $169 for 50 Gb per month, or $269 for 100 Gb per month. And that includes both uploads and downloads. So no, I doubt it's really "available" in any sense for the majority of people.
Cheers, Victor
Good catch =).
What I should have done is differentiate between Chinese culture, that's been there for thousands of years, and the mentality from PRC, post=Cultural Revolution. That's what I mean by the "culture" endemic on the mainland.
Also, this isn't a racial thing (I hope not, at any rate, or I'm pretty screwed) but just different systems, which promote different ways of succeeding. Back home, perhaps that's what you have to do to excel. See comment by AzureDiamond below.
Cheers, Victor
Cheating is certainly not as endemic from those countries. Just look at some of the other comments from other Australians here, my experience isn't exactly unique.
And using the link that you posted yourself:
" Students who speak English as a second language have been shown to commit academic dishonesty more and are more likely to be caught than native speakers, since they will often not want to rewrite sources in their own words, fearing that the meaning of the sentence will be lost through poor paraphrasing skills.[27] In the University of California system, international students make up 10% of the student body but comprise 47% of academic dishonesty cases.[28]"
Mainland Chinese students probably represent a sizeable majority of international students here in Australia, particularly from non-English speaking countries. Hence why they are so well-represented in academic dishonesty cases here, and have their reputation, deserved or not.
And no, it's not exactly racist. Firstly, I'm Chinese. *grins*. It's like Cohen making jokes about Jews *rolls eyes*. Seriously though, I don't think it's anything to do with our race - at least I hope not. And it's not "cultural" in the sense of Chinese culture, which any Chinese will proudly tell you is thousands of years old. However, it might be cultural in the sense that it's just a mentality from PRC, post Cultural Revolution - that anything goes. And that things like plagiarism are ok.
Also, I have to agree with the earlier poster, that part of it might just be desperation - English isn't their first language, and the only way they can see an out, at least to them, is to either copy, or pay somebody to do their essay. I remember back when I was in Chinese school, and I had to sit exams there...lol, I was a joke. I didn't copy, but I basically remember handing in exams with swathes and swathes of blank squares. Pretty humiliating, and I can see that the temptation would be strong. Still, as my parents would tell me, I didn't have the ruthless drive to succeed that a normal, good little filial Chinese boy from the mainland would.
And the business thing, political-correctness aside and all, there's a reason Chinese is famous for KIRF (http://www.engadget.com/tag/kirf). And that even Chinese nationals are worried to do business with them, for fear of their designs being stolen. And that the PRC has a reputation for endemic corruption and graft.
http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2009/gcb2009#dnld
Cheers, Victor
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm of Chinese descent.
As sad as it is, I think I have to agree with many of the above commentators. There does seem to be a strange lack of morals in people from the PRC, particularly the students. In Australian universities, rightly or wrongly, they have something of a reputation for being underhanded, plagiarising cheats who you really, really do not want to have in your group assignments. That's not to say they're the only one's doing it, far from it, but they definitely have that reputation. Maybe things have changed, I don't know.
In terms of the underlying reason, It could be for any number of reasons. Maybe they find the language hard? *shrugs*. But then students from other countries don't resort to cheating. Or maybe they don't quite understand what exactly plagiarism is? I don't know. I doubt it. Maybe they don't know how to reference? I worked in one group where they basically copied entire paragraphs, word for word, from our mentor's project (submitted the year before). They didn't even both to change the product names to match what we were doing. And when I confronted them, they didn't seem particularly repentant, more annoyed they got caught. Heck, I've seen them submit in Wikipedia articles as their project, formatting unchanged.
I really don't think it's a cultural thing as such. True, Confucianism does have its weird quirks. But to argue that we have no morals is a little unfair. However, my father taught me a saying when we were young, I probably can't even write the characters anymore...haha...disgraceful, but basically, it went along the lines of when your wealth is short, your morals are correspondingly short. Maybe that's it. But I doubt most of the international students arriving here are exactly "poor", by any definition.
I suspect it's really just a "win at any costs" culture endemic on the mainland, combined with their infamous mercenariness. Even in business, from what I've heard, you really, really want to be careful dealing with them. They'll screw you over nine ways to Sunday, and sell their own grandmother to make a buck. *sigh*. It really is sad to see, but maybe things will change, as they get wealthier?
Cheers, Victor
Err, yeah, but there's a world of difference between "punching a senator" in the face, and cracking jokes about him. Sorry, but that's just a ridiculous comparison and makes no sense.
And let's not spread fallacies here - the Lese Majeste law isn't really about threats, but also about anything that's considered disparaging in general. It's about violating the *dignity* of a sovereign or head of state.
Quite frankly, I'm going to get out there and say I think it's just plain ridiculous, and shows how backward and outdated Thailand is (and before you cry claims of racism, racism, my family is from SE Asia). I can make a website senatorconroy-is-an-idiot.com.au, and put anything I want there (within reason, of course - say, no child porn or hate speech), and nobody's going to be kicking down any doors.
I mean, look at this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/6498119/Student-throws-shoe-at-former-Australian-PM-John-Howard.html
Some hippy idiot throws a shoe at John Howard. Admittedly, the man's throwing abilities is an embarrassment to aussies everywhere, but even then, Howard laughs it off, and says "he's never be on my team (i.e. cricket). Even George Bush brushed off the whole shoeing thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoeing
With your second point, I have no love for Thaksin, but I don't really find him much worse than any of the other tin-pot dictators in the region. And the last few leaders in Thailand have all been outsed for corruption or various other crimes. Sorry, but basically, they're all wrong, ok, so trying to paint the current regime as anything other than militarily-imposed dictatoriship is just dishonest.
Cheers, Victor
Sorry, I'm going to have to call you out on this.
Firstly, your "sweaty linux nerds" comment was completely pointless, and paints you as a little bit shallow and bigoted. I *work* with Linux in my day-to-day job, not sure if that qualifies me as one of your "sweaty linux nerds". It's just a petty little insult that's unneeded. Also, this is a bit archaic, but normally we refer to it as animals that "sweat", human beings are said to "perspire".
Back to the main point, YouTube commands a large percentage of mindshare. Sorry, let me rephrase, YouTube *dominates* the online video market. Combined with Google Video, they pretty much wipe the market.
This is from 2008, but I doubt it's changed much, if anything, it probably dominates more:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_dominates_video.php
If they changed, and combined this with a "use Google Chrome, or ChromeFrame", and they introduced the codec into Chromium as an auto-update, I'm pretty sure the market penetration of VP8 would escalate quite quickly. Realistically, they'd probably phase it in, much as they did with dropping IE6 support.
Cheers, Victor
Ok, the apologists are just getting ridiculous now
.
I heard somebody above write it's not illegal to carry an AK-47 or RPG in Iraq. I can't verify that, perhaps somebody else can.
.
Let's just say, for arguments sake that by some weird stretch, these people weren't AIF insurgents, but were say, I don't know, normal mums and dads walking their kids to work.
Sure, I can believe Iraq might be a pretty lawless place. I haven't been there myself recently. But in what universe is it considered smartto carry a frickin RPG or assault-rifle and walk down the street? What, you're going to protect yourself against armed insurgents with those? *sigh*. Brilliant, just brilliant, there's a bunch of terrorists running around killing people, and the US military is running a land-battle against them to wipe them out, and you come up with the brilliant idea of protecting yourself by carrying the same weapons the terrorists are carrying.
And I see all these people hold up the van as a smoking gun. Guys, you drive a frigging van into an area that just got strafed by a gunship, with combatants still on the ground. Hell, if there was a firefight and the van got hit by small-arms fire from the insurgent's side, I can bet you Wikileaks and the liberal apologists wouldn't' exactly be in arms over it. Sure, I can believe that the van was unrelated to the AIF, and it tragic and terrible what happened, but in my books what they did falls under the "possibly well-intentioned but very, very stupid" category.
I just people read this http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/06/6--2nd.brigade.combat.team.15-6.investigation.pdf
Cheers, Victor
I think there must be something funky in your setup. Like, really...lol. Chrome is blazing fast where I am - on work computers, on my laptop (under both Windows 7 and Arch Linux). Firefox, on the other hand, feature-packed as it can be, is a bloated nightmare, chewing up RAM, and lagging like molasses. It's fine when your number of tabs is low (I think I'm not the only one, popular consensus with me is on this, pretty much everybody that tries it finds Chrome to be faster - feature-lacking yeah, but synthetic benchmarks as well as user experiences all show it to be meaningfully more performant.
Cheers, Victor
Well, actually, stealing usually involves depriving somebody of property. So something like shoplifting is "stealing".
What's actually happening here is copyright infringement, they're just throwing around the stealing word to try and make it sound melodromatic.
See, that's where I take issue at those stupid anti-piracy videos they force us to watch at the cinemas. I watch a lot of movies - I probably hit the cinemas around once a week. Basically, I watch everything that comes out. I've racked up so many Greater Union Cinebuzz points, I could watch a month of free movies. But still, I'm forced to watch idiotic advertisements that try to equate copyright infringement with breaking into a car, or stealing a handbag? And a whole bunch of other ads for restaurants, cleaning services, and cinemas advertising. Come on...I paid money to see this damn movie, so I shouldn't have to sit there watching ads - it wastes my time, and it's actually annoying how inaccurate and farcial their propaganda is. And my friends that pirate movies (or heck, I've downloaded movies before, to be honest) - guess what, no long ads, no stupid inaccurate propaganda at the beginning.
And don't get me started on buying DVDs. There's these stupid long ads I have to sit through telling me how bad piracy is. I bought your stupid friggin DVD, ok, so yes, I'm bloody supporting you. Then there's all this ridiculousness with new budget DVDs not having subtitles - I'm hearing impaired, how bloody hard is it to put stupid English subtitles on your film? That's half the reason I like to buy DVDs. Instead, other people who download the MKV get a nice film experience, with no unskippable ads, they can watch it on anything they like, and guess what - some nice fellow transcripted subtitles for that "pirated" movie. I mean...seriously...the frigging pirates get a better experience than me, who just forked out $30 for your stupid DVD. Cheers, Victor
I'm going to have to agree with the parent. We used to share our school bus with different high school. I went to James Ruse, basically a selective school, where kids sit an entrance test to get in - think nerdy kids, essentially the top of their state (I was the exception *grins*, I was just lucky). Then the other school on the bus was Gilroy, a local independent Catholic school.
So we'd get tools on the bus, year 7 Gilroy kids who did stupid things like trip other people over, steal their wallets, spit, annoy the driver, that sort of thing. There was one bunch who kept bugging my friends and I because hey, we went to Ruse. One day, one of the Prefects from Gilroy picked up one of their kids, dragged him by the shirt back to us, and said "Apologise." I said, seriously, it's ok, but the prefect didn't relent. The kid grinned like an idiot, till he realised the prefect was serious. To this day, I'm grateful to that guy, for actually being responsible, because all the stupidity toned down after that.
Moral of the story, kids will be kids, they do stupid things. And a bit of jostling around isn't going to kill them. Sometimes you just need to show them you're not going to bend over every time.
And a few years later, those idiotic year 7's decided to put their bags down the middle of the bus, so people would trip over them walking in to the bus. So I walked over, grabbed all the bags, and threw them about 15m out the front door. The bus driver certainly didn't try to stop me. They were being complete tools to him as well.
Like it or not, for small things, you just have to teach your kids to be less of a wimp. I mean, there is a line - and I think here, what happened was serious enough that somebody should have stepped in. But if some kid flicks a rubber-band at another kid, that's not a reason to call in a teacher - you walk over to the kid, and tell him to stop it, and if he doesn't or says make me, say you'll rain nine kinds of s*it down on him if he doesn't. Bullies look for soft targets, they're not going to risk having their nose bloodied just so they can flick rubberbands or stuff grass down somebody's shirt.
Cheers, Victor
The issue here is, what exactly is "safely shutting down the car". I can think of many cases where shutting down the car would *not* be a good idea. So I suppose the issue is, how much of the systems are critical and not, and is there some kind of mostly-manual fallback you can switch to, so the driver can at least control the vehicle?
Cheers, Victor
heya,
Yeah, I'd have to agree, this is a non-story.
I also work for an IB, although not in a client-facing area. Still, I'm not enough of a prat to intentionally start posting privileged info or restricted info on a public forum, or even a private form for that matter.
When we first interned, they told us there were restrictions on the sort of trading we could do on our own (e.g. have to disclose to the bank, must hold for 30 days etc.). A lot of people whined at the time, but look, seriously, you're working full-time for a IB, it's not like you really need to do day-trading on the side to put bread on the table.
For fun, sure, but how the heck do you find time during the day to do any serious trading, on your own account? And you're risking a lot, who's not to say that something you overhear at work won't influence your personal trading decisions, whether subconsciously or not. Or maybe a post-it note you saw on somebody else's desk? A little trading for fun, maybe, but I certainly wouldn't put the house on it, or start leveraging for it. So if I lose, meh, it's just pocket change.
It's the same reason I don't use FB, or put drunken photos of myself on Twitpics (well, fine I don't drink but meh, you get the idea). Civil rights or not, I don't want a Google search for my name by a HR hack to turn up something bad.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Err, because Bush and his ilk saw the world in a very black-and-white world, and thought Saddam Hussein was an evil twat, who should be removed? And unlike Kim Il Jong, they could probably do it (or so they thought) quickly and easily, without risk of nuclear recriminations? And because Hussein was universally hated by pretty much everybody in his country for raping, pillaging, and gassing his way across the land?
Cheers, Victor