"Thus we extend our military influence further abroad. Whether we claim to own the territories we are in or not is irrelevant, we have military presence that allows us to influence other nations to our will. Do me a favor and try to point out the nearest foreign military base on US soil. When your military is extended throughout the world but the rest of the world is not extended in your own nation, you are an empire, whether you have territorial claims or not."
Well, much of the reason the EU and other regions are able to live a nice socialistic life...with medical and what all they brag about, is BECAUSE they don't have to fund a military, the US has done it for them.
They could readily ask us to leave at any time, and frankly, I wish we would leave a lot of those ungrateful places, and stop sending tons of money to those areas, and keep this $$ at home.
Um, EU nations actually have very modern militaries, with most of their adult population having been through some sort of police or military service and on reserve. They simply don't have the appetite for extending their military might that we do. They're able to have their lifestyle because they want their money spent on the public well-being and not on "liberating" foreign nations. If you haven't been paying attention to the news, and by your ignorance I can only assume you haven't, our tax dollars in the US have not been flooding into EU nations. It's been flooding into the gas tanks of Abrams tanks and F-18 Hornets, subject to absurd inflation because of the irresponsibilities of supercapitalist money lenders, and pissed away through government bailouts into the bonus checks of the same people responsible for causing our inflation.
No army before WW2 eh? So how did we fight world war one? How did we fight the civil war? How did we fight all those wars before then?
We had a policy to stay out of European affairs but we damn sure had an army. We changed that policy after being dragged into two world wars and seeing the tragic loss of life they caused.
Sure, we do have a lot of bases worldwide but many of them are because of defensive treaties. For example our bases in Japan are there for defensive purposes and were used for reconstruction of Japan after the war, same with Germany.
Also, a lot of them are holdovers from the cold war in which we prevented the soviets from taking over Europe. Or do all you Europeans want to be praising the soviet motherland?
What gp meant was we had no large standing army. At the end of each conflict before the Second World War, units were disbanded back to a peacetime force level. After the Second World War we did not continue this routine, but built up forces in Europe and Asia to maintain deterrence against the Soviets - even though we were in peacetime. Eisenhower had the foresight to warn against the rising Military-Industrial complex forming in the US, but we didn't care because the Commies were going to come get us in our sleep and we had to be ready. Since the Soviets don't exist to produce that fear anymore, we had to scramble for something else to hang on to. Towelheads and terrorists are now the reason for a large standing army and continuous military operations to feed the machine. And they're all going to get nukes and make us all Muslims and kill us. Thus we extend our military influence further abroad. Whether we claim to own the territories we are in or not is irrelevant, we have military presence that allows us to influence other nations to our will. Do me a favor and try to point out the nearest foreign military base on US soil. When your military is extended throughout the world but the rest of the world is not extended in your own nation, you are an empire, whether you have territorial claims or not.
In a day where kids are bringing bombs and guns to school because they got one too many swirlies,
Some of us who still consider ourselves young went to school before Columbine. That was a turning point. I was in High School then. It was a significantly different world after that.
Before Columbine, that principle would have been mocked by the entire campus. After Columbine, the student would have been.
You got the time period when I forgot to mention it. Shortly after Columbine, like months.
What advantage does NetBSD give me over Linux? Other than avoiding monoculture, of course. People must obviously think it brings some set of advantages if they continue working on it and using it, I'd like to hear what they are.
It's a different UNIX-like platform. People use NetBSD over Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris/OpenBSD/Windows/Plan9/Darwin/etc. for the same reason you might use one of the umpteen billion Linux distros over the others: it's a personal choice that suits your style, interests, and the way you want to utilize your system. In my experience some Linux users believe that the Linux kernel is the end-all-be-all of computing, and when that view is challenged by the existence, adoption, and successes of other UNIX-like systems they feel threatened and retaliate with snide remarks. It's silly to be that way, considering that we're all in the open source boat together and in-fighting does nothing but distract us from our purpose. Most of us recognize that the monopoly of Microsoft has wrecked the hell out of computing, but there are Linux zealots that will not accept a competitor. Why is that?
That being said, NetBSD's appeal is in its BSD heritage, its wide portability and small footprint (especially considering the embedded market), and its pkgsrc ports system. There's also a behavior in the BSD culture that many Linux users don't see or understand, in that the permissiveness of the licenses of the various BSD projects allows them to have their own cultures with their own set of goals (portability, security, advanced hardware support, etc.) and operate independently, but also benefit from eachother through cross-system code porting. There are many features of NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD that have been swapped back and forth to allow each system to evolve but also retain its own distinct identity. From my point of view, this makes the BSD arena a much more open and inviting environment to some people. But we have to face the fact that Linux and its BSD brethren are competitive as Unix-like platforms, and the advantages one poses over the others are entirely circumstantial and by no means sweeping. They all are capable of running the same open source software, they are competitors that drive eachother forward.
I have been in the Principal's office with the police in the room with the Principal screaming like an idiot asking for me to be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. My crime? I was in possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook. Spittle was flying across the room while passages were being read that described thermite and 10 ways to kill somebody with your finger. It was taken from my backpack from another teacher when I left it in class. The police actually had to calm her down to explain to her that I had broken no laws whatsoever. It took 2 weeks to get me back into school by going to her supervisors and pointing out that I did not even break any rules in school.
I was also through the same situation later on when a teacher that taught computer science claimed that a file left on a "hacked" server proved I was the perpetrator. Why? It had a line of text that said, "Ed did this". Seriously, that was the CSI level proof that required my expulsion from school. I knew the kid that did it and he thought it was absolutely hilarious what happened. At the time my ethics demanded I did not "squeal", so I never said I knew who did it.
It's one thing for people to completely ignorant of what open source software is, licensing models, copyrights, fair use, etc. It's another when they use their ignorance and position of authority to force their ideologies on a student. That's just inappropriate when a teacher does that.
It's something else when a teacher sets out to destroy you over their ignorance. It sucks since a student is most often left in a position that they can't defend themselves at all, even when they are right and innocent.
It sounds to me like you had also demonstrated your own ignorance of the culture you were exposed to. In a day where kids are bringing bombs and guns to school because they got one too many swirlies, you can safely assume a teacher to feel threatened and scared when a kid is packing the Anarchist's Cookbook in his backpack. If you were a little less ignorant, you might have left it at home where your privacy is more or less assured.
Not that I'm agreeing with the reaction of the principal. I had a similar experience when, on a day where the sky was pissing great floods of rain, I made the mistake of putting a hat on before putting my hand on the door to the outside and the principal snatched it off my head. "No hats in school", he said with a smirk as he glanced out at the torrent. So I gawked in disbelief and went to my car. I started to leave but the principle of what the principal did was soaking in to me as the rain was soaking into my hair and dripping down into my shirt, so I stopped by the office to demand my apparel back. The office ladies said they could page the principal up, but I said "No, I'm so mad at him I don't want to see him. I'm afraid I'd hit him." Wrong thing to say about a man with short-man-in-power syndrome. The next day I was called into the office where a police officer was waiting for me and the principal was ranting about how I had physically threatened him. Me, a student with no record of ever having been called to the office, a student that made good grades and was on the drumline, a rail that weighed all of 145 pounds, that made the mistake of using the word 'hit' in a sentence that involved a pissant in authority. I mean, I could understand if I had come in to that office with a knife and a letter that said "I'm going to kill you" and asked one of the office ladies to deliver it to him, that might be a threat, but I came in looking like a drenched cat and I was pissed that this guy had fucked with me on a rainy day just to ruin my afternoon. I wasn't exactly oozing violence at that point. So in short, I agree with your premise. Fucking school administrators. Piss on them.
RTFA. The verizon install cd is *required* to connect to the service (generates a password and some other crap). In reality, it's the Linux folk who need to do a little more research before going and saying "everything will work just great in Ubuntu!"
The idea that a subscriber line *requires* the client to run a particular operating system is a bogon. You need only have support for the protocols the service operates with, none of which are unique to Windows. The CD is a crutch that keeps the ISP from having to really train its helpdesk staff in internet communications. They pick the most popular platform and only offer *support* for it. This doesn't mean you have to use that platform, it means their helpdesk won't even answer calls about any other platform. This same bogocity doesn't exist for corporate customers, who get access to NOC personnel that know what the hell they are doing. The lay consumer, however, is given subpar support that is crafted very carefully to ward off customer usage with those stupid CDs, "system requirements", capped hold queues that fill and drop callers, nasty hold music ("Your call is important to us!" my ass), and underpaid, undereducated representatives who are punished for call times exceeding 5 minutes and are thus encouraged to dump the caller as fast as possible. The whole circus screams GO AWAY, and people do. They "upgrade" their new computer to a 3GHz, 3GB ram, 400GB disk, and Vista Home Premium because "the CD said so"; they don't buy a mac because "the CD said I can't have a Mac", and they don't ever call to inquire about anything because they know they'll sit on hold for 30 minutes and get some wanker that doesn't speak english and isn't interested in what the customer really needs.
Well, even if the hardware was the same, I'd blame the drivers. On Windows, lots of networking equipment has crummy drivers coded by companies that really don't care that work, but with much higher latency and bandwidth than the hardware is capable of.
I actually get better performance off the USB wifi card in my desktop than the PCI one built-in, because the PCI one has lousy drivers and the USB one has good drivers.
Ah, the old "Windows is the victim of its own vendors" card. Microsoft has a certification program for third party drivers. If they sign a driver and it's a piece of shit, that's still on Microsoft's head - they've certified that a crappy driver exemplifies the 'quality' of Windows. If the vendor provides an unsigned driver and it's shit, then they're on equal turf with their open source competitors - who don't receive much if any vendor support.
The game was locked up in Mark's lockbox, along with a 9mm handgun."
Wow. I'd say the real thing to note here is "Don't store the stuff you take from your child as a punishment in the same box as your guns, they might get ideas"
Like I said...
This is quite revealing. I think it's safe to say there is at least some degree of a lack of rationality in that family that is not Halo 3 related
From this article:
"According to prosectors, Petric, 16 at the time of the shooting, was forbidden to buy Halo 3 by his parents, Mark and Susan Petric. The teen snuck out to purchase the game anyway, and was caught by his parents upon his return. The game was locked up in Mark's lockbox, along with a 9mm handgun."
So no, a history of violence wasn't mentioned in the articles I have seen so far. However, it also says he didn't have a copy of the game.
From the same article:
"Lawyers for the accused delivered a brief statement at the opening of the trial, explaining that their client had be under a large amount of stress after being homebound for a year due to a snowboarding accident with nothing to do but watch television and play video games."
So, presumably he hadn't been playing the game elsewhere.
But don't worry...
"Dad, I'm so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family," Daniel Petric said, according to his father. "I'm so glad you are alive."
"You're my son," Mark Petric responded. "You're my boy."
Dad forgives him...
This is quite revealing. I think it's safe to say there is at least some degree of a lack of rationality in that family that is not Halo 3 related
When the torment is physical, you can easily fight back and have a fairly good chance of winning (especially if it's not your first time and/or it's not jock-on-dork).
Obviously, you've never been picked on at the playground. Every time it has happened to me, there were at least 5 of them. Bullies get followers and they travel in packs. A bully that fights alone would have a chance to lose, and would eventually lose and no longer be a bully. So, what are my chances of winning when it's 5 on one?
I guess the solution would be to recruit your own friends to fight back against the bullies. You should wear identifying clothing so you can recognize each other on the playground, and come up with a creative name for yourselves to enhance your group perception. Your group may need financial resources for its activities, so you could probably have your group selling some sort of candy or something to the surrounding neighborhood as an extra-curricular activity, and use the revenue to purchase baseball bats or other intimidating weapons to scare the bully group with. This highly effective solution should have no unforeseen consequences...
This just in.. It is in fact a child's parents who are most likely to abduct them! Best throw the kids out on the street for their own safety.
Research has also shown that four out of five people who die each year were at one time born, raising a strong correlation between birth and mortality.
That reminds me of the time I thought I heard a noise at night and I walked into my kids room and there was this guy standing there looking at my 8 month old daughter sleeping. Scared the shit out of me. I was about to either kick his ass, or shit myself when he told me to calm down. He was an Ethical Burglar(TM).
He had used some pretty basic lock picking methods to break in and just wanted me to know my family was at risk and that we should cage ourselves in our own home so that the marauding Visigoths couldn't break in and kill us all.
I thanked him for his generous service and he said it was no problem. On his way out he looked at my house one more time and mentioned that he might come back another time and set the place on fire, so we should probably get a coating of asbestos or something to be ready for that.
I only wish we had more of these ethical hackers and burglers to keep up safe.
Hacker is a term that has a meaning that has long predated the Intarweb and has been given an incorrect meaning by inept journalists.
"A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular."
"One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming."
"An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example."
And most importantly for you to read,
"[deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence password hacker, network hacker. The correct term for this sense is cracker."
Right. The point I was supporting with the slashdot link was that FreeBSD 7 SMP performance was competitive with that of Linux, and that there have been marked improvements since FreeBSD 5, contrary to the parent's trolling. Like a Good Linux Zealot, he Deliberately Missed The Point. I could give two shits if FreeBSD or Linux performs better according to blind taste test XYZ, Bob's Admin Poll, Gartner Research, or any other "credible" source. FreeBSD is a modern unix-like operating system that is making strides in open source operating systems and software that adds benefit to the whole open source community, I don't understand why Linux zealots have to bitch and moan whenever FreeBSD gets a meager portion of the credit it deserves.
As a lover of FreeBSD, I hope the guys in charge never try to "win the desktop". They'd never win and they'd stop paying attention to the stuff that makes it so good for servers. FreeBSD, and the other BSD's for that matter, belong in the data center. I'd argue the same for Linux, but that might get me slaughtered in these parts...
Let's not forget the embedded market. FreeBSD seems very popular in that world, I'd assume because of the permissive licensing.
FreeBSD fanboyz shouldn't go mouthing off about "half-assed" considering the way since 5.x it's crappy smp and threadlocking would seize up tighter than a great-grandma on a straight brick cheese diet with lock-mgr panics. Problem persisted in 7.0, who knows if 7.1 will finally put the issues to rest?
5.0 was released in January 2003, I think 6 years of passage should have allowed you enough grumping time that you can let it go now. I think you could also take a look in your wayback machine and remember that Linux was not exactly perfect at the time either. FreeBSD 5 did have its teething problems with all of the new technologies introduced, especially KSE and the ULE scheduler, but progress has continued to be made and your unsubstantiated claim otherwise is just the pathetic grumblings of a troglodyte.
Huh? There is a lot of new libraries and APIs in Vista apart from DX10. A new audio stack, new printing subsystem (both have support for legacy APIs, of course, but also totally new APIs enabling resource hogging DRM that you never wanted in the first place), kernel transaction manager, etc.
When they came out with new generation Zunes, they rolled out all the updates to older generation owners as well.
Of course they did. How else could they brick your Zune 30 only after they were sure they had an established base of Zune 80/120 owners and plenty of them on the market for you to replace your dead Zune 30 with?
Also why would I want to be waving my arms at my CRT or LCD screen?
Just earlier today I was thinking about this. I believe that one possible sollution to the "gorilla arm" syndrome is to put the monitor in the place of the keyboard, and move the keyboard a bit down.
Take THAT, ergonomic viewing angles!
I for one will keep my non-touch display at a comfortable elevation while you're at the chiropractor.
At what point do you consider a pregnancy to be composed of two people?
This is really the question, isn't it? For me, the answer seems logical. If a person is defined by his or her DNA, then the moment when a person begins existing has to be at conception. (Actually, at the instant when the parents' DNA fuses completely. I think that happens between conception and implantation, if I understand the terms correctly.) Prior to conception, you have only half the DNA; after conception, there's really no clear moment where the DNA changes in a way that re-defines the person. Birth can happen early or late--does this mean that fetuses take different amounts of time before they become people?
First, I'd like to say I'm glad to see an intelligent discussion forming after this. After the first wanker replied, I was skeptical.
I think this absolutely means it takes variable time for bastulas/fetuses to become 'people'. Physiologically, the DNA distinction is interesting. But how feasible is that in law? A woman can't even tell she's pregnant at the moment of conception, it takes several days or weeks to develop hormone level changes substantial enough for a pregnancy test to pick up, and even then the menstrual cycle may not be interrupted and the developing bastula is washed away on the woman's next period. If law were to unequivocally define a person's life in society begins at the first moment of identifiable DNA, it would require too much of a burden to keep up with testing and records, especially considering the amount and range of miscarriages.
When does she no longer have authority over that part of her body?
Many pro-life supporters believe that there is a supernatural power. When you accept the existence of the supernatural, you can take further logical steps and conclude that perhaps women (and men) don't have authority over their body.
While that may be true, a secular society can't base its laws on the supernatural beliefs of a group and expect to remain a rational, stable society. Consider the ramifications if a religious conservative minority passes into law that the individual has no authority over their own person. Who does? The state? The church? Which one? Doesn't that sound an awful lot like autocracy to you?
And since this is now a legal life that a mother is responsible for, should we have funerals for fertilized eggs that don't attach to the uterus?
A funeral is not a legal process. You can choose to have funerals or not for anything, just as you can choose to be interred or cremated.
Quite right. Death certificates then?
Should a bastula be registered with social security as soon as the pregnancy test comes back positive? Shouldn't someone claim it as a dependent on their taxes? And get more welfare for it? And now lets say the pregnancy fails, should there be an autopsy and criminal hearings to see if the pregnant mother was criminally negligent with her diet and exercise routine? And if the mother terminates the pregnancy because of health risk, should she be put on trial?
I agree with you that in each of those cases, we should be looking for consistency. If the U.S. decides that people begin existence at birth, I'd disagree. However, if that were to be decided, it would be hypocritical to try and charge people for double homicides. We need to pick one. The problem is that the two sides are so fundamentally opposed that I can't see a middle ground happening anytime soon.
And that's where I'm getting, the law must have a definitive distinction from morality in this area. It can't determine whether abortion is right or wrong, but it can define when a child is protected by law. The possibilities of abuse for this may seem distasteful, but the opposite position raises not just possibilities but realit
Why is it that the unborn are deprived of life without due process?
I assume you're referring to clinical abortion with your little quip there. Abortions are medical procedures, not criminal proceedings. The 5th amendment has nothing to say about that.
But in answer to why the 5th amendment might not apply to the unborn, perhaps it's the same reason you can't claim the unborn as dependents on your taxes or put them on welfare. They are not yet born. Hence the un in unborn. Not that this clears anything up though, because if you were to kill a pregnant mother in a car wreck while drinking you can be charged for two counts of homicide. So the legal status of the fetus is really up in the air.
I don't think the law is prepared to tackle this dilemma either. At what point do you consider a pregnancy to be composed of two people? I mean, the fetus is connected to the mother, shares her blood, and is inside her very body, growing from her own cells. When does she no longer have authority over that part of her body? Four weeks? Three weeks? Two? When the bastula has split for the first time? When the egg drops? Well there's sperm too, so don't go spanking your monkey unless you're prepared to stand tall before the man. And since this is now a legal life that a mother is responsible for, should we have funerals for fertilized eggs that don't attach to the uterus? Should a bastula be registered with social security as soon as the pregnancy test comes back positive? Shouldn't someone claim it as a dependent on their taxes? And get more welfare for it? And now lets say the pregnancy fails, should there be an autopsy and criminal hearings to see if the pregnant mother was criminally negligent with her diet and exercise routine? And if the mother terminates the pregnancy because of health risk, should she be put on trial?
Pro-life supporters honestly have an honorable goal, to protect life. I understand that and admire it. But the depth of pandora's box can't be ignored when we open it up and start trying to legally redefine when life starts based on the physiology of a pregnancy. The law has it about as close as it can, in my opinion. When the child leaves the womb and breathes on its own and pumps its own blood, a birth certificate is made out declaring the date and time of birth. This is when the child is legally identified as a solitary living person under the protection of a guardian. The distinction between the mother and fetus prior to that point is contentious on morality, and it should remain that way. The law of a secular society has to end at some point and let morality hold its own turf. This is one of those points.
When the government decides what is necessary and unnecessary and bans the unnecessary you are no longer in a free society.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I'm a law abiding citizen with no felony record and no history of violent or psychotic behavior. I've clearly demonstrated I am not a danger to others around me. It should be "presumed" that my actions will be "innocent" of criminal intent. That's the fancy civilized "presumed innocent" thing in action, see. If a person that can't think that way, and distrusts his neighbors to the point of regulating their lives.. that person is a totalitarian shit. That person blatantly opposes the concept of liberty; he desires to remove the ability of his neighbors to act according to their own will by removing from them the circumstances with which to exercise their will. That's the whole point of banning guns and knives after all - to restrict the ability for a person to act on their own will, and therefore short-circuit their will altogether rather than allowing their will to be exercised and judged. Totalitarian shits see that there are people using guns and knives in crime, and then have the bright idea that "Hey! If we take their guns and knives away, then the people won't get the chance to decide to shoot or stab someone! Brilliant!" So law-abiding citizens, by their nature of abiding the law, are stripped of another liberty; and the criminal that holds the law in contempt already continues to express his criminal and violent will.
I also wanted to say that, like so many other ideals, the notion that guns are not necessary in a civilized society is fundamentally flawed because we do not live in a peaceful utopia in which greed and violence do not exist. Weapons will always be necessary as long as there are adversaries that would wish to deprive others of life or inflict injury, whether you consider foreign armies, civil war, street thugs, angry bison, or little green men from mars - unless of course you perceive a civilized society as a highly regulated police state. It's not paranoid at all to want to be prepared for defense against these things (maybe in the case of the bison or little green men, especially if you wear a tinfoil hat). In fact, it's pretty rational. Given the amount of violent crime we already know exists, it's not unreasonable to wish to have an effective means of defense. And ultimately, if history can teach us anything about civilized society, it's that it is fleeting at best. All great civilized societies before ours have perished in violence. The Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, and the Byzantines after them, the Ottomans; all of these are great civilized societies that suffered death in violence - both internal and external. Our societies will collapse one day too. When that happens, there will be no Bobbies with billy clubs and shiny whistles to scare away the meanies. Violent people will take what they want from others, they will kill or maim anyone they want, and then they'll post videos of it on YouTube. I'd rather be armed before that point, myself.
Slashdot Mirror
This video reminds me of all those "infomercial" showing the latest innovation in carpet cleaning or kitchen robot ...
And I think this video is an appropriate response to the "Mojave Experiment" commercials.
"Thus we extend our military influence further abroad. Whether we claim to own the territories we are in or not is irrelevant, we have military presence that allows us to influence other nations to our will. Do me a favor and try to point out the nearest foreign military base on US soil. When your military is extended throughout the world but the rest of the world is not extended in your own nation, you are an empire, whether you have territorial claims or not."
Well, much of the reason the EU and other regions are able to live a nice socialistic life...with medical and what all they brag about, is BECAUSE they don't have to fund a military, the US has done it for them.
They could readily ask us to leave at any time, and frankly, I wish we would leave a lot of those ungrateful places, and stop sending tons of money to those areas, and keep this $$ at home.
Um, EU nations actually have very modern militaries, with most of their adult population having been through some sort of police or military service and on reserve. They simply don't have the appetite for extending their military might that we do. They're able to have their lifestyle because they want their money spent on the public well-being and not on "liberating" foreign nations. If you haven't been paying attention to the news, and by your ignorance I can only assume you haven't, our tax dollars in the US have not been flooding into EU nations. It's been flooding into the gas tanks of Abrams tanks and F-18 Hornets, subject to absurd inflation because of the irresponsibilities of supercapitalist money lenders, and pissed away through government bailouts into the bonus checks of the same people responsible for causing our inflation.
No army before WW2 eh? So how did we fight world war one? How did we fight the civil war? How did we fight all those wars before then? We had a policy to stay out of European affairs but we damn sure had an army. We changed that policy after being dragged into two world wars and seeing the tragic loss of life they caused. Sure, we do have a lot of bases worldwide but many of them are because of defensive treaties. For example our bases in Japan are there for defensive purposes and were used for reconstruction of Japan after the war, same with Germany. Also, a lot of them are holdovers from the cold war in which we prevented the soviets from taking over Europe. Or do all you Europeans want to be praising the soviet motherland?
What gp meant was we had no large standing army. At the end of each conflict before the Second World War, units were disbanded back to a peacetime force level. After the Second World War we did not continue this routine, but built up forces in Europe and Asia to maintain deterrence against the Soviets - even though we were in peacetime. Eisenhower had the foresight to warn against the rising Military-Industrial complex forming in the US, but we didn't care because the Commies were going to come get us in our sleep and we had to be ready. Since the Soviets don't exist to produce that fear anymore, we had to scramble for something else to hang on to. Towelheads and terrorists are now the reason for a large standing army and continuous military operations to feed the machine. And they're all going to get nukes and make us all Muslims and kill us. Thus we extend our military influence further abroad. Whether we claim to own the territories we are in or not is irrelevant, we have military presence that allows us to influence other nations to our will. Do me a favor and try to point out the nearest foreign military base on US soil. When your military is extended throughout the world but the rest of the world is not extended in your own nation, you are an empire, whether you have territorial claims or not.
In a day where kids are bringing bombs and guns to school because they got one too many swirlies,
Some of us who still consider ourselves young went to school before Columbine. That was a turning point. I was in High School then. It was a significantly different world after that.
Before Columbine, that principle would have been mocked by the entire campus. After Columbine, the student would have been.
You got the time period when I forgot to mention it. Shortly after Columbine, like months.
What advantage does NetBSD give me over Linux? Other than avoiding monoculture, of course. People must obviously think it brings some set of advantages if they continue working on it and using it, I'd like to hear what they are.
It's a different UNIX-like platform. People use NetBSD over Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris/OpenBSD/Windows/Plan9/Darwin/etc. for the same reason you might use one of the umpteen billion Linux distros over the others: it's a personal choice that suits your style, interests, and the way you want to utilize your system. In my experience some Linux users believe that the Linux kernel is the end-all-be-all of computing, and when that view is challenged by the existence, adoption, and successes of other UNIX-like systems they feel threatened and retaliate with snide remarks. It's silly to be that way, considering that we're all in the open source boat together and in-fighting does nothing but distract us from our purpose. Most of us recognize that the monopoly of Microsoft has wrecked the hell out of computing, but there are Linux zealots that will not accept a competitor. Why is that?
That being said, NetBSD's appeal is in its BSD heritage, its wide portability and small footprint (especially considering the embedded market), and its pkgsrc ports system. There's also a behavior in the BSD culture that many Linux users don't see or understand, in that the permissiveness of the licenses of the various BSD projects allows them to have their own cultures with their own set of goals (portability, security, advanced hardware support, etc.) and operate independently, but also benefit from eachother through cross-system code porting. There are many features of NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD that have been swapped back and forth to allow each system to evolve but also retain its own distinct identity. From my point of view, this makes the BSD arena a much more open and inviting environment to some people. But we have to face the fact that Linux and its BSD brethren are competitive as Unix-like platforms, and the advantages one poses over the others are entirely circumstantial and by no means sweeping. They all are capable of running the same open source software, they are competitors that drive eachother forward.
I have been in the Principal's office with the police in the room with the Principal screaming like an idiot asking for me to be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. My crime? I was in possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook. Spittle was flying across the room while passages were being read that described thermite and 10 ways to kill somebody with your finger. It was taken from my backpack from another teacher when I left it in class. The police actually had to calm her down to explain to her that I had broken no laws whatsoever. It took 2 weeks to get me back into school by going to her supervisors and pointing out that I did not even break any rules in school.
I was also through the same situation later on when a teacher that taught computer science claimed that a file left on a "hacked" server proved I was the perpetrator. Why? It had a line of text that said, "Ed did this". Seriously, that was the CSI level proof that required my expulsion from school. I knew the kid that did it and he thought it was absolutely hilarious what happened. At the time my ethics demanded I did not "squeal", so I never said I knew who did it.
It's one thing for people to completely ignorant of what open source software is, licensing models, copyrights, fair use, etc. It's another when they use their ignorance and position of authority to force their ideologies on a student. That's just inappropriate when a teacher does that.
It's something else when a teacher sets out to destroy you over their ignorance. It sucks since a student is most often left in a position that they can't defend themselves at all, even when they are right and innocent.
It sounds to me like you had also demonstrated your own ignorance of the culture you were exposed to. In a day where kids are bringing bombs and guns to school because they got one too many swirlies, you can safely assume a teacher to feel threatened and scared when a kid is packing the Anarchist's Cookbook in his backpack. If you were a little less ignorant, you might have left it at home where your privacy is more or less assured.
Not that I'm agreeing with the reaction of the principal. I had a similar experience when, on a day where the sky was pissing great floods of rain, I made the mistake of putting a hat on before putting my hand on the door to the outside and the principal snatched it off my head. "No hats in school", he said with a smirk as he glanced out at the torrent. So I gawked in disbelief and went to my car. I started to leave but the principle of what the principal did was soaking in to me as the rain was soaking into my hair and dripping down into my shirt, so I stopped by the office to demand my apparel back. The office ladies said they could page the principal up, but I said "No, I'm so mad at him I don't want to see him. I'm afraid I'd hit him." Wrong thing to say about a man with short-man-in-power syndrome. The next day I was called into the office where a police officer was waiting for me and the principal was ranting about how I had physically threatened him. Me, a student with no record of ever having been called to the office, a student that made good grades and was on the drumline, a rail that weighed all of 145 pounds, that made the mistake of using the word 'hit' in a sentence that involved a pissant in authority. I mean, I could understand if I had come in to that office with a knife and a letter that said "I'm going to kill you" and asked one of the office ladies to deliver it to him, that might be a threat, but I came in looking like a drenched cat and I was pissed that this guy had fucked with me on a rainy day just to ruin my afternoon. I wasn't exactly oozing violence at that point. So in short, I agree with your premise. Fucking school administrators. Piss on them.
RTFA. The verizon install cd is *required* to connect to the service (generates a password and some other crap). In reality, it's the Linux folk who need to do a little more research before going and saying "everything will work just great in Ubuntu!"
The idea that a subscriber line *requires* the client to run a particular operating system is a bogon. You need only have support for the protocols the service operates with, none of which are unique to Windows. The CD is a crutch that keeps the ISP from having to really train its helpdesk staff in internet communications. They pick the most popular platform and only offer *support* for it. This doesn't mean you have to use that platform, it means their helpdesk won't even answer calls about any other platform. This same bogocity doesn't exist for corporate customers, who get access to NOC personnel that know what the hell they are doing. The lay consumer, however, is given subpar support that is crafted very carefully to ward off customer usage with those stupid CDs, "system requirements", capped hold queues that fill and drop callers, nasty hold music ("Your call is important to us!" my ass), and underpaid, undereducated representatives who are punished for call times exceeding 5 minutes and are thus encouraged to dump the caller as fast as possible. The whole circus screams GO AWAY, and people do. They "upgrade" their new computer to a 3GHz, 3GB ram, 400GB disk, and Vista Home Premium because "the CD said so"; they don't buy a mac because "the CD said I can't have a Mac", and they don't ever call to inquire about anything because they know they'll sit on hold for 30 minutes and get some wanker that doesn't speak english and isn't interested in what the customer really needs.
Well, even if the hardware was the same, I'd blame the drivers. On Windows, lots of networking equipment has crummy drivers coded by companies that really don't care that work, but with much higher latency and bandwidth than the hardware is capable of.
I actually get better performance off the USB wifi card in my desktop than the PCI one built-in, because the PCI one has lousy drivers and the USB one has good drivers.
Ah, the old "Windows is the victim of its own vendors" card. Microsoft has a certification program for third party drivers. If they sign a driver and it's a piece of shit, that's still on Microsoft's head - they've certified that a crappy driver exemplifies the 'quality' of Windows. If the vendor provides an unsigned driver and it's shit, then they're on equal turf with their open source competitors - who don't receive much if any vendor support.
Wow. I'd say the real thing to note here is "Don't store the stuff you take from your child as a punishment in the same box as your guns, they might get ideas"
Like I said...
This is quite revealing. I think it's safe to say there is at least some degree of a lack of rationality in that family that is not Halo 3 related
From this article: "According to prosectors, Petric, 16 at the time of the shooting, was forbidden to buy Halo 3 by his parents, Mark and Susan Petric. The teen snuck out to purchase the game anyway, and was caught by his parents upon his return. The game was locked up in Mark's lockbox, along with a 9mm handgun." So no, a history of violence wasn't mentioned in the articles I have seen so far. However, it also says he didn't have a copy of the game. From the same article: "Lawyers for the accused delivered a brief statement at the opening of the trial, explaining that their client had be under a large amount of stress after being homebound for a year due to a snowboarding accident with nothing to do but watch television and play video games." So, presumably he hadn't been playing the game elsewhere. But don't worry... "Dad, I'm so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family," Daniel Petric said, according to his father. "I'm so glad you are alive." "You're my son," Mark Petric responded. "You're my boy." Dad forgives him...
This is quite revealing. I think it's safe to say there is at least some degree of a lack of rationality in that family that is not Halo 3 related
When the torment is physical, you can easily fight back and have a fairly good chance of winning (especially if it's not your first time and/or it's not jock-on-dork). Obviously, you've never been picked on at the playground. Every time it has happened to me, there were at least 5 of them. Bullies get followers and they travel in packs. A bully that fights alone would have a chance to lose, and would eventually lose and no longer be a bully. So, what are my chances of winning when it's 5 on one?
I guess the solution would be to recruit your own friends to fight back against the bullies. You should wear identifying clothing so you can recognize each other on the playground, and come up with a creative name for yourselves to enhance your group perception. Your group may need financial resources for its activities, so you could probably have your group selling some sort of candy or something to the surrounding neighborhood as an extra-curricular activity, and use the revenue to purchase baseball bats or other intimidating weapons to scare the bully group with. This highly effective solution should have no unforeseen consequences...
This just in.. It is in fact a child's parents who are most likely to abduct them! Best throw the kids out on the street for their own safety.
Research has also shown that four out of five people who die each year were at one time born, raising a strong correlation between birth and mortality.
machine full of adware that pops up each minute trying to sell him viagra or one night stand services
But... But... I thought that WAS Windows?! ;)
It was ... and now with Windows Vista it's all that PLUS crippling DRM!
Oh, Mojave!
Yeah, Hacker Ethics, that's it.
That reminds me of the time I thought I heard a noise at night and I walked into my kids room and there was this guy standing there looking at my 8 month old daughter sleeping. Scared the shit out of me. I was about to either kick his ass, or shit myself when he told me to calm down. He was an Ethical Burglar(TM).
He had used some pretty basic lock picking methods to break in and just wanted me to know my family was at risk and that we should cage ourselves in our own home so that the marauding Visigoths couldn't break in and kill us all.
I thanked him for his generous service and he said it was no problem. On his way out he looked at my house one more time and mentioned that he might come back another time and set the place on fire, so we should probably get a coating of asbestos or something to be ready for that.
I only wish we had more of these ethical hackers and burglers to keep up safe.
Hacker is a term that has a meaning that has long predated the Intarweb and has been given an incorrect meaning by inept journalists.
Read the definitions on the Jargon file.
"A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular."
"One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming."
"An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example."
And most importantly for you to read,
"[deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence password hacker, network hacker. The correct term for this sense is cracker."
so...
A freebsd guys benchmarks say freebsd is faster.
a linux guys benchmarks say linux is faster.
Right. The point I was supporting with the slashdot link was that FreeBSD 7 SMP performance was competitive with that of Linux, and that there have been marked improvements since FreeBSD 5, contrary to the parent's trolling. Like a Good Linux Zealot, he Deliberately Missed The Point. I could give two shits if FreeBSD or Linux performs better according to blind taste test XYZ, Bob's Admin Poll, Gartner Research, or any other "credible" source. FreeBSD is a modern unix-like operating system that is making strides in open source operating systems and software that adds benefit to the whole open source community, I don't understand why Linux zealots have to bitch and moan whenever FreeBSD gets a meager portion of the credit it deserves.
Nice job posting AC this time so you don't lose karma from your obnoxious trolling. Bravo.
As a lover of FreeBSD, I hope the guys in charge never try to "win the desktop". They'd never win and they'd stop paying attention to the stuff that makes it so good for servers. FreeBSD, and the other BSD's for that matter, belong in the data center. I'd argue the same for Linux, but that might get me slaughtered in these parts...
Let's not forget the embedded market. FreeBSD seems very popular in that world, I'd assume because of the permissive licensing.
FreeBSD fanboyz shouldn't go mouthing off about "half-assed" considering the way since 5.x it's crappy smp and threadlocking would seize up tighter than a great-grandma on a straight brick cheese diet with lock-mgr panics. Problem persisted in 7.0, who knows if 7.1 will finally put the issues to rest?
Are you talking about this SMP?
5.0 was released in January 2003, I think 6 years of passage should have allowed you enough grumping time that you can let it go now. I think you could also take a look in your wayback machine and remember that Linux was not exactly perfect at the time either. FreeBSD 5 did have its teething problems with all of the new technologies introduced, especially KSE and the ULE scheduler, but progress has continued to be made and your unsubstantiated claim otherwise is just the pathetic grumblings of a troglodyte.
Huh? There is a lot of new libraries and APIs in Vista apart from DX10. A new audio stack, new printing subsystem (both have support for legacy APIs, of course, but also totally new APIs enabling resource hogging DRM that you never wanted in the first place), kernel transaction manager, etc.
Fixed that for you.
When they came out with new generation Zunes, they rolled out all the updates to older generation owners as well.
Of course they did. How else could they brick your Zune 30 only after they were sure they had an established base of Zune 80/120 owners and plenty of them on the market for you to replace your dead Zune 30 with?
Also why would I want to be waving my arms at my CRT or LCD screen?
Just earlier today I was thinking about this. I believe that one possible sollution to the "gorilla arm" syndrome is to put the monitor in the place of the keyboard, and move the keyboard a bit down.
Take THAT, ergonomic viewing angles!
I for one will keep my non-touch display at a comfortable elevation while you're at the chiropractor.
At what point do you consider a pregnancy to be composed of two people?
This is really the question, isn't it? For me, the answer seems logical. If a person is defined by his or her DNA, then the moment when a person begins existing has to be at conception. (Actually, at the instant when the parents' DNA fuses completely. I think that happens between conception and implantation, if I understand the terms correctly.) Prior to conception, you have only half the DNA; after conception, there's really no clear moment where the DNA changes in a way that re-defines the person. Birth can happen early or late--does this mean that fetuses take different amounts of time before they become people?
First, I'd like to say I'm glad to see an intelligent discussion forming after this. After the first wanker replied, I was skeptical.
I think this absolutely means it takes variable time for bastulas/fetuses to become 'people'. Physiologically, the DNA distinction is interesting. But how feasible is that in law? A woman can't even tell she's pregnant at the moment of conception, it takes several days or weeks to develop hormone level changes substantial enough for a pregnancy test to pick up, and even then the menstrual cycle may not be interrupted and the developing bastula is washed away on the woman's next period. If law were to unequivocally define a person's life in society begins at the first moment of identifiable DNA, it would require too much of a burden to keep up with testing and records, especially considering the amount and range of miscarriages.
When does she no longer have authority over that part of her body?
Many pro-life supporters believe that there is a supernatural power. When you accept the existence of the supernatural, you can take further logical steps and conclude that perhaps women (and men) don't have authority over their body.
While that may be true, a secular society can't base its laws on the supernatural beliefs of a group and expect to remain a rational, stable society. Consider the ramifications if a religious conservative minority passes into law that the individual has no authority over their own person. Who does? The state? The church? Which one? Doesn't that sound an awful lot like autocracy to you?
And since this is now a legal life that a mother is responsible for, should we have funerals for fertilized eggs that don't attach to the uterus?
A funeral is not a legal process. You can choose to have funerals or not for anything, just as you can choose to be interred or cremated.
Quite right. Death certificates then?
Should a bastula be registered with social security as soon as the pregnancy test comes back positive? Shouldn't someone claim it as a dependent on their taxes? And get more welfare for it? And now lets say the pregnancy fails, should there be an autopsy and criminal hearings to see if the pregnant mother was criminally negligent with her diet and exercise routine? And if the mother terminates the pregnancy because of health risk, should she be put on trial?
I agree with you that in each of those cases, we should be looking for consistency. If the U.S. decides that people begin existence at birth, I'd disagree. However, if that were to be decided, it would be hypocritical to try and charge people for double homicides. We need to pick one. The problem is that the two sides are so fundamentally opposed that I can't see a middle ground happening anytime soon.
And that's where I'm getting, the law must have a definitive distinction from morality in this area. It can't determine whether abortion is right or wrong, but it can define when a child is protected by law. The possibilities of abuse for this may seem distasteful, but the opposite position raises not just possibilities but realit
So, you kids make sure you a a valid birth certificate or your parents can kill you at any time till your are 18. Or, does it go past 18 years of age?
Tim S
Chalk another one up for deliberately missing the point.
Why is it that the unborn are deprived of life without due process?
I assume you're referring to clinical abortion with your little quip there. Abortions are medical procedures, not criminal proceedings. The 5th amendment has nothing to say about that.
But in answer to why the 5th amendment might not apply to the unborn, perhaps it's the same reason you can't claim the unborn as dependents on your taxes or put them on welfare. They are not yet born. Hence the un in unborn. Not that this clears anything up though, because if you were to kill a pregnant mother in a car wreck while drinking you can be charged for two counts of homicide. So the legal status of the fetus is really up in the air.
I don't think the law is prepared to tackle this dilemma either. At what point do you consider a pregnancy to be composed of two people? I mean, the fetus is connected to the mother, shares her blood, and is inside her very body, growing from her own cells. When does she no longer have authority over that part of her body? Four weeks? Three weeks? Two? When the bastula has split for the first time? When the egg drops? Well there's sperm too, so don't go spanking your monkey unless you're prepared to stand tall before the man. And since this is now a legal life that a mother is responsible for, should we have funerals for fertilized eggs that don't attach to the uterus? Should a bastula be registered with social security as soon as the pregnancy test comes back positive? Shouldn't someone claim it as a dependent on their taxes? And get more welfare for it? And now lets say the pregnancy fails, should there be an autopsy and criminal hearings to see if the pregnant mother was criminally negligent with her diet and exercise routine? And if the mother terminates the pregnancy because of health risk, should she be put on trial?
Pro-life supporters honestly have an honorable goal, to protect life. I understand that and admire it. But the depth of pandora's box can't be ignored when we open it up and start trying to legally redefine when life starts based on the physiology of a pregnancy. The law has it about as close as it can, in my opinion. When the child leaves the womb and breathes on its own and pumps its own blood, a birth certificate is made out declaring the date and time of birth. This is when the child is legally identified as a solitary living person under the protection of a guardian. The distinction between the mother and fetus prior to that point is contentious on morality, and it should remain that way. The law of a secular society has to end at some point and let morality hold its own turf. This is one of those points.
When the government decides what is necessary and unnecessary and bans the unnecessary you are no longer in a free society.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I'm a law abiding citizen with no felony record and no history of violent or psychotic behavior. I've clearly demonstrated I am not a danger to others around me. It should be "presumed" that my actions will be "innocent" of criminal intent. That's the fancy civilized "presumed innocent" thing in action, see. If a person that can't think that way, and distrusts his neighbors to the point of regulating their lives.. that person is a totalitarian shit. That person blatantly opposes the concept of liberty; he desires to remove the ability of his neighbors to act according to their own will by removing from them the circumstances with which to exercise their will. That's the whole point of banning guns and knives after all - to restrict the ability for a person to act on their own will, and therefore short-circuit their will altogether rather than allowing their will to be exercised and judged. Totalitarian shits see that there are people using guns and knives in crime, and then have the bright idea that "Hey! If we take their guns and knives away, then the people won't get the chance to decide to shoot or stab someone! Brilliant!" So law-abiding citizens, by their nature of abiding the law, are stripped of another liberty; and the criminal that holds the law in contempt already continues to express his criminal and violent will.
I also wanted to say that, like so many other ideals, the notion that guns are not necessary in a civilized society is fundamentally flawed because we do not live in a peaceful utopia in which greed and violence do not exist. Weapons will always be necessary as long as there are adversaries that would wish to deprive others of life or inflict injury, whether you consider foreign armies, civil war, street thugs, angry bison, or little green men from mars - unless of course you perceive a civilized society as a highly regulated police state. It's not paranoid at all to want to be prepared for defense against these things (maybe in the case of the bison or little green men, especially if you wear a tinfoil hat). In fact, it's pretty rational. Given the amount of violent crime we already know exists, it's not unreasonable to wish to have an effective means of defense. And ultimately, if history can teach us anything about civilized society, it's that it is fleeting at best. All great civilized societies before ours have perished in violence. The Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, and the Byzantines after them, the Ottomans; all of these are great civilized societies that suffered death in violence - both internal and external. Our societies will collapse one day too. When that happens, there will be no Bobbies with billy clubs and shiny whistles to scare away the meanies. Violent people will take what they want from others, they will kill or maim anyone they want, and then they'll post videos of it on YouTube. I'd rather be armed before that point, myself.