Re:Can someone research the political BS in Summar
on
Minority Report
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· Score: 2
Padilla was arrested May 8, but the arrest was not disclosed until June 12, after he had already been transferred to a military prison. This transfer was never approved by the judge as you imply, in fact the Justice Dept claims that the judicial system has no say in the matter whatsoever.
So you are saying that CNN is lying that Padilla's attorney argued his case in front of US District Judge before June 12th? I think you need to get your facts straight. And I will stop being angry, as a downtown NYC resident, when the organization that plotted and executed the murder of my neighbors is completely destroyed.
All things considered, I have been listening to NPR too much.
Fun with Robot Combat, Today!
on
GUIs for Robots
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· Score: 4, Informative
Visit IBM's Robocode and program your own deathbot! If you are old school Mac, you might remember RoboWar. A favorite of mine when I had a PowerBook 140.
Re:Can someone research the political BS in Summar
on
Minority Report
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· Score: 2
Americans like you might provoke some people to take other Americans and "put a gun to
their head and blow their evil brains out". Ever heard of the presumption of innocence? Not guilty until proven guilty before a court? YOU taught these principles, now you abandon them!
Thank you for not reading my post and responding. I said:
But this is America and we play nice with evil people. We give these unlawful combatants the benefit of the doubt and try them through military tribunals instead of executing them on the spot.
But what else can you expect from someone that has angry with America...falsehoods.
Terrorists are either PoWs (Geneva Convention: fair treatment) or criminals (justice system, local court, International Criminal Court).
Article 4 of the Geneva Convention states:
Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions: (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
No members of Al Qaeda meet this standard therefor they cannot be afforded PoW status. They are not criminals in the same manner as a burgler or murderer. They are what they are. Terrorists. A group of individuals that do not care about the Geneva Convention, US Law and human life, including their own.
We will do with them what we see fit. As a nation we cannot recognize the ICC as American Law trumps International Law under the US Constitution. If you don't like it. Tuff. They are lucky that when they are captured we allow them to continue to breath. Any other nation would have executed them on the spot. And it is a much better treatment than my apartment neighbor received from Al Qaeda. They still haven't found anything to identify his DNA in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Re:Can someone research the political BS in Summar
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 2
There are a quite decent number of "material witnesses" being held without any charges and no access to a lawyer. Activists are also sometimes inprisoned at protests, held for a week, then released without ever being charged or arrested.
All the "material witnesses" being held in Federal custody are illegal aliens from Al Qaeda sponsoring countries that already had deportation orders from the INS. So they are not "American Citizens" but foreign criminals. I feel safer at night that they are rotting in prison than running loose on American streets. Break the law, go to jail. Violate the immigration laws, skip deportation orders, rot in jail. They had an opportunity to return their country of origin when the deportation order was given.
There are not "Activists" in prison being held without trial nor are they held for a week without being charged or arrested. That is not even a logical statement. In order to be put in prison at a protest, you have to be arrested. Cops just don't grab you and throw you in the jail. They arrest you.
Can someone research the political BS in Summaries
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 2
This tale of police who solve crimes before they are committed reached the theaters just a few weeks after the United States learned that even citizens are being locked up without a trial or a lawyer because they might turn out to be terrorists."
This is 100% false. A complete lie. Typical leftist propaganda. Ideology before the truth.
The only "American Citizen" to being locked up outside, the American Taliban John Walker Lindh, is Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir. He has a lawyer, who has appeared in front of a judge. Her name is Donna Newman and she appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mukasey to plead Padilla's case. Its not like they picked him up off the street and threw him in the brig. Once his conspiratorial behavior with Al Qaeda was documented before the highly respected Judge Mukasey, Padilla's status was changed and he was thrown into a military prison where he belongs (right before the firing squad). Two seconds on google would have pointed that out. But John Ashcroft bashing is in vogue for the politically frustrated left, so these little pesky details never seem make it out when dealing with Padilla. Your Civil Rights are fine, you just don't have the right to make people listen to this "Sky is Falling" hysteria.
Mr. Dirty Bomber was not arrested for changing his name into something most American's cannot pronounce. He was arrested for travelling to a nation that harbors terrorists and meeting with Al Qaeda officials in order to plot out a radiological attack against innocent American Citizens. This is a conspiracy to commit terrorism. Terrorists are referred to by the Geneva Convention as "unlawful combatants" giving you pretty much the permission to put a gun to their head and blow their evil brains out. But this is America and we play nice with evil people. We give these unlawful combatants the benefit of the doubt and try them through military tribunals instead of executing them on the spot.
If you want to ensure that you do not end up like Mr. Muhajir, don't conspire with terrorists in a plot to harm vast numbers of Americans. Feel free to call John Ashcroft a religious poopy head, he won't stop you by calling you a terrorist.
Re:Failed on the Desktop...
on
Is Linux Dead?
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· Score: 2
Okay, way way off-topic, but you're misparsing the slogan.
I have read much about this problem in OpenSSH and fearing the worst...checking logs to see how often my SSH version was scanned. However, as far as I know, I haven't had any break ins using a SSH exploit. Thank God for TCP Wrappers, at least that helps when you find out about these things.
Did any one of the many black hat groups out there actually work up a exploit or was this caught in time that it was just a possibility of being exploited?
Failed on the Desktop...
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I love Linux, I use it 24/7 to run servers and have uptimes in the 200+ days range on all of them. The only reason they have such a short uptime was due to 9-11-01 and the effects it had on NYC where the servers are located. RedHat even sent me a note offering to help my boxen get back online on that fateful day, Microsoft was mute. Cheap, efficient and very easy to maintain. Nothing Microsoft produces (parent of MSNBC) can compare to my Linux servers.
However, I can't use Linux on the Desktop. I just can't. XFree86 with GNOME and KDE just doesn't cut the GUI mustard. That's not a bad thing. Just means the Linux Desktop folks are going to have to do more work...someone will get it right. When you think about it, a bunch of unpaid people scattered around the world actually built a consumer OS...for free, for anyone! Amazing progress.
Its not that people are afraid of a UNIX/UNIX-like OS for their desktop. Microsoft has been shoveling that FUD BS for the last six months. Mac OS X has done very well in its 1 1/2 year of existence in gaining market share. Linux on the Desktop folks ought to take a hard look at Aqua and Quartz and think if XFree86 and Window Managers are still the way to go for GUI on Linux. As the Marketing Department at Apple says, "Think Different". "Think Differently" for the grammatically anal.
iTunes is grossly lacking in configuration options, any winamp user using iTunes would be appalled at the lack of functionality.
Configuration options? Like playing music? iTunes has both 'Play' and 'Stop' along with some fancier controls that allow to advance music forwards and backwards. It even has this whiz-bang feature that automagically rips MP3s just my inserting a CD and labels the MP3s with ID3 tags. All of this for free!
And, yes, I too was once a Apple biggot. Then I mended my ways, got a CS degree, and found Linux.
Ew, sorry to hear that. I heard those CS degrees don't pay off in the long run. Guess things must be rough for you financially when you are having to use a free 'UNIX-like' operating system on cheap x86 hardware instead of a real UNIX operating system like Apple's Mac OS X on well designed, complimentary hardware.
Now that's cool. Majority of the time when I walk into my "non-techie" friends's houses, their VCR is always in that state. I would have thought they would have captured the radio signal from the Navy Nuke Clocks like the soothing sounds, clock radios at Sharper Image but I guess XDS will do the job just as well.
When the iPod was first announced, I ragged on it. Another MP3 player, YAWN! I already have a 6gig Archos Jukebox, why would I want an iPod? When it hit the stores, I still had to see one -- its an Apple product and I am an Apple Zealot. I walked into a store asked to see one, played with the jog wheel for 1 minute, looked at the display, pulled out a credit card and bought the sucker.
Its great that Windows users will get to feed MP3s to this player, however, without iTunes, I think you will be missing the full "iPod Experience". I don't think I have ever seen a hardware product work so well with software. Its just plain seamless. Even my Mom was able to figure it out on the first try when my Dad gave an iPod to her after seeing mine. The VCR flummuxes her -- it has flashed 12:00 for three years.
I am sure that XPlay is some devious plot by Steve Jobs to get all of you guys to switch. I don't see how XPlay can compete with iTunes in dealing with the iPod. iTunes is the best UNIX based MP3 player around, if not the best MP3 player, period.
We need to maintain a healthy balance between a free society and a peaceful society: truly, that's what democracy is about at its heart.
Actually, at the heart of the democracy is the tyranny of majority. That is why, as an American, I am happy that I live in a country that has a Representative Republic form of Government. Where constitutional rights trump the momentary whims of the majority in power.
An no, we do not need to maintain a healthy balance between free speech and a peaceful society. What we need to do is protect the ability to speak freely and punish those that use civil unrest or the threat of it to prevent that free speech -- the tyranny of the majoity which democracy fosters.
The work on the software for speech and visual pattern recognition is being developed for so many other applications, the only requirement that the handheld device would need to add such features is more computing power.
The problem with speech recognition is that it has to be audible. So far, I am about to slap every Tom, Dick and Mary walking down NYC streets talking on Cell Phones through the little "hands-free" headphone mics. I can't imagine when self important people start walking down the street scheduling appointments and dictating memos on a PDA. When the Cell Phone headphone mic (looks like a walkman headphone) came out at first, I thought that some mental hospital had a clearance sale on schizophrenics with all the people wandering around apparently talking to themselves. Really freaked me out for a bit until I realize that this was a "technological advance".
Unless these handheld companies can figure how to improve input into these tiny little computers, it doesn't matter how fast the CPU chip is because my big mitts won't get the data into fast enough for it to matter. To me, they are nothing more than a static data storage and regurgitation device, not an interactive system like my notebook or desktop.
The virtual keyboard might be hard to use at first, but it also might be able to switch instantly from one mode to another using simultaneous voice commands or (what I've been waiting for a long time) foot pedals.
The virtual keyboard is a cool idea. The foot pedals are a must. If a monkey can eat a banana using his foot, why can't I use mine to select the Shift key? The only problem with a virtual keyboard is tactile feedback. Hitting virtual space with meat space mitts might be a little hard on the brain. Touch is such an important sense.
Unless you can plug an I/O interface directly to my brain, you are not going to beat the keyboard for computer access. 100+ keys in approximately 1 1/2 foot range. We are very adroitness as mammals with our fingers. Eddie Van Halen and Jimmy Page are perfect examples of this ability. You will never see one of our nearest mammalian cousins, the chimpanzee, do "Stairway to Heaven" without pissing everyone off at the local guitar store sound room.
The common human can manage the 1 1/2 foot distance of a keyboard fairly well as evidenced by the number of God awful personal web pages on Geocities. Even though I use the most "gooey" Graphical User Interface, Apple's Mac OS X, if I want to manage data, files, etc., I jump to the "Terminal" and do it through the Command Line Interface. Even with Mac OS X's speech control and IBM's Via Voice software, I can still type faster than I can talk -- in an intelligible manner.
I always find it funny in "near future" films how complicated the input interfaces are. They are dancing their hands in a virtual space acting like data had a form that you could grab and move. What a waste of effort. If you have to flail your arms around for 8 hours, you are going to be exhausted...but at least you will only have to buy one ticket to fly Southwest. The amount of effort required to manipulate the 100+ keys of a standard QWERTY keyboard is minimal. Though I have never had problems, I am sure the keyboard design can be improved to prevent repetitive injuries to certain users. We are all different shapes and sizes in various regions of our anatomy. Its hard to pick the "average human being" for a generic device.
The keyboard is a powerful input device. Even with the 130 year-old QWERTY keyboard, human kind has been able to create wonders -- without it, we would have never made it to the moon. Compared to the original 1872 keyboard layout by C. L. Sholes, my clear plastic keyboard that came with my Dual G4 is not much different. I know it so well, I don't think I will ever use the Dvorak keyboard but my future kids might.
Thank you Dutch! I was getting tired of having everyone bashing the USA for our stupid legal system. Its great to know that we are not the only idiots on the planet. Thanks for taking some of the heat off of us.
But is it better to tell people, and no doubt have people killed in the panic, but maybe a few do get clear or not tell anybody and have them all die?
I say don't tell anyone. Let them enjoy the remaining moments of their life in an ignorant bliss. No point letting their last remaining days on Earth be spent in complete and utter panic. They are dead either way.
This particular asteroid wouldn't have been the end of the world, only a section of it. If it had been on a collision course with a populated area and we detected it, people could have been evacuated.
Uh, excuse me? Evcuate an area the size of Siberia? Where are you going to put millions and millions of refuges. When an asteroid hits the Earth, you don't try to figure out who to get out of the way, you start praying to your favorite deity. There would be no way we could move all the folks. Just look at what happens in Florida when they have Hurricanes and try to evacuate folks.
Id like to thank the United States government for CUTTING BACK funds to search for stuff like this. I think currently we map 5% of the skies? No wonder it was discovered 3 days later, it was in the other 95% of the skies we dont have enough money to look at.
1. What would we have done if found out 1 month before it passed by Earth? Send Bruce Willis out to blow it up with a nuclear bomb? Get a really big pool cue and bank shot it off Mars?
2. Why can't Europe get off its butt and save mankind for change? Why is it always the taxpayers of the United States that have to save the Earth? We did enough in the 20th Century. Its time for us to take a century and let France save the Earth for a change. God knows we saved their asses enough.
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So you are saying that CNN is lying that Padilla's attorney argued his case in front of US District Judge before June 12th? I think you need to get your facts straight. And I will stop being angry, as a downtown NYC resident, when the organization that plotted and executed the murder of my neighbors is completely destroyed.
All things considered, I have been listening to NPR too much.
Visit IBM's Robocode and program your own deathbot! If you are old school Mac, you might remember RoboWar. A favorite of mine when I had a PowerBook 140.
Thank you for not reading my post and responding. I said:
But what else can you expect from someone that has angry with America...falsehoods.
Terrorists are either PoWs (Geneva Convention: fair treatment) or criminals (justice system, local court, International Criminal Court).
Article 4 of the Geneva Convention states:
No members of Al Qaeda meet this standard therefor they cannot be afforded PoW status. They are not criminals in the same manner as a burgler or murderer. They are what they are. Terrorists. A group of individuals that do not care about the Geneva Convention, US Law and human life, including their own.We will do with them what we see fit. As a nation we cannot recognize the ICC as American Law trumps International Law under the US Constitution. If you don't like it. Tuff. They are lucky that when they are captured we allow them to continue to breath. Any other nation would have executed them on the spot. And it is a much better treatment than my apartment neighbor received from Al Qaeda. They still haven't found anything to identify his DNA in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
All the "material witnesses" being held in Federal custody are illegal aliens from Al Qaeda sponsoring countries that already had deportation orders from the INS. So they are not "American Citizens" but foreign criminals. I feel safer at night that they are rotting in prison than running loose on American streets. Break the law, go to jail. Violate the immigration laws, skip deportation orders, rot in jail. They had an opportunity to return their country of origin when the deportation order was given.
There are not "Activists" in prison being held without trial nor are they held for a week without being charged or arrested. That is not even a logical statement. In order to be put in prison at a protest, you have to be arrested. Cops just don't grab you and throw you in the jail. They arrest you.
This is 100% false. A complete lie. Typical leftist propaganda. Ideology before the truth.
The only "American Citizen" to being locked up outside, the American Taliban John Walker Lindh, is Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir. He has a lawyer, who has appeared in front of a judge. Her name is Donna Newman and she appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mukasey to plead Padilla's case. Its not like they picked him up off the street and threw him in the brig. Once his conspiratorial behavior with Al Qaeda was documented before the highly respected Judge Mukasey, Padilla's status was changed and he was thrown into a military prison where he belongs (right before the firing squad). Two seconds on google would have pointed that out. But John Ashcroft bashing is in vogue for the politically frustrated left, so these little pesky details never seem make it out when dealing with Padilla. Your Civil Rights are fine, you just don't have the right to make people listen to this "Sky is Falling" hysteria.
Mr. Dirty Bomber was not arrested for changing his name into something most American's cannot pronounce. He was arrested for travelling to a nation that harbors terrorists and meeting with Al Qaeda officials in order to plot out a radiological attack against innocent American Citizens. This is a conspiracy to commit terrorism. Terrorists are referred to by the Geneva Convention as "unlawful combatants" giving you pretty much the permission to put a gun to their head and blow their evil brains out. But this is America and we play nice with evil people. We give these unlawful combatants the benefit of the doubt and try them through military tribunals instead of executing them on the spot.
If you want to ensure that you do not end up like Mr. Muhajir, don't conspire with terrorists in a plot to harm vast numbers of Americans. Feel free to call John Ashcroft a religious poopy head, he won't stop you by calling you a terrorist.
WAY OFF TOPIC! But thanks for the information. :)
Gobble! Gobble!
Did any one of the many black hat groups out there actually work up a exploit or was this caught in time that it was just a possibility of being exploited?
However, I can't use Linux on the Desktop. I just can't. XFree86 with GNOME and KDE just doesn't cut the GUI mustard. That's not a bad thing. Just means the Linux Desktop folks are going to have to do more work...someone will get it right. When you think about it, a bunch of unpaid people scattered around the world actually built a consumer OS...for free, for anyone! Amazing progress.
Its not that people are afraid of a UNIX/UNIX-like OS for their desktop. Microsoft has been shoveling that FUD BS for the last six months. Mac OS X has done very well in its 1 1/2 year of existence in gaining market share. Linux on the Desktop folks ought to take a hard look at Aqua and Quartz and think if XFree86 and Window Managers are still the way to go for GUI on Linux. As the Marketing Department at Apple says, "Think Different". "Think Differently" for the grammatically anal.
Very good point!
Most likely a Frenchman, they are always bitchin' when they don't get credit for something they haven't done! :P
Configuration options? Like playing music? iTunes has both 'Play' and 'Stop' along with some fancier controls that allow to advance music forwards and backwards. It even has this whiz-bang feature that automagically rips MP3s just my inserting a CD and labels the MP3s with ID3 tags. All of this for free!
And, yes, I too was once a Apple biggot. Then I mended my ways, got a CS degree, and found Linux.
Ew, sorry to hear that. I heard those CS degrees don't pay off in the long run. Guess things must be rough for you financially when you are having to use a free 'UNIX-like' operating system on cheap x86 hardware instead of a real UNIX operating system like Apple's Mac OS X on well designed, complimentary hardware.
[tongue removed from cheek]
In the only place that matters, America! If you want a satellite to be active during your daytime, fund it, build it and launch it. Jeez...
Now that's cool. Majority of the time when I walk into my "non-techie" friends's houses, their VCR is always in that state. I would have thought they would have captured the radio signal from the Navy Nuke Clocks like the soothing sounds, clock radios at Sharper Image but I guess XDS will do the job just as well.
Its great that Windows users will get to feed MP3s to this player, however, without iTunes, I think you will be missing the full "iPod Experience". I don't think I have ever seen a hardware product work so well with software. Its just plain seamless. Even my Mom was able to figure it out on the first try when my Dad gave an iPod to her after seeing mine. The VCR flummuxes her -- it has flashed 12:00 for three years.
I am sure that XPlay is some devious plot by Steve Jobs to get all of you guys to switch. I don't see how XPlay can compete with iTunes in dealing with the iPod. iTunes is the best UNIX based MP3 player around, if not the best MP3 player, period.
Actually, at the heart of the democracy is the tyranny of majority. That is why, as an American, I am happy that I live in a country that has a Representative Republic form of Government. Where constitutional rights trump the momentary whims of the majority in power.
An no, we do not need to maintain a healthy balance between free speech and a peaceful society. What we need to do is protect the ability to speak freely and punish those that use civil unrest or the threat of it to prevent that free speech -- the tyranny of the majoity which democracy fosters.
The problem with speech recognition is that it has to be audible. So far, I am about to slap every Tom, Dick and Mary walking down NYC streets talking on Cell Phones through the little "hands-free" headphone mics. I can't imagine when self important people start walking down the street scheduling appointments and dictating memos on a PDA. When the Cell Phone headphone mic (looks like a walkman headphone) came out at first, I thought that some mental hospital had a clearance sale on schizophrenics with all the people wandering around apparently talking to themselves. Really freaked me out for a bit until I realize that this was a "technological advance".
I still have the original Newton MP. The only PDA that was big enough for my hands! :)
Unless these handheld companies can figure how to improve input into these tiny little computers, it doesn't matter how fast the CPU chip is because my big mitts won't get the data into fast enough for it to matter. To me, they are nothing more than a static data storage and regurgitation device, not an interactive system like my notebook or desktop.
The virtual keyboard is a cool idea. The foot pedals are a must. If a monkey can eat a banana using his foot, why can't I use mine to select the Shift key? The only problem with a virtual keyboard is tactile feedback. Hitting virtual space with meat space mitts might be a little hard on the brain. Touch is such an important sense.
The common human can manage the 1 1/2 foot distance of a keyboard fairly well as evidenced by the number of God awful personal web pages on Geocities. Even though I use the most "gooey" Graphical User Interface, Apple's Mac OS X, if I want to manage data, files, etc., I jump to the "Terminal" and do it through the Command Line Interface. Even with Mac OS X's speech control and IBM's Via Voice software, I can still type faster than I can talk -- in an intelligible manner.
I always find it funny in "near future" films how complicated the input interfaces are. They are dancing their hands in a virtual space acting like data had a form that you could grab and move. What a waste of effort. If you have to flail your arms around for 8 hours, you are going to be exhausted...but at least you will only have to buy one ticket to fly Southwest. The amount of effort required to manipulate the 100+ keys of a standard QWERTY keyboard is minimal. Though I have never had problems, I am sure the keyboard design can be improved to prevent repetitive injuries to certain users. We are all different shapes and sizes in various regions of our anatomy. Its hard to pick the "average human being" for a generic device.
The keyboard is a powerful input device. Even with the 130 year-old QWERTY keyboard, human kind has been able to create wonders -- without it, we would have never made it to the moon. Compared to the original 1872 keyboard layout by C. L. Sholes, my clear plastic keyboard that came with my Dual G4 is not much different. I know it so well, I don't think I will ever use the Dvorak keyboard but my future kids might.
Thank you Dutch! I was getting tired of having everyone bashing the USA for our stupid legal system. Its great to know that we are not the only idiots on the planet. Thanks for taking some of the heat off of us.
I say don't tell anyone. Let them enjoy the remaining moments of their life in an ignorant bliss. No point letting their last remaining days on Earth be spent in complete and utter panic. They are dead either way.
Uh, excuse me? Evcuate an area the size of Siberia? Where are you going to put millions and millions of refuges. When an asteroid hits the Earth, you don't try to figure out who to get out of the way, you start praying to your favorite deity. There would be no way we could move all the folks. Just look at what happens in Florida when they have Hurricanes and try to evacuate folks.
1. What would we have done if found out 1 month before it passed by Earth? Send Bruce Willis out to blow it up with a nuclear bomb? Get a really big pool cue and bank shot it off Mars?
2. Why can't Europe get off its butt and save mankind for change? Why is it always the taxpayers of the United States that have to save the Earth? We did enough in the 20th Century. Its time for us to take a century and let France save the Earth for a change. God knows we saved their asses enough.