Every time I see a pop-up advertisement that says:
"YOUR COMPUTER COULD BE INFECTED WITH SPYWARE - CLICK HERE"
It sends up huge red flags for me, and I always shut them down without clicking. I've seen so many of them (wanting to optimize my Windows, etc.) that I'm now gun shy of any such remote scanning application.
I'll be thinking long and hard about letting anything scan my system through my firewall.
"Historically, the lack of friendly interfaces has been an obstacle to making Linux® a commercially viable product for end users..."
I would switch to Linux on my home PC/today/ except for one thing. The primary purpose of my home PC is entertainment. Until I can run my games on it, and I'm talking maintstream-buy-at-Walmart games, it's just never going to happen for me.
I want to be on the Linux bandwagon in a big way. I'd switch instantly. But that is the showstopper for me.
"Browse featured listings or search the archive to find just what you want, then click to buy. Once you do, you get stutter-free, ad-free video delivered directly to your desktop. From there, the sky's the limit, because you own purchased video forever. Watch as many times as you choose, share between five computers, burn to data CDs or sync to the new iPod. Instant gratification never looked better."
-> "...because you own purchased video forever." -
As has already been pointed out, insurgencies can be quite effective.
I believe insurgencies here in the United States could also be effective. In fact, in some ways insurgencies here might be even MORE effective than insurgencies in Iraq.
Unless Americans are killed, whenever a bomb goes off in Iraq (or anywhere else in the world) most people here in the US just yawn. No one cares. There is no real impact here.
But an insurgency here, even if militarily completely ineffective, would have/devestating/ economic consequences. Remember the DC snipers? Two nuts operating out of the back of a car, shooting out of a hole cut in the back of the trunk. I forget the exact numbers, but I believe the economic impact from just those two lunatics alone was in the millions - people quit going out and shopping! And that wasn't even these guys primary objective!
An insurgency here, no matter what the PR spin the government was able to put on it, would have huge economic consequences, and, consequently, hugely hit the tax base. Imagine the economic impact if, say, Atlanta turned into an Iraq. The loss of such tax revenue would get far, far more attention than a thousand successful military strikes.
>We do not have a militia, and unorganized people not enlisted in >"state security" are neither a militia nor necessary to the defense >of a free state.
>But unless it's revised to protect a right for any American to own and use a gun without restriction, these contrived versions by 2nd Amendment fetishists are baseless. And dangerous to our security.
You are correct - today, there is no militia. But there is/supposed/ to be a militia.
What the founding fathers intended, based on other writings of theirs (like the Federalist Papers), was clearly to prevent a strong centralized government from having a strong military which would enable it to act as a tyranny. The way they intended to prevent this was to have no standing Federal army, or, at the most, a small one, countered by militias raised by the states, commanded by officers from those states, and made up of citizens from those states.
The overriding intent is clearly to keep military power in the hands of the citizens of the states, and out of the hands of a centralized federal government. The overriding intent is clearly to retain enough military power outside of the federal government to prevent said federal government from taking military action against the citizens of the states.
This kind of military setup died in the late 19th century. Many like to argue that the National Guard is now the militia of the founding father's vision. It is not. Today's National Guard in no way serves to counterbalance Federal military power. If anything, it serves as an adjunct to it and reinforces it.
Just because state militias have been commandeered by the Federal government does not mean that the founding fathers' intents are not still valid! The militias are gone, but the people are not! Given today's situation, the only way left to preserve the intent of the founding fathers is to keep arms in the hands of the/people/.
There are militias no longer, therefore the/people/ must serve as the counterbalance to federal tyranny.
>...BellSouth could try, but then Google lights up all their dark fiber >and take themselves OUT of BellSouth's market altogether, leaving ?BellSouth to explain to their customers why they should keep paying >for a service that doesn't give them easy access to the most popular >search engine on the net.
And what stops Google from pulling the same stuff?
I guess new folks who grow up with reliable, always-available internet might find web-based email as "real" as a local email client. But I, too, prefer a local email client. I guess it boils down to a trust thing. I like to get my emails off of someone else's server and onto my computer as quickly as I can, so that the email is in MY hands. The idea of being at the mercy of some other corporate entity to get at my email just bugs me. Privacy, data integrity, storage size limitations, security, DRM, fear of price changes for the service - all of these things bug me when I leave my email on someone else's server. Granted, most of the issues are still present once I get the email onto my own computer, but I just feel more in control with it on my own computer. I only use webmail as a last resort.
>Nothing personal, but just because you haven't had a single customer >refuse to purchase the product because of the device doesn't mean one never will.
And just because you have never missed a car payment doesn't mean that lots of people obviously/do/.
Everyone loves to wring their hands over stereotypes, but what happens when you have enough experience to convince yourself that the stereotype is usually true?
This guy/owns/ a buy here-pay-here car lot. He knows the kind of clientel that buys from his kind of car lot from first-hand experience. He wouldn't be putting these things on his cars (and paying for them) if he didn't feel he was getting a return on his investment.
>So you'll need an infrastructure right? A router, a couple access points, >some way to manage access, etc. Next you'll probably want someone to run it, >unless you feel like having 499 house holds call you ever time they can't get >their email. Finally, you'll need a bill collector to make sure everyone's >paying in to cover the monthly fees and denying access when they don't. > >Congratulations. You've just become a service provide
Good points.
However, we already have a homeowners' association, and we already have to pay $81/quarter to it, so a fee collection mechanism is already in place for our neighborhood.
While ideally it would be nice to have someone to call if you can't get it to work, it's not entirely necessary. Once you actually get the hardware up and running, you simply hand out instructions on how to connect to all new folks who move into the neighborhood. Or the instructions could be printed in the quarterly newsletter all homeowners receive. If you can't make it work for you, well, too bad. There are lots of neighborhood services that I don't take advantage of for whatever reason (like, say, the tennis courts or swimming pool) but I still pay for. This would be just another one of those things. But if it really was necessary (and it/will/ be necessary to have someone install, set up, and maintain the hardware), this sort of thing can easily be outsourced. The community already outsources lots of for-hire services, like landscaping, security, maintenance, etc. Why not IT?
You are correct about the problems of dicing up wireless bandwidth. But our neighborhood is on Cable for high speed internet (no DSL available). And, as you know, cable is also a shared pipe for the neighborhood (and I can feel it in the evenings when the kids/parents get home).
I wonder what sort of equipment is used by the cable company today to pipe internet into our neighborhood? Does the current cable setup really cost $12,500 a month to service our neighborhood? (these are actual questions, not sarcasm).
Anyway, I'm sure WiFi and WiMax won't be able to compete with a landline in terms of bandwidth any time soon, but I can see this still being a threat to ISPs.
The telecoms would hate for cities, towns, civic groups, neighborhoods, or anyone else to get together and set up their own shared high speed wireless network.
I'm also suprised at the lack of debate at the/real/ meat in this article - the fact that the big ISPs have already lobbied in places to hobble the speed of such WiFi networks.
I think this is going to become a huge issue as WiFi and WiMax take off.
My subdivision has some 500 houses in it. If half of them get high speed internet in some form, at $50/month they are paying out some $12,500 a month collectively for high speed internet access.
What if our subdivision decided to set up it's own WiFi network? Yeah, I can see the ISPs getting real nervous about this.
Also, I can see Cell Phone companies getting VERY nervous about this. If WiFi internet access becomes free and widespread, you won't need the cellular network anymore to make wireless phone calls. Just a portable wireless IP phone.
No wonder the big Telecom industries are out to squelch this.
The problem with the IT job market in the US is, in my view, that the days of being moderately competent and getting a good job in IT are over.
Back in the late 80's early 90's, if you had played with a TI/994A computer or took typing in high school you were probably geeky enough to have some computer experience. And when you entered the job market you entered into a place where most of the people doing the hiring were too old to know what computers were or how to use them. Basically if you had any computer experience at all the world was your oyster.
Those days are over.
Today, if you want to get into IT, make good money, and be relatively immune from outsourcing it is no longer sufficient to be a dabbler in computers. You/must/ be at the top of your field. Anything less and you quickly become a commodity, which is very dangerous in this field.
So I would tell students contemplating a degree in CS that if they are not willing to put 110% into their studies, graduate with a 4.0,/and/ be self-taught in state-of-the art programming tools before they graduate (universities are always/way/ behind the curve in the tools they use for teaching), to forget it.
I suspect the market is far more tolerable of average business or law school graduates than it is to average CS graduates. Average CS jobs go to India. The day may well come when average business and law jobs go their, too, but this is true for average CS jobs/today/.
Steve
Re:Arguing over the best way to kill people is sil
on
HAARP Amping It Up
·
· Score: 1
>SO you have no qualms against chemical or biological weapons then I gather.
It depends on how effective they are. If the end result is similar to, say, a high explosive shell or, say, a nuclear blast, then I don't really see what the difference is. Weapons that result in prelonged suffering and agony, say, longer then maybe 10 minutes or so might give me pause, but otherwise, no, I have no qualms. I mean, if I had to choose between death by some chemical means that put me to sleep or death by nuclear vaporization or blasted into small pieces with high explosives, I do believe I'd choose the chemical means. If I had to choose between taking a bullet in the chest and dying over the course of ten or so minutes with a sucking chest wound as I drowned in my own blood vs. sufficating over the same time period as some chemical shut down my nervous system I'd say either option about equally sucked.
>I also suppose you have no problem with torture either. Dead is dead at least when you torture people you keep them alive right?
Straw man. I have said nothing about torture.
>Oh before I forget. You do realize that you don't actually have to invade other countries, occupy them and kill the people who don't >want you there right? You realize that right? You don't have to kill people, it's strange but it's true.
Aside from the fact that sometimes it/is/ necessary to invade other countries, occupy them, and kill people who don't want you there, I was not attempting to debate or discuss when such options might or might not be necessary. I am merely asserting that it is rather silly to debate over what is the good and proper way to kill someone in war. It's usually just a way for people to make themselves feel a little better about killing people.
>I hear God said something like that >but I might be wrong. Maybe you should check with your local holy man or maybe even your mom.
I checked with my local holy man and my Mom and they both said I was right.
>"Support free speech. Don't post anonymously. If you are anonymous, don't bother >replying to my comments, I won't see it"
Heh, you want your right to privacy, but then don't want people to post while protecting their privacy.:)
Frankly, I think all of this is a tempest in a teapot. For years now people have sent TONS of data across the network in the clear, because they felt anonymous because no one had the tools or inclination to monitor what was being sent. Now that governments are starting to get wise to what is going over the net, they are developing the tools and the inclination.
The answer to all of this is simple, and has been available for a long time - encryption. How many people bother to encrypt their emails, despite PGP plug-ins being pretty common for most email clients? I don't, because I can't count on the people I send email to being able to decrypt it.
Encryption needs to become standard and transparent for all data being sent over the web. Then monitoring will become pointless.
I am currently an XM subscriber, but I'm about to ditch them after 1 year of service (got the thing for Christmas last year).
I agree, this sounds basically like the cellular companies are turning your cell phone into a "satellite" radio. This should compete directly against them - IF they can broadcast with equal coverage like satellite does. If cellular radio can actually stream specific content to specific customers that could bury satellite radio.
The reason I'm ditching XM though, is first of all, because of the price of gas, we are trying to cut back, and every little bit helps, even $10/month. But secondly, I haven't been as impressed with XM radio as I thought I would be. Yes, commercial free is nice (most channels are commercial free), but I find that the "popular" channels (80s, 90s, Country, etc.), don't seem to play many "A side" songs - they all seem to be "B side" songs. That is, (for those of you before vinyl), they don't seem to run many Top 10 songs. You listen to the 80s channel, for example, and every once in a while you will hear a song that makes you go, "Oh yeah, I remember that one!" But most of them I have never heard before. Thirdly, I find myself channel surfing a lot because I'm not happy with what I'm hearing. I find myself returning to my self-burned CDs of songs I/know/ I like alot more. So I think I have come to the conclusion that I would rather hear my OWN music collection than something picked out for me.
If we were keeping our cell phones (we are also cancelling our 2-phone $80/month family plan with Verizon in favor of going back to a "land line" through Vonage for $25/month) I might consider cellular radio - IF it did not consume phone airtime, IF it cost no more than XM radio, and if it would FM broadcast to my car radio or otherwise hook into it.
The big ta-do over Apple allowing video downloads was not the crappy mini-version they are currently offering, it is that this could be the crack-in-the-dam that allows us to download video on demand for/real/ TV-quality shows.
"2- The component suppliers are subsidizing the cost of the parts with profits made from developed countries. One condition of this arrangement is that the $100 laptops cannot be sold here and undercut the profits."
Of course. Once again, we will subsidize other countries. This is just like damn drugs! I have to pay through the nose so that the drug companies get enough profit to offset the cheap ones they sell to Canada and the like!
This is the one thing I love about globalization. While the multinationals would LOVE to be able to sell, say, a CD, or a DVD, or a computer for one amount in one country and another amount in another country, globalization insures that the cheapest ones will always be available on eBay for me to buy.
I predict $100 laptops will be available on eBay for around $50 shortly after they are introduced.
Yeah, when someone says "avant-garde" it usually means they are looking at a turd and trying to sound sophisticated by using big words to convince others that it really isn't a turd.
>What do you people have against Star Wars? Most people here think Star >Wars (IV, V, VI) is cool because all the older geeks they live up to thought >it was cool. Now everyone that watched the newer episodes (or even heard about >them) and their grandmothers think they suck. Well you know what? If they did >truly suck, people wouldn't go like crazy to watch them (don't forget, >Episode I is 5th on the All Time Box Office for the USA) all.
There is one huge, huge reason why lots of people went to the box office to watch them. All of us "older geeks" who were actually alive and went to see the original movies/remember/ how great they were. And we all went in droves to see, we hoped the continuation of that greatness. And even as pathetic as the new installments kept being, I kept going, kept hoping that it would get better.
>Can anyone give me a precise reason why they think Star Wars I, II or III >were horrible movies? Was it Jar Jar? If yes, how would you do it to >make it suck less, stick to the original story and ensure IV, V and VI >don't have to change? Remember, you still need a gullible character that >can be trusted by the Jedis, loyal, possible elected to be a representative >in the Senate at a future time and easily manipulated in the future. Any >character you make like that (even making Harrison Ford play the character, >since so many love him) would still make you hate him. It is the exact purpose >of the character. And it is also the ingredient the movie needs to evolve.
In a nutshell, the latest three suck because they were too childish. The first three movies were much more "adult" feeling. They weren't "Aliens" by any stretch of the imagination, but even when I watch them now as an adult (I was 7 when the first one came out) I can appreciate them as being dark and sinister, but not in a Sunday-morning cartoon kind of way. For example, the mighty droid army that took over Naboo? They look, quite literally, like puppy dogs. My droid army would have looked like the exoskelton T800 from "The Terminator".
But I think my biggest problem with the last 3 movies was the acting. You would think George Lucas could get anyone in the world he wanted for his movies. The kids who played Anakin, both as a child and as an adult, could not act their way out of paper bags. Maybe some of the actors in the original 3 movies weren't the hottest actors in the world, either, but none of them made me CRINGE as they said their lines.
No, this article seems to be complete, unadulterated crap.
Have you READ the "references" at the bottom of this "article"? "Magic Purple Plates"? !? "Harmonic Protectors"?!?
I am FLOORED that this showed up on Slashdot.
Steve
This, I can guarantee. If the Internet is changed such that it is no longer possible to be anonymous, people will either make an anonymous, separate internet, or an anonymous peer to peer service that goes through several anonymous peers before reaching its location, a la Freenet.
The problem is, your data pipeline always ends with wherever you are. And your ISP knows where that end is, and who it belongs to.
Yes, you can obfuscate your dataline by going through various means to make it difficult to follow, but it is not impossible to follow, or else the data you are downloading could not find you either.
I suspect that this is going to be the second edge to a very sharp double edged sword.
The first edge was this: If data exists, it can be copied. This edge is what has doomed and will doom efforts at DRM through encryption.
But the second edge will be this: If data can be copied, the destination can be found.
Just as any DRM scheme can be defeated, I strongly suspect that any anonymizing routine can be defeated.
Sure it's difficult. And today, perhaps it is difficult enough that you can be pretty sure no one is going to take the effort to hunt you down.
But if they pass laws that make it so that the corporations moving and handling the data - the ISPs and Telecoms, have to provide tools and means to see where data is flowing to and from, this could get very easy very fast.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time I see a pop-up advertisement that says:
"YOUR COMPUTER COULD BE INFECTED WITH SPYWARE - CLICK HERE"
It sends up huge red flags for me, and I always shut them down without clicking. I've seen so many of them (wanting to optimize my Windows, etc.) that I'm now gun shy of any such remote scanning application.
I'll be thinking long and hard about letting anything scan my system through my firewall.
Steve
From TFA:
/today/ except for one thing. The primary purpose of my home PC is entertainment. Until I can run my games on it, and I'm talking maintstream-buy-at-Walmart games, it's just never going to happen for me.
"Historically, the lack of friendly interfaces has been an obstacle to making Linux® a commercially viable product for end users..."
I would switch to Linux on my home PC
I want to be on the Linux bandwagon in a big way. I'd switch instantly. But that is the showstopper for me.
Steve
From the iTunes web site:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/videos/
"Browse featured listings or search the archive to find just what you want, then click to buy. Once you do, you get stutter-free, ad-free video delivered directly to your desktop. From there, the sky's the limit, because you own purchased video forever. Watch as many times as you choose, share between five computers, burn to data CDs or sync to the new iPod. Instant gratification never looked better."
-> "...because you own purchased video forever." -
Steve
As has already been pointed out, insurgencies can be quite effective.
/devestating/ economic consequences. Remember the DC snipers? Two nuts operating out of the back of a car, shooting out of a hole cut in the back of the trunk. I forget the exact numbers, but I believe the economic impact from just those two lunatics alone was in the millions - people quit going out and shopping! And that wasn't even these guys primary objective!
I believe insurgencies here in the United States could also be effective. In fact, in some ways insurgencies here might be even MORE effective than insurgencies in Iraq.
Unless Americans are killed, whenever a bomb goes off in Iraq (or anywhere else in the world) most people here in the US just yawn. No one cares. There is no real impact here.
But an insurgency here, even if militarily completely ineffective, would have
An insurgency here, no matter what the PR spin the government was able to put on it, would have huge economic consequences, and, consequently, hugely hit the tax base. Imagine the economic impact if, say, Atlanta turned into an Iraq. The loss of such tax revenue would get far, far more attention than a thousand successful military strikes.
Steve
>We do not have a militia, and unorganized people not enlisted in
/supposed/ to be a militia.
/people/.
/people/ must serve as the counterbalance to federal tyranny.
>"state security" are neither a militia nor necessary to the defense
>of a free state.
>But unless it's revised to protect a right for any American to own and use a gun without restriction, these contrived versions by 2nd Amendment fetishists are baseless. And dangerous to our security.
You are correct - today, there is no militia. But there is
What the founding fathers intended, based on other writings of theirs (like the Federalist Papers), was clearly to prevent a strong centralized government from having a strong military which would enable it to act as a tyranny. The way they intended to prevent this was to have no standing Federal army, or, at the most, a small one, countered by militias raised by the states, commanded by officers from those states, and made up of citizens from those states.
The overriding intent is clearly to keep military power in the hands of the citizens of the states, and out of the hands of a centralized federal government. The overriding intent is clearly to retain enough military power outside of the federal government to prevent said federal government from taking military action against the citizens of the states.
This kind of military setup died in the late 19th century. Many like to argue that the National Guard is now the militia of the founding father's vision. It is not. Today's National Guard in no way serves to counterbalance Federal military power. If anything, it serves as an adjunct to it and reinforces it.
Just because state militias have been commandeered by the Federal government does not mean that the founding fathers' intents are not still valid! The militias are gone, but the people are not! Given today's situation, the only way left to preserve the intent of the founding fathers is to keep arms in the hands of the
There are militias no longer, therefore the
Steve
>...BellSouth could try, but then Google lights up all their dark fiber
>and take themselves OUT of BellSouth's market altogether, leaving
?BellSouth to explain to their customers why they should keep paying
>for a service that doesn't give them easy access to the most popular
>search engine on the net.
And what stops Google from pulling the same stuff?
Steve
I guess new folks who grow up with reliable, always-available internet might find web-based email as "real" as a local email client. But I, too, prefer a local email client. I guess it boils down to a trust thing. I like to get my emails off of someone else's server and onto my computer as quickly as I can, so that the email is in MY hands. The idea of being at the mercy of some other corporate entity to get at my email just bugs me. Privacy, data integrity, storage size limitations, security, DRM, fear of price changes for the service - all of these things bug me when I leave my email on someone else's server. Granted, most of the issues are still present once I get the email onto my own computer, but I just feel more in control with it on my own computer. I only use webmail as a last resort.
Steve
>Nothing personal, but just because you haven't had a single customer
/do/.
/owns/ a buy here-pay-here car lot. He knows the kind of clientel that buys from his kind of car lot from first-hand experience. He wouldn't be putting these things on his cars (and paying for them) if he didn't feel he was getting a return on his investment.
>refuse to purchase the product because of the device doesn't mean one never will.
And just because you have never missed a car payment doesn't mean that lots of people obviously
Everyone loves to wring their hands over stereotypes, but what happens when you have enough experience to convince yourself that the stereotype is usually true?
This guy
Steve
Bittorrent, Usenet, etc.
I get what I want, when I want it (almost), I get to keep it forever, and the price is right.
I'd be willing to pay my cable company if they could get rid of my "almost" above. But they better move quickly, or they will soon be irrelevant.
Steve
>So you'll need an infrastructure right? A router, a couple access points,
/will/ be necessary to have someone install, set up, and maintain the hardware), this sort of thing can easily be outsourced. The community already outsources lots of for-hire services, like landscaping, security, maintenance, etc. Why not IT?
>some way to manage access, etc. Next you'll probably want someone to run it,
>unless you feel like having 499 house holds call you ever time they can't get
>their email. Finally, you'll need a bill collector to make sure everyone's
>paying in to cover the monthly fees and denying access when they don't.
>
>Congratulations. You've just become a service provide
Good points.
However, we already have a homeowners' association, and we already have to pay $81/quarter to it, so a fee collection mechanism is already in place for our neighborhood.
While ideally it would be nice to have someone to call if you can't get it to work, it's not entirely necessary. Once you actually get the hardware up and running, you simply hand out instructions on how to connect to all new folks who move into the neighborhood. Or the instructions could be printed in the quarterly newsletter all homeowners receive. If you can't make it work for you, well, too bad. There are lots of neighborhood services that I don't take advantage of for whatever reason (like, say, the tennis courts or swimming pool) but I still pay for. This would be just another one of those things. But if it really was necessary (and it
Steve
You are correct about the problems of dicing up wireless bandwidth. But our neighborhood is on Cable for high speed internet (no DSL available). And, as you know, cable is also a shared pipe for the neighborhood (and I can feel it in the evenings when the kids/parents get home).
I wonder what sort of equipment is used by the cable company today to pipe internet into our neighborhood? Does the current cable setup really cost $12,500 a month to service our neighborhood? (these are actual questions, not sarcasm).
Anyway, I'm sure WiFi and WiMax won't be able to compete with a landline in terms of bandwidth any time soon, but I can see this still being a threat to ISPs.
Steve
The telecoms would hate for cities, towns, civic groups, neighborhoods, or anyone else to get together and set up their own shared high speed wireless network.
Steve
I'm surprised at all the negativity about this.
/real/ meat in this article - the fact that the big ISPs have already lobbied in places to hobble the speed of such WiFi networks.
I'm also suprised at the lack of debate at the
I think this is going to become a huge issue as WiFi and WiMax take off.
My subdivision has some 500 houses in it. If half of them get high speed internet in some form, at $50/month they are paying out some $12,500 a month collectively for high speed internet access.
What if our subdivision decided to set up it's own WiFi network? Yeah, I can see the ISPs getting real nervous about this.
Also, I can see Cell Phone companies getting VERY nervous about this. If WiFi internet access becomes free and widespread, you won't need the cellular network anymore to make wireless phone calls. Just a portable wireless IP phone.
No wonder the big Telecom industries are out to squelch this.
Steve
The problem with the IT job market in the US is, in my view, that the days of being moderately competent and getting a good job in IT are over.
/must/ be at the top of your field. Anything less and you quickly become a commodity, which is very dangerous in this field.
/and/ be self-taught in state-of-the art programming tools before they graduate (universities are always /way/ behind the curve in the tools they use for teaching), to forget it.
/today/.
Back in the late 80's early 90's, if you had played with a TI/994A computer or took typing in high school you were probably geeky enough to have some computer experience. And when you entered the job market you entered into a place where most of the people doing the hiring were too old to know what computers were or how to use them. Basically if you had any computer experience at all the world was your oyster.
Those days are over.
Today, if you want to get into IT, make good money, and be relatively immune from outsourcing it is no longer sufficient to be a dabbler in computers. You
So I would tell students contemplating a degree in CS that if they are not willing to put 110% into their studies, graduate with a 4.0,
I suspect the market is far more tolerable of average business or law school graduates than it is to average CS graduates. Average CS jobs go to India. The day may well come when average business and law jobs go their, too, but this is true for average CS jobs
Steve
>SO you have no qualms against chemical or biological weapons then I gather.
/is/ necessary to invade other countries, occupy them, and kill people who don't want you there, I was not attempting to debate or discuss when such options might or might not be necessary. I am merely asserting that it is rather silly to debate over what is the good and proper way to kill someone in war. It's usually just a way for people to make themselves feel a little better about killing people.
It depends on how effective they are. If the end result is similar to, say, a high explosive shell or, say, a nuclear blast, then I don't really see what the difference is. Weapons that result in prelonged suffering and agony, say, longer then maybe 10 minutes or so might give me pause, but otherwise, no, I have no qualms. I mean, if I had to choose between death by some chemical means that put me to sleep or death by nuclear vaporization or blasted into small pieces with high explosives, I do believe I'd choose the chemical means. If I had to choose between taking a bullet in the chest and dying over the course of ten or so minutes with a sucking chest wound as I drowned in my own blood vs. sufficating over the same time period as some chemical shut down my nervous system I'd say either option about equally sucked.
>I also suppose you have no problem with torture either. Dead is dead at least when you torture people you keep them alive right?
Straw man. I have said nothing about torture.
>Oh before I forget. You do realize that you don't actually have to invade other countries, occupy them and kill the people who don't
>want you there right? You realize that right? You don't have to kill people, it's strange but it's true.
Aside from the fact that sometimes it
>I hear God said something like that
>but I might be wrong. Maybe you should check with your local holy man or maybe even your mom.
I checked with my local holy man and my Mom and they both said I was right.
Steve
I never use advertisement-riddled products when an ad-free alternative is available.
Just about anyone on a P2P network would agree.
Steve
If I kill people by burning them to death or blasting them to pieces, which one is better?
Silly argument. Dead is dead.
Steve
P.S. spare me the extreme tangents about "Well, would you like to die slowly by method X or Y?"
A bomb is a bomb is a bomb. One way or another, within 10 minutes you will be dead.
you say:
:)
>"Does no-one have the right to privacy anymore?"
But then your tagline says:
>"Support free speech. Don't post anonymously. If you are anonymous, don't bother
>replying to my comments, I won't see it"
Heh, you want your right to privacy, but then don't want people to post while protecting their privacy.
Frankly, I think all of this is a tempest in a teapot. For years now people have sent TONS of data across the network in the clear, because they felt anonymous because no one had the tools or inclination to monitor what was being sent. Now that governments are starting to get wise to what is going over the net, they are developing the tools and the inclination.
The answer to all of this is simple, and has been available for a long time - encryption. How many people bother to encrypt their emails, despite PGP plug-ins being pretty common for most email clients? I don't, because I can't count on the people I send email to being able to decrypt it.
Encryption needs to become standard and transparent for all data being sent over the web. Then monitoring will become pointless.
Steve
I am currently an XM subscriber, but I'm about to ditch them after 1 year of service (got the thing for Christmas last year).
/know/ I like alot more. So I think I have come to the conclusion that I would rather hear my OWN music collection than something picked out for me.
I agree, this sounds basically like the cellular companies are turning your cell phone into a "satellite" radio. This should compete directly against them - IF they can broadcast with equal coverage like satellite does. If cellular radio can actually stream specific content to specific customers that could bury satellite radio.
The reason I'm ditching XM though, is first of all, because of the price of gas, we are trying to cut back, and every little bit helps, even $10/month. But secondly, I haven't been as impressed with XM radio as I thought I would be. Yes, commercial free is nice (most channels are commercial free), but I find that the "popular" channels (80s, 90s, Country, etc.), don't seem to play many "A side" songs - they all seem to be "B side" songs. That is, (for those of you before vinyl), they don't seem to run many Top 10 songs. You listen to the 80s channel, for example, and every once in a while you will hear a song that makes you go, "Oh yeah, I remember that one!" But most of them I have never heard before. Thirdly, I find myself channel surfing a lot because I'm not happy with what I'm hearing. I find myself returning to my self-burned CDs of songs I
If we were keeping our cell phones (we are also cancelling our 2-phone $80/month family plan with Verizon in favor of going back to a "land line" through Vonage for $25/month) I might consider cellular radio - IF it did not consume phone airtime, IF it cost no more than XM radio, and if it would FM broadcast to my car radio or otherwise hook into it.
Steve
The big ta-do over Apple allowing video downloads was not the crappy mini-version they are currently offering, it is that this could be the crack-in-the-dam that allows us to download video on demand for /real/ TV-quality shows.
Steve
"2- The component suppliers are subsidizing the cost of the parts with profits made from developed countries. One condition of this arrangement is that the $100 laptops cannot be sold here and undercut the profits."
Of course. Once again, we will subsidize other countries. This is just like damn drugs! I have to pay through the nose so that the drug companies get enough profit to offset the cheap ones they sell to Canada and the like!
This is the one thing I love about globalization. While the multinationals would LOVE to be able to sell, say, a CD, or a DVD, or a computer for one amount in one country and another amount in another country, globalization insures that the cheapest ones will always be available on eBay for me to buy.
I predict $100 laptops will be available on eBay for around $50 shortly after they are introduced.
Steve
> When someone says avant-garde...
Yeah, when someone says "avant-garde" it usually means they are looking at a turd and trying to sound sophisticated by using big words to convince others that it really isn't a turd.
Steve
>What do you people have against Star Wars? Most people here think Star
/remember/ how great they were. And we all went in droves to see, we hoped the continuation of that greatness. And even as pathetic as the new installments kept being, I kept going, kept hoping that it would get better.
>Wars (IV, V, VI) is cool because all the older geeks they live up to thought
>it was cool. Now everyone that watched the newer episodes (or even heard about
>them) and their grandmothers think they suck. Well you know what? If they did
>truly suck, people wouldn't go like crazy to watch them (don't forget,
>Episode I is 5th on the All Time Box Office for the USA) all.
There is one huge, huge reason why lots of people went to the box office to watch them. All of us "older geeks" who were actually alive and went to see the original movies
>Can anyone give me a precise reason why they think Star Wars I, II or III
>were horrible movies? Was it Jar Jar? If yes, how would you do it to
>make it suck less, stick to the original story and ensure IV, V and VI
>don't have to change? Remember, you still need a gullible character that
>can be trusted by the Jedis, loyal, possible elected to be a representative
>in the Senate at a future time and easily manipulated in the future. Any
>character you make like that (even making Harrison Ford play the character,
>since so many love him) would still make you hate him. It is the exact purpose
>of the character. And it is also the ingredient the movie needs to evolve.
In a nutshell, the latest three suck because they were too childish. The first three movies were much more "adult" feeling. They weren't "Aliens" by any stretch of the imagination, but even when I watch them now as an adult (I was 7 when the first one came out) I can appreciate them as being dark and sinister, but not in a Sunday-morning cartoon kind of way. For example, the mighty droid army that took over Naboo? They look, quite literally, like puppy dogs. My droid army would have looked like the exoskelton T800 from "The Terminator".
But I think my biggest problem with the last 3 movies was the acting. You would think George Lucas could get anyone in the world he wanted for his movies. The kids who played Anakin, both as a child and as an adult, could not act their way out of paper bags. Maybe some of the actors in the original 3 movies weren't the hottest actors in the world, either, but none of them made me CRINGE as they said their lines.
Steve
No, this article seems to be complete, unadulterated crap. Have you READ the "references" at the bottom of this "article"? "Magic Purple Plates"? !? "Harmonic Protectors"?!? I am FLOORED that this showed up on Slashdot. Steve
The problem is, your data pipeline always ends with wherever you are. And your ISP knows where that end is, and who it belongs to.
Yes, you can obfuscate your dataline by going through various means to make it difficult to follow, but it is not impossible to follow, or else the data you are downloading could not find you either.
I suspect that this is going to be the second edge to a very sharp double edged sword.
The first edge was this: If data exists, it can be copied. This edge is what has doomed and will doom efforts at DRM through encryption.
But the second edge will be this: If data can be copied, the destination can be found.
Just as any DRM scheme can be defeated, I strongly suspect that any anonymizing routine can be defeated.
Sure it's difficult. And today, perhaps it is difficult enough that you can be pretty sure no one is going to take the effort to hunt you down.
But if they pass laws that make it so that the corporations moving and handling the data - the ISPs and Telecoms, have to provide tools and means to see where data is flowing to and from, this could get very easy very fast.
maillemaker