This is why Americans are so fucking hypocrites. Do whatever you want on your own land, but leave rest of the world alone. We don't want your bullshit around here in Europe, and the rest of the world.
As an American, I have to admit that your argument does have some merit, but please don't mistake the actions of the US politicians for the desires of the citizens. Politicians in this country tend to be wealthy, stuck-up, elitist bastards who pretend to listen to the wishes of the people around election time but otherwise follow their own agenda (which is primarily the agenda of the corporate interests who employ lobbyists) while giving away various entitlements and pork to keep their favorite voting blocs happy. For some reason they believe that it is their mandate to run every aspect of our lives and dictate what is best for us. For this they deserve to be punished most severely, but who is going to step up and do it? The corrupt love the current status quo and will do anything to prevent real change.
I feel like this country should have been up in arms about this 20-30 years ago, but the fact is that people here have gone soft and weak. Yes, we have the second amendment, but unless someone strong enough to lead and organize a revolution comes forward, it won't really do us much good to be able to keep and bear arms. Any chaotic revolt that may occur without strategy and planning is doomed. Most of the people I walk past every day are hopelessly materialistic and only care about their immediate lives. They have never had to struggle to obtain freedom, so it means nothing to them. They care more about American Idol than they do about American politics. Can these people be saved? Do they deserve to be saved? I say no.
On a related note, I can't understand why someone can't actually provide HARDWARE write protect on a USB stick
It's been done. I still have an early-generation Memorex USB stick from 2002 that has a physical write-protect switch on it. (basically a little recessed switch on the back much like the one on SD cards) When the switch is set to read-only, it works consistently across all operating systems so it's definitely a hardware lock, not software. The stick is of such durable construction and so reliable that I still use it today even though it is very low capacity by modern standards. (128 MB)
The next stick I bought didn't have hardware write protect and I haven't seen the feature since.
It's strange why people view jury duty as something to avoid when it an excellent opportunity to practice persuasion skills. With both of the parties involved in a trial counting on your support, you can manipulate the outcome of a case as you see fit (possibly even setting precedent in some instances) if you can convince the other people in the jury to go along with you.
I've found that OpenJDK6 is really good on Linux and most distro repositories have it. Apple did deprecate their own JVM last year, but OpenJDK has made progress recently and is probably going to be the new standard JVM on OS X based on what I've heard. Apple's in-house JVM releases have always been horribly out of date, so it would be better if people could use the newest OpenJDK instead if they need to. It's really sad.. OSX used to be one of best best Java development environments since Java came stock but since Apple insisted on controlling everything it degenerated into the worst since Java5 was the latest version for the longest time. (there was an experimental Java6 package available for Leopard a while ago but Apple actually took it down! If you wanted to run new Java stuff on Leopard, you were SOL) Apple only bothered adding Java6 to Snow Leopard even though Java6 had been out for years already by that time. Apple's Java 6 implementation *still* treats Java programs like second class applications... it's obvious that Apple wants people to develop using Objective C instead. *sigh*
I haven't really used C#, so how are the tools better? The only thing I have against C# is that it is Microsoft-centric and you need to make sure your stuff works properly on Mono if you do any sort of cross-platform development. (like I do) If I have to load Mono to get C# stuff working on Linux and Mac, what is the advantage over Java? I already know Java and the languages are similar, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick up C# if need be.
There's a reason why nobody uses Java for desktop applications; it's too damn slow!
10-15 years ago, I would definitely agree with you. Unless you are building a hugely complex application, Java is fine for lightweight to mid-range software. For instance, I'm currently building a fairly lightweight cross-platform Java-based frontend for GnuPG (something that has been sorely needed for a long time) and my application runs as fast as anything else on the system even when it has several threads running at once. Java applications can even look native these days (Swing's Windows and GTK widgets are fine, but I admit the OS X look still needs some work) so you aren't even stuck with that hideous cross-platform look anymore if you don't want it.
And using force is completely out of the question in this day and age.
No, it's because things simply haven't gotten that bad yet. If unemployment gets much worse (the official stats are wrong since they only count those currently receiving benefits. I would estimate the real number being ~15-20% unemployment if you take into account the people who have exhausted their 99 weeks) To make matters worse, many perceive the government as being insulated from real-life problems and it does not help that Obama seems to spend more time golfing and taking vacations than he does actually working. If food and fuel prices keep going up like they have been, then all it would take is a singular triggering event to spark a revolution. For instance, remember how one guy setting himself on fire to protest his standard of living in Tunisia sparked a revolt that toppled the government not only in that country but caused uprisings in several others as well?
People may care about American Idol, but they still care more about having a job, house, and being able to eat.
"Big Data" (and corporate America in general) justify it because money is all that matters to them. They have based their lives around it and it fills their very being even though they may pretend otherwise. If you were to meet one of them and look past the surface, the hunger and greed would be there. Even though they already have enough money, what does privacy matter when the chance of gaining even more profit is at stake? If someone were to take their money (or power) away from them, they would be broken and their life would no longer hold any meaning whatsoever.
Based on what my grandparents told me when I was growing up, 100-150 years ago, teenagers were far more capable than they are today simply because more was expected of them and they were given actual responsibilities. (and there were consequences for failing to fulfill them) If teens acted like they do today back then, they would have been looked at as being childish and feeble-minded. Even as recently as 70-80 years ago, you would have been disgraced as a parent if your kid did most of the "normal" stuff that teens do today. I'm not convinced that our modern culture of extending "childhood" until age 18 is the right thing to do... it certainly didn't happen a century or more ago and more of often than not people were better off for it.
I would much prefer someone write Episodes 7-9 instead
Except how are they going to do that without undermining 15-20 years worth of sequel novels/other EU stuff? For the benefit of the uninitiated, dates in Star Wars are based around episode four much like our CE and BCE system, (The Battle of Yavin happens at 0 BBY) so BBY ==years before the Battle of Yavin and ABY == years After the Battle of Yavin. The Star Wars timeline has been extended out to as far as ~150 ABY in the legacy era and prequel stuff goes back over 4000 BBY into the early Old Republic era. (KOTOR games, comics, etc) We have even seen glimpses of the Pre-Republic era (20,000 BBY) but it hasn't been explored very much.
The only hope for more movies would be to cram additional episodes somewhere in the middle between those two extremes and hope everything still fits together without any huge contradictions. (though I personally doubt Lucas would actually care if he ruined years of established continuity in favor of his own vision)
I've noticed that state and local (especially county/municipal) governments tend to be the worst offenders in regards to establishing forms of petty tyranny. I hear stuff all the time about how $city wants to ban trans-fat/salt or how $local_politician wants to get rid of all free parking city-wide to generate more revenue. (I heard about how they actually tried that in Long Beach, CA last year... fortunately for the people who live there it didn't happen)
This is all dependent on where you are working. If you are working a government job they won't even consider you for promotion unless you have a degree.
The main lure of government jobs is stability. If you work in government (state/local government especially) and you're union, you have near guaranteed job security, to the point that many politicians will actually sacrifice the well-being of everyone else just to please your union if they have to.
Am I the only one here who is disgusted with HR in general? Even the term "Human Resources"is abhorrent to me; I long for the days when that used to be called "Personnel" or something similar. I'm a person, not a fucking resource! When I think of resources, I think of computers, staplers, filing cabinets or something like that. If companies place their staff in the same general category as office resources, then that explains much of what is wrong in business today.
all I have seen suffering do to groups of people is weld them together, and I don't really consider that a good thing since it leads to tribalism and nationalism. "Us" vs. "Them" thinking.
Yes, suffering on such a scale does tend to bond people together, but I fail to see why you consider tribalism and nationalism to be a bad thing. It gives groups and nations a distinct identity and character. Why should that be needlessly sacrificed?
If an occupation improves their situation, people will support it. If it worsens it, it will be rejected.
Since it is impossible to tell in advance how something like that would turn out, it is best to leave other countries alone. If that country's people want a change in government, let them fight for it themselves. That way, they will value it and the struggle will strengthen them as a people. If we (the US or any other country in a position to do so) interfere in another country's business, we weaken ourselves by expending resources that could be put to other use and we weaken that country as well by robbing from them the strength they would have gained if they had handled a revolution themselves.
150W metal halide lamps are small enough to fit in standard fixtures (those 300W reflectors), and give a shitload of light.
I agree, HID is the only way to go for outdoor lighting. It will work in all kinds of temperatures and are the most efficient solution *per lumen* than fluorescent or anything else. However as far as I know you just can't put a HID bulb into a standard incandescent fixture b/c you need a ballast to start and maintain the arc. What kind of setup are you using?
In the house, I prefer CFLs because they come in a wider variety of color temperatures (I like 5000K on up... 3200K incandescent is too yellow for me) I also use CFLs in places that are hard to get to... I haven't had to change my porch light bulbs for over a year, whereas I would have to risk my life 15' up on a ladder over concrete to change out the incandescents every 6 months or so.
But I do remember is SGU's first episode where the Stargate pulled so much energy dialing across ~1000 galaxies that it went "boom".
Actually, it was the planet that blew up, not the gate. (draining huge amounts of raw energy from the core of an already unstable planet is bound to have serious consequences) The stargates themselves are nearly impossible to destroy, so the Icarus gate is probably still floating in the planetary debris field.
Windows installation for Win XP and older has always sucked. Even though XP installer didn't support SATA out of the box, (something they should have fixed by SP2 at the very latest, or added USB flash drive support) the disc was bootable at least. Older versions of Windows couldn't even do that. (I know Win 9x/me couldn't, I forget if 2k could or not) I always wondered why Win9x required a boot floppy to work when MS could have easily made the disc bootable with a DOS ramdisk to allow easy installation.
Are we really surprised? There are very few games in a casino where the house doesn't have a significant advantage. The house wants you to lose money because their business model depends on it. They only pay out winnings to keep people coming back. The whole gambling industry (including lotteries) is nothing more than a system of wealth redistribution. The rich love casinos (if they own the place) because it makes money for them and the government loves casinos because it means more tax revenue. Everyone else loses.
I'm normally a devout Linux user, but I can set my biases aside enough to admit that Microsoft did a good job with Windows 7. Of course, Vista could have been much better than it was if its codebase hadn't deteriorated so much during its insanely long development cycle.
The thing that's been bothering me about SG:U is that they are on this massive ship and don't seem to be exploring it much outside the tiny area they occupy. The ship likely has manufacturing facilities onboard and a full hospital with diagnostic equipment. It was intended to be ready for the arrival of a large crew for long term travel, yes? So it goes to reason everything they need is already there, including repairs to the ship. And how could only Rush know the ship has a bridge? Even the advanced Atlantis era ships that could be run by one person still had a bridge, and they've brought up maps on consoles before.
It may be that most of the areas on Destiny are unpressurized or running with minimal life support.(and IIRC they have only one working CO2 scrubber, not near enough to clean the whole ship) As far as hull breaches go, why are the shields powerful enough to keep super-hot star material out of the ship every time Destiny recharges but not powerful enough to maintain pressurization in breached compartments?
One small independent rental place place near where I used to live had one of those DVD restoration machines that polished the scratches off of the discs, but this one was much nicer than the ones you could buy. It even restored some of my damaged discs (sort of a side service they offered, but you had to ask for it since it wasn't advertised) so I doubt that damaged discs are much of a problem. If a small place has a commercial-grade disc polisher, then a Blockbuster probably has something similar.
I'm just brainstorming here, but I wonder if it would be possible to write a utility that splices encrypted data into one or more files while preserving the integrity of those host files. That way, the same hypothetical utility would be able to store small amounts (several hundred KB at most at a time) of encrypted data in a directory full of otherwise normal files that would still behave as they should. (JPG files would still display correctly, MP3 files would still play, etc) Since the spliced data would be small, there would be nothing to arouse suspicion by having the host files be larger than they should be. The only downside is that you would need a lot of files for some situations, but nearly everyone has a large music and/or porn collection that could be used. When the time comes to decrypt, the hypothetical utility would then extract the encrypted data from each file and reassemble it into a complete decrypted file or message. (remember old multi-floppy spanning zip files before USB sticks became common? Same idea) I'm sure that there is a whole lot of loose ends that would make implementation much harder than it sounds on paper (certainly beyond my current abilities when it comes to building something like that from scratch) but I do remember that years ago viruses frequently embedded themselves in files. It would be nice if that could finally be used for a good purpose.
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As an American, I have to admit that your argument does have some merit, but please don't mistake the actions of the US politicians for the desires of the citizens. Politicians in this country tend to be wealthy, stuck-up, elitist bastards who pretend to listen to the wishes of the people around election time but otherwise follow their own agenda (which is primarily the agenda of the corporate interests who employ lobbyists) while giving away various entitlements and pork to keep their favorite voting blocs happy. For some reason they believe that it is their mandate to run every aspect of our lives and dictate what is best for us. For this they deserve to be punished most severely, but who is going to step up and do it? The corrupt love the current status quo and will do anything to prevent real change.
I feel like this country should have been up in arms about this 20-30 years ago, but the fact is that people here have gone soft and weak. Yes, we have the second amendment, but unless someone strong enough to lead and organize a revolution comes forward, it won't really do us much good to be able to keep and bear arms. Any chaotic revolt that may occur without strategy and planning is doomed. Most of the people I walk past every day are hopelessly materialistic and only care about their immediate lives. They have never had to struggle to obtain freedom, so it means nothing to them. They care more about American Idol than they do about American politics. Can these people be saved? Do they deserve to be saved? I say no.
It's been done. I still have an early-generation Memorex USB stick from 2002 that has a physical write-protect switch on it. (basically a little recessed switch on the back much like the one on SD cards) When the switch is set to read-only, it works consistently across all operating systems so it's definitely a hardware lock, not software. The stick is of such durable construction and so reliable that I still use it today even though it is very low capacity by modern standards. (128 MB)
The next stick I bought didn't have hardware write protect and I haven't seen the feature since.
Actually, the equivalent item for this in Fallout (Fallout 3 and NV at least) is called Dirty Water.
It's strange why people view jury duty as something to avoid when it an excellent opportunity to practice persuasion skills. With both of the parties involved in a trial counting on your support, you can manipulate the outcome of a case as you see fit (possibly even setting precedent in some instances) if you can convince the other people in the jury to go along with you.
I've found that OpenJDK6 is really good on Linux and most distro repositories have it. Apple did deprecate their own JVM last year, but OpenJDK has made progress recently and is probably going to be the new standard JVM on OS X based on what I've heard. Apple's in-house JVM releases have always been horribly out of date, so it would be better if people could use the newest OpenJDK instead if they need to. It's really sad.. OSX used to be one of best best Java development environments since Java came stock but since Apple insisted on controlling everything it degenerated into the worst since Java5 was the latest version for the longest time. (there was an experimental Java6 package available for Leopard a while ago but Apple actually took it down! If you wanted to run new Java stuff on Leopard, you were SOL) Apple only bothered adding Java6 to Snow Leopard even though Java6 had been out for years already by that time. Apple's Java 6 implementation *still* treats Java programs like second class applications... it's obvious that Apple wants people to develop using Objective C instead. *sigh*
I haven't really used C#, so how are the tools better? The only thing I have against C# is that it is Microsoft-centric and you need to make sure your stuff works properly on Mono if you do any sort of cross-platform development. (like I do) If I have to load Mono to get C# stuff working on Linux and Mac, what is the advantage over Java? I already know Java and the languages are similar, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick up C# if need be.
oops.. this reply got inserted into the wrong thread, it was supposed to be a follow-up to "Java & Ruby: Not known for high performance"
10-15 years ago, I would definitely agree with you. Unless you are building a hugely complex application, Java is fine for lightweight to mid-range software. For instance, I'm currently building a fairly lightweight cross-platform Java-based frontend for GnuPG (something that has been sorely needed for a long time) and my application runs as fast as anything else on the system even when it has several threads running at once. Java applications can even look native these days (Swing's Windows and GTK widgets are fine, but I admit the OS X look still needs some work) so you aren't even stuck with that hideous cross-platform look anymore if you don't want it.
No, it's because things simply haven't gotten that bad yet. If unemployment gets much worse (the official stats are wrong since they only count those currently receiving benefits. I would estimate the real number being ~15-20% unemployment if you take into account the people who have exhausted their 99 weeks) To make matters worse, many perceive the government as being insulated from real-life problems and it does not help that Obama seems to spend more time golfing and taking vacations than he does actually working. If food and fuel prices keep going up like they have been, then all it would take is a singular triggering event to spark a revolution. For instance, remember how one guy setting himself on fire to protest his standard of living in Tunisia sparked a revolt that toppled the government not only in that country but caused uprisings in several others as well?
People may care about American Idol, but they still care more about having a job, house, and being able to eat.
This is one of the gripes I have with DVD as well. Why should I pay for something like that? If a disc has ads on it, it should be free.
"Big Data" (and corporate America in general) justify it because money is all that matters to them. They have based their lives around it and it fills their very being even though they may pretend otherwise. If you were to meet one of them and look past the surface, the hunger and greed would be there. Even though they already have enough money, what does privacy matter when the chance of gaining even more profit is at stake? If someone were to take their money (or power) away from them, they would be broken and their life would no longer hold any meaning whatsoever.
Based on what my grandparents told me when I was growing up, 100-150 years ago, teenagers were far more capable than they are today simply because more was expected of them and they were given actual responsibilities. (and there were consequences for failing to fulfill them) If teens acted like they do today back then, they would have been looked at as being childish and feeble-minded. Even as recently as 70-80 years ago, you would have been disgraced as a parent if your kid did most of the "normal" stuff that teens do today. I'm not convinced that our modern culture of extending "childhood" until age 18 is the right thing to do... it certainly didn't happen a century or more ago and more of often than not people were better off for it.
Except how are they going to do that without undermining 15-20 years worth of sequel novels/other EU stuff? For the benefit of the uninitiated, dates in Star Wars are based around episode four much like our CE and BCE system, (The Battle of Yavin happens at 0 BBY) so BBY ==years before the Battle of Yavin and ABY == years After the Battle of Yavin. The Star Wars timeline has been extended out to as far as ~150 ABY in the legacy era and prequel stuff goes back over 4000 BBY into the early Old Republic era. (KOTOR games, comics, etc) We have even seen glimpses of the Pre-Republic era (20,000 BBY) but it hasn't been explored very much.
The only hope for more movies would be to cram additional episodes somewhere in the middle between those two extremes and hope everything still fits together without any huge contradictions. (though I personally doubt Lucas would actually care if he ruined years of established continuity in favor of his own vision)
I've noticed that state and local (especially county/municipal) governments tend to be the worst offenders in regards to establishing forms of petty tyranny. I hear stuff all the time about how $city wants to ban trans-fat/salt or how $local_politician wants to get rid of all free parking city-wide to generate more revenue. (I heard about how they actually tried that in Long Beach, CA last year... fortunately for the people who live there it didn't happen)
The main lure of government jobs is stability. If you work in government (state/local government especially) and you're union, you have near guaranteed job security, to the point that many politicians will actually sacrifice the well-being of everyone else just to please your union if they have to.
Am I the only one here who is disgusted with HR in general? Even the term "Human Resources"is abhorrent to me; I long for the days when that used to be called "Personnel" or something similar. I'm a person, not a fucking resource! When I think of resources, I think of computers, staplers, filing cabinets or something like that. If companies place their staff in the same general category as office resources, then that explains much of what is wrong in business today.
Yes, suffering on such a scale does tend to bond people together, but I fail to see why you consider tribalism and nationalism to be a bad thing. It gives groups and nations a distinct identity and character. Why should that be needlessly sacrificed?
Since it is impossible to tell in advance how something like that would turn out, it is best to leave other countries alone. If that country's people want a change in government, let them fight for it themselves. That way, they will value it and the struggle will strengthen them as a people. If we (the US or any other country in a position to do so) interfere in another country's business, we weaken ourselves by expending resources that could be put to other use and we weaken that country as well by robbing from them the strength they would have gained if they had handled a revolution themselves.
I agree, HID is the only way to go for outdoor lighting. It will work in all kinds of temperatures and are the most efficient solution *per lumen* than fluorescent or anything else. However as far as I know you just can't put a HID bulb into a standard incandescent fixture b/c you need a ballast to start and maintain the arc. What kind of setup are you using? In the house, I prefer CFLs because they come in a wider variety of color temperatures (I like 5000K on up... 3200K incandescent is too yellow for me) I also use CFLs in places that are hard to get to... I haven't had to change my porch light bulbs for over a year, whereas I would have to risk my life 15' up on a ladder over concrete to change out the incandescents every 6 months or so.
Actually, it was the planet that blew up, not the gate. (draining huge amounts of raw energy from the core of an already unstable planet is bound to have serious consequences) The stargates themselves are nearly impossible to destroy, so the Icarus gate is probably still floating in the planetary debris field.
Windows installation for Win XP and older has always sucked. Even though XP installer didn't support SATA out of the box, (something they should have fixed by SP2 at the very latest, or added USB flash drive support) the disc was bootable at least. Older versions of Windows couldn't even do that. (I know Win 9x/me couldn't, I forget if 2k could or not) I always wondered why Win9x required a boot floppy to work when MS could have easily made the disc bootable with a DOS ramdisk to allow easy installation.
Are we really surprised? There are very few games in a casino where the house doesn't have a significant advantage. The house wants you to lose money because their business model depends on it. They only pay out winnings to keep people coming back. The whole gambling industry (including lotteries) is nothing more than a system of wealth redistribution. The rich love casinos (if they own the place) because it makes money for them and the government loves casinos because it means more tax revenue. Everyone else loses.
I'm normally a devout Linux user, but I can set my biases aside enough to admit that Microsoft did a good job with Windows 7. Of course, Vista could have been much better than it was if its codebase hadn't deteriorated so much during its insanely long development cycle.
It may be that most of the areas on Destiny are unpressurized or running with minimal life support.(and IIRC they have only one working CO2 scrubber, not near enough to clean the whole ship) As far as hull breaches go, why are the shields powerful enough to keep super-hot star material out of the ship every time Destiny recharges but not powerful enough to maintain pressurization in breached compartments?
One small independent rental place place near where I used to live had one of those DVD restoration machines that polished the scratches off of the discs, but this one was much nicer than the ones you could buy. It even restored some of my damaged discs (sort of a side service they offered, but you had to ask for it since it wasn't advertised) so I doubt that damaged discs are much of a problem. If a small place has a commercial-grade disc polisher, then a Blockbuster probably has something similar.
I'm just brainstorming here, but I wonder if it would be possible to write a utility that splices encrypted data into one or more files while preserving the integrity of those host files. That way, the same hypothetical utility would be able to store small amounts (several hundred KB at most at a time) of encrypted data in a directory full of otherwise normal files that would still behave as they should. (JPG files would still display correctly, MP3 files would still play, etc) Since the spliced data would be small, there would be nothing to arouse suspicion by having the host files be larger than they should be. The only downside is that you would need a lot of files for some situations, but nearly everyone has a large music and/or porn collection that could be used. When the time comes to decrypt, the hypothetical utility would then extract the encrypted data from each file and reassemble it into a complete decrypted file or message. (remember old multi-floppy spanning zip files before USB sticks became common? Same idea) I'm sure that there is a whole lot of loose ends that would make implementation much harder than it sounds on paper (certainly beyond my current abilities when it comes to building something like that from scratch) but I do remember that years ago viruses frequently embedded themselves in files. It would be nice if that could finally be used for a good purpose.