The moon asserts a greater force on the hammer, but it also has to overcome the hammer's greater inertia. The contradictory forces negate each other, and both hit simultaneously.
So, you would rather people in the US die of starvation, malnutrition, and lack of medication?
There's nothing wrong with social programs - just how they're implemented, politicized, and administrated. Social Security, for exmaple, was never meant to be a retirement fund. When it was enacted as part of the New Deal during the great depression, it was designed to bribe old people out of their jobs to free them up for younger, unemployed workers. It was also designed as a security blanket in case you outlived your retirement savings- the retirement age was 65 in the 50s, and the average life expectancy for men was 65.6
Problems occur when the primary purpose of a program is transformed from a Good Thing (helping the impoverished elderly) to a Bad Thing (another pork win for a politician to gloat over.) Soon (how soon depends on who you ask), social security is doomed to become insolvent, with the only solutions raising taxes to excessively high levels or cutting the benefits leveraged up by every politician in the history of ever who wanted political points.
Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the dangers inherent in American democracy when politicians realized they could bribe the public with its own money. Right now, the program is flawed - the government takes money from you that you should be ferreting away for your retirement fund, takes out the salaries of the takers, and places it in a trust fund. Sadly, much of the trust fund is looted by congressmen and replaced with government bonds - i.e., the government is writing I.O.U. notes to itself with your retirement.
Instead, those with incomes should be able to save for their own retirement. Barring the unemployed (who don't pay social security taxes anyway), everyone is capable of doing this. If we truly wanted to help the impoverished elderly, we would scrap the program as it is now, and replace it with something that would actually help them.
Oh yeah, and let the elderly who are no longer able to work die on the streets. You'd rather spend it on killing people over waepons of mass destruction. Oh, except they didn't exist
You can't be considered "tech savvy" if you are in absolute ignorance of Windows. It is the dominating OS, after all, and not knowing how to use what's industry standard in a lot of industries is a Bad Thing.
Actually, I thought the Empire State Building analogy was fairly good. The sizes are kinda irrelevant; neither the building nor the probe will destroy Wyoming nor the moon, and both would look pretty cool. ^_^
because they want to make sure we're this supposed cohesive nation... we have to make sure we're all patriotic so when the next terrorist attack occurs
Yes, yes, I see it now. The NSA obviously exists to enforce goodthink and patriotism by hiding its existence and trying to do as little as possible. In no way is it simply trying to gather SIGINT for military and law enforcement.
Just wait for the next attack. I'm betting its a nuclear bomb and it will be blamed on Iran. We've had a vendetta against Iran since the 1950s and boy would their oil rake in some extra dough
Wow, 9/11 all makes sense now. In no way was al-Qaeda merely trying to bomb the World Trade Center yet another time, its obviously big oil interests and their cronies killing 2,000-some innocent people for... whatever reason you said in there somewhere.
Or, there are no conspiracies. We're not fighting a trillion-dollar war to get a billion dollars of oil. The 9/11 attacks were not faked in a sound studio or planned by government or big oil or whatever you said, And possibly, the NSA was around before the Bush administration.
This is from a previous slashdot article. The "missed opportunity to market software and services" line was for Microsoft PARNERS and AFFILIATES - the people who specialize in MS products. In other words, they're telling their own vendors that selling less is bad.
Or... people don't switch to Firefox because it's overrated and ugly.
I liked Firefox a lot better than I liked IE6 and used it until I got a beta copy of IE7. It's fast, memory efficient, and clean, and dragged me back from Firefox. And, it has tabbed browsing. Woot.
Did you know that you ended every sentence with a "..." where only one "." was necessary? Just checkin'.
Besides, only a moron would confusing NOTINFRINGING IP (supporting indie artists distributing their works for free) with INFRINGING IP (downloading pirated music from torrents and kazaa).
One of the ideals of OO revolution was that object would own the data. Taken to extremes that means that one object should own the data through its entire existence [...] It seems to me that OO ushered in proliferation of proprietary formats.
You, sir, are obviously not a programmer.
The object-oriented paradigm is just a programming idea for how a program should be "broken down." An OO programmer would look at a problem and think of how it can be broken down into more logical, programmable parts - like saying a car can be broken down and programmed as an engine object, a steering wheel/gas/brake "interface" object, and 4 wheel objects.
Those objects would then be programmed as "black boxes" for the data, the idea being that whoever uses the objects doesn't have to know how the data is tinkered with and can just use the methods provided by the programmer. For example, you don't have to know what ratio of fuel and air at what pressure has to be achieved for optimal combustion in order to accelerate the engine - the "programmer" left you that nifty gas pedal interface.
Obfuscated, undocumented formats and lazy hacks were around before OO programming, and OO programming doesn't encourage their use. An object "owns" data in the sense that it handles manipulation of the data for the end user - it sure would suck if you had to know how to mix fuel properly to make your car go. In fact, OO programming encourages the opposite - that you'd have one "file object" that would handle saving and loading, so that you could use that same object in future programs to load the same data. (Code re-use is another facet of the OO paradigm.)
Whether or not the lazy programmer actually documents the file format or not has nothing to do with whether or not he adheres to OO programming principles.
Some NPR content definitely is biased. For example, on my local NPR station a while back they ran a piece on the WalMart controversy, which consisted mostly of WalMart employees calling in and griping about how anti-union, low-paying, and morally corrupt WalMart is. Point: The last group of people you'd use to create a non-biased show on WalMart would be disgruntled WalMart employees, wouldn't it?
As for "deeper understanding" == "liberal bias", bull. Nobody suggests that stories about migrant farm workers or families lacking insurance are automatically biased - they get pegged as "biased" when they advocate blanket amnesty and a socialist national healthcare system.
Generally, NPR does do a good job of keeping impartial. Understandably, people get touchy when it airs segments (like the little WalMart broadcast) that are litle more than propaganda AND is partially subsidized by federal funds. But, the real crime is when people are unable to see bias for what it is when that bias is friendly to their point of view.
Actually, the kernel of Windows is written in a smattering of machine language and C. The Windows API (not MFC) is also in C.
Besides, the contest is to create a program that will perform miserably on a "competitor's" OS without the malicious, anti-competitive part of the code being obvious or anything other than innocent-looking.
Actually, UUIDs are NOT (pseudo)random. The generator has to be mathematically guaranteed never to generate the same UUID twice, or otherwise, the whole concept of a UUID breaks down.
Actually I don't think making copies of songs should bankrupt anyone
And I don't think that fluffy puppies should die, either. But, it does - if you're pirating a song instead of buying it, that's not exactly good business for the record label, is it?
There are some many problems with equating copyright infringment with theft I can't see how any reasonable person would try to do so.
No, there aren't. Theft is taking something without paying. In music piracy (a special case of copyright infringement), you took music without paying for it.
Does anyone else see a problem where a country punishes people more for copyright infringment than murder?
Hrm, I want to find this country. There are a few people I know who I'd kill for $4k.
Direct 3D10 will support older (current) 3D cards BUT is very much optimised for cards (not yet built) [...]
Just wanted to nitpick, but DirectDraw / Direct3D no longer exist - they were merged into something called "DirectX Graphics". There's no such thing as "Direct3D 10" - there wasn't a Direct3D 9 or 8, either.
If you turn all of the useless stuff off in Windows XP it is actually performs pretty well for most office tasks
Or, it performs pretty well for most office tasks if you have the shaders on. Remember, an operating system usually needs a computer made in the same decade to function well.
The one reason that government's can sometimes do things better or first is because they don't have to make a profit
The government doesn't have to make a profit; somebody else does. Doing things "first" comes at the expense of the entire country, and "better" is always debatable.
My definition of security is to fix the problem, not put up caution tape and flashing lights around the problem.
Of course it is. So is everybody's. The problem isn't necessarily that Windows isn't secure; the problem is that the average-Joe enduser that makes up the bulk of Microsoft's customer base rarely take the time to actually download the security fixes. The pop-ups warning that your version of Windows is out of date and your anti-virus hasn't been used since dates were stored as one-byte offsets is an attempt to fix the biggest security hole Windows ever had - the user.
Slashdot Mirror
The moon asserts a greater force on the hammer, but it also has to overcome the hammer's greater inertia. The contradictory forces negate each other, and both hit simultaneously.
So, you would rather people in the US die of starvation, malnutrition, and lack of medication?
There's nothing wrong with social programs - just how they're implemented, politicized, and administrated. Social Security, for exmaple, was never meant to be a retirement fund. When it was enacted as part of the New Deal during the great depression, it was designed to bribe old people out of their jobs to free them up for younger, unemployed workers. It was also designed as a security blanket in case you outlived your retirement savings- the retirement age was 65 in the 50s, and the average life expectancy for men was 65.6
Problems occur when the primary purpose of a program is transformed from a Good Thing (helping the impoverished elderly) to a Bad Thing (another pork win for a politician to gloat over.) Soon (how soon depends on who you ask), social security is doomed to become insolvent, with the only solutions raising taxes to excessively high levels or cutting the benefits leveraged up by every politician in the history of ever who wanted political points.
Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the dangers inherent in American democracy when politicians realized they could bribe the public with its own money. Right now, the program is flawed - the government takes money from you that you should be ferreting away for your retirement fund, takes out the salaries of the takers, and places it in a trust fund. Sadly, much of the trust fund is looted by congressmen and replaced with government bonds - i.e., the government is writing I.O.U. notes to itself with your retirement.
Instead, those with incomes should be able to save for their own retirement. Barring the unemployed (who don't pay social security taxes anyway), everyone is capable of doing this. If we truly wanted to help the impoverished elderly, we would scrap the program as it is now, and replace it with something that would actually help them.
Oh yeah, and let the elderly who are no longer able to work die on the streets. You'd rather spend it on killing people over waepons of mass destruction. Oh, except they didn't exist
Yea, about that. They did exist. Saddam gassed cities of his own people to death, and his weapons programs are well-known, funded, supplied, and trained by nations around the world.
You can't be considered "tech savvy" if you are in absolute ignorance of Windows. It is the dominating OS, after all, and not knowing how to use what's industry standard in a lot of industries is a Bad Thing.
Besides, Macs have a BIOS, too.
Actually, I thought the Empire State Building analogy was fairly good. The sizes are kinda irrelevant; neither the building nor the probe will destroy Wyoming nor the moon, and both would look pretty cool. ^_^
The "opportunity cost" to hire someone would be something like the 5 minutes it takes to do the interview, not whatever you're thinking of.
Besides, the summary says they didn't hire him; they bought the rights to use an algorithm he invented.
"Then" is used in relation to a series of events or cause and effect situations, such as First this, then that.
"Than" is used when making comparisons, such as more of this than that.
So, grandparent was perfectly correct in his post. Hope you were joking. 0.o
because they want to make sure we're this supposed cohesive nation... we have to make sure we're all patriotic so when the next terrorist attack occurs
Yes, yes, I see it now. The NSA obviously exists to enforce goodthink and patriotism by hiding its existence and trying to do as little as possible. In no way is it simply trying to gather SIGINT for military and law enforcement.
Just wait for the next attack. I'm betting its a nuclear bomb and it will be blamed on Iran. We've had a vendetta against Iran since the 1950s and boy would their oil rake in some extra dough
Wow, 9/11 all makes sense now. In no way was al-Qaeda merely trying to bomb the World Trade Center yet another time, its obviously big oil interests and their cronies killing 2,000-some innocent people for... whatever reason you said in there somewhere.
Or, there are no conspiracies. We're not fighting a trillion-dollar war to get a billion dollars of oil. The 9/11 attacks were not faked in a sound studio or planned by government or big oil or whatever you said, And possibly, the NSA was around before the Bush administration.
Just a thought.
These saem arguments were made by Malthus centuries ago. Problem is, those dang farmers just keep getting more productive each and every year.
Operating a computer via some combination of mouse and keyboard is really easier [than using voice commands].
You obviously haven't watched Star Trek: The Next Generation ^_^
This is from a previous slashdot article. The "missed opportunity to market software and services" line was for Microsoft PARNERS and AFFILIATES - the people who specialize in MS products. In other words, they're telling their own vendors that selling less is bad.
Not really all that malicious.
Why should Microsoft document and publicize the innermost workings of its OS for the benefit of a (competing) third party?
Or... people don't switch to Firefox because it's overrated and ugly.
I liked Firefox a lot better than I liked IE6 and used it until I got a beta copy of IE7. It's fast, memory efficient, and clean, and dragged me back from Firefox. And, it has tabbed browsing. Woot.
Did you know that you ended every sentence with a "..." where only one "." was necessary? Just checkin'.
Besides, only a moron would confusing NOTINFRINGING IP (supporting indie artists distributing their works for free) with INFRINGING IP (downloading pirated music from torrents and kazaa).
You did, though. You deprived the record label of the profit they would have received had you bought the item instead of stealing it.
If you build it, it will eat you. Anyone who who's even heard of "Science Fiction" knows that.
One of the ideals of OO revolution was that object would own the data. Taken to extremes that means that one object should own the data through its entire existence [...] It seems to me that OO ushered in proliferation of proprietary formats.
You, sir, are obviously not a programmer.
The object-oriented paradigm is just a programming idea for how a program should be "broken down." An OO programmer would look at a problem and think of how it can be broken down into more logical, programmable parts - like saying a car can be broken down and programmed as an engine object, a steering wheel/gas/brake "interface" object, and 4 wheel objects.
Those objects would then be programmed as "black boxes" for the data, the idea being that whoever uses the objects doesn't have to know how the data is tinkered with and can just use the methods provided by the programmer. For example, you don't have to know what ratio of fuel and air at what pressure has to be achieved for optimal combustion in order to accelerate the engine - the "programmer" left you that nifty gas pedal interface.
Obfuscated, undocumented formats and lazy hacks were around before OO programming, and OO programming doesn't encourage their use. An object "owns" data in the sense that it handles manipulation of the data for the end user - it sure would suck if you had to know how to mix fuel properly to make your car go. In fact, OO programming encourages the opposite - that you'd have one "file object" that would handle saving and loading, so that you could use that same object in future programs to load the same data. (Code re-use is another facet of the OO paradigm.)
Whether or not the lazy programmer actually documents the file format or not has nothing to do with whether or not he adheres to OO programming principles.
Some NPR content definitely is biased. For example, on my local NPR station a while back they ran a piece on the WalMart controversy, which consisted mostly of WalMart employees calling in and griping about how anti-union, low-paying, and morally corrupt WalMart is. Point: The last group of people you'd use to create a non-biased show on WalMart would be disgruntled WalMart employees, wouldn't it?
As for "deeper understanding" == "liberal bias", bull. Nobody suggests that stories about migrant farm workers or families lacking insurance are automatically biased - they get pegged as "biased" when they advocate blanket amnesty and a socialist national healthcare system.
Generally, NPR does do a good job of keeping impartial. Understandably, people get touchy when it airs segments (like the little WalMart broadcast) that are litle more than propaganda AND is partially subsidized by federal funds. But, the real crime is when people are unable to see bias for what it is when that bias is friendly to their point of view.
Actually, the kernel of Windows is written in a smattering of machine language and C. The Windows API (not MFC) is also in C.
Besides, the contest is to create a program that will perform miserably on a "competitor's" OS without the malicious, anti-competitive part of the code being obvious or anything other than innocent-looking.
Actually, UUIDs are NOT (pseudo)random. The generator has to be mathematically guaranteed never to generate the same UUID twice, or otherwise, the whole concept of a UUID breaks down.
Actually I don't think making copies of songs should bankrupt anyone
And I don't think that fluffy puppies should die, either. But, it does - if you're pirating a song instead of buying it, that's not exactly good business for the record label, is it?
There are some many problems with equating copyright infringment with theft I can't see how any reasonable person would try to do so.
No, there aren't. Theft is taking something without paying. In music piracy (a special case of copyright infringement), you took music without paying for it.
Does anyone else see a problem where a country punishes people more for copyright infringment than murder?
Hrm, I want to find this country. There are a few people I know who I'd kill for $4k.
Direct 3D10 will support older (current) 3D cards BUT is very much optimised for cards (not yet built) [...]
Just wanted to nitpick, but DirectDraw / Direct3D no longer exist - they were merged into something called "DirectX Graphics". There's no such thing as "Direct3D 10" - there wasn't a Direct3D 9 or 8, either.
Wowzorz. Newer operating systems are not "bug fixes" for older ones. Believe it or not, Windows XP has a few more features over 3.1...
If you turn all of the useless stuff off in Windows XP it is actually performs pretty well for most office tasks
Or, it performs pretty well for most office tasks if you have the shaders on. Remember, an operating system usually needs a computer made in the same decade to function well.
The one reason that government's can sometimes do things better or first is because they don't have to make a profit
The government doesn't have to make a profit; somebody else does. Doing things "first" comes at the expense of the entire country, and "better" is always debatable.
My definition of security is to fix the problem, not put up caution tape and flashing lights around the problem.
Of course it is. So is everybody's. The problem isn't necessarily that Windows isn't secure; the problem is that the average-Joe enduser that makes up the bulk of Microsoft's customer base rarely take the time to actually download the security fixes. The pop-ups warning that your version of Windows is out of date and your anti-virus hasn't been used since dates were stored as one-byte offsets is an attempt to fix the biggest security hole Windows ever had - the user.