Am I the only one who noticed that the article mentions that the consultant who they interviewed, a one ms. Rim Abida, didn't want her full name published yet they repeatedly do so? Even in the same paragraph.
Unless, of course, that is a fake last name. But it doesn't mention that anywhere.
Are you asserting this as an actual fact or are you just spinning a random scenario? The accomplishments of Arab scientists through the Western Middle Ages is very lengthy and very well know. Any hypothesis that they were all really Persians in Arab-drag is a foolish one. Not knowing of this lengthy list makes the hypothesis fatally uninformed.
Unfortunately, you don't seem to fare much better. The whole Arab/Islamic Science diatribe (mostly spun by Islamists, for obvious reason) is pure nonsense. All those 'great inventions' they like to take claim for (such as Math) are actually of Greek origine. They were translated into Arabic because it was the lingua franca of the time. It does not make those invention Arab or Islamic, it simply proves that Invasion works, bitches (apologies to XKCD).
So... you mod the parent 4, funny, for making a tasteless joke about rape, that's not even funny, and you mod down the person that calls them out. Not cool, guys.
I see a lot of people going off on a tangent about this proposed Bill and how it might help the RIAA/MPAA, but it seems to be designed to get a handle on the blatant (possibly state sanctioned) cyber attacks from countries such as China.
Right now, there isn't any actual internationally accepted law surrounding Cyber Warfare. In other words, there is no consensus about what kind of cyber attack crosses the line to such an extent that it becomes an act of war. A large problem with cyber attacks is attribution. Not knowing who really attacked you limits your options in terms of a proportional response, and this is a big issue for policymakers everywhere. Essentially it has caused most governments to (at best) apply a strictly passive defense to their critical infrastructure, instead of an immediate offensive response (ie. packetting whoever is attacking you).
In the physical world an invading force would immediately be met with physical violence and quite possibly international outrage towards the offending party, acting (in most cases) as a deterrent. Right now, there is no such deterrent in the arena of Cyber Warfare and countries such as China seem to be actively exploiting that. They know that even IF they get caught, they can simply deny government involvement and blame it on non-state actors. Of course, those "non-state actors" are never actually brought to justice, making the whole exercise futile.
It seems to me that this Bill is designed to counter this problem by imposing sanctions against countries who either engage in Cyber Warfare or harbor those convenient "non-state actors", and as such seems a sane step forward.
Of course, one can only hope that such a Bill would not be abused by the **AA.
Its funny that you draw a parallel with Socialism, because in my opinion it is socialist extremism that is undermining our current system. What we have -and are slowly losing- is a good blend between capitalism and socialism. Capitalism inspires people to advance themselves and better their position, while socialism ensures we keep improving the circumstances of everyone (including the less fortunate).
It is my opinion that too much Socialism would lead to failure, because you are simply giving away too much money and not stimulating income. Too much Capitalism would lead to failure because the divide between rich and poor would become a huge and there would not be enough stimulation to take care of the less fortunate.
A line needs to be drawn, and its probably somewhere in the middle. I just wish that the Dutch political parties would see that and stop accepting every sobstory that passes them by.
I agree. I got offered a position as CIO for a mediumsized company (probably still considered small by US standards), but they offered (literally) half of what I was making now. In US Dollars. Add that to the work ethic mentioned above and you'll understand that I politely declined.
I was just discussing this article with my colleague and we agreed this was probably a US-oriented survey. We're Dutch and working in The Netherlands as system engineers, and compared to the US our working conditions are great! On average, we work 40 hour weeks (sometimes less!) and get an average of 24 days paid vacation a year. Overtime is PAID overtime. These conditions apply to pretty much ALL jobs here, not just IT.
Comparing that to the US, its not strange that Americans are less satisfied. From what I picked up over the years reading articles like the ones on Slashdot, Americans in IT generally work 10+ hours a day, don't even always get overtime paid for and only receive about 5 vacationdays a year. And the pay, even though admittedly living is cheaper there, sucks too.
But im not, really. Having worked for the Dutch police twice now, I can safely say that the majority of their IT staff are completely clueless. A few years ago they "outsourced" their IT to a seperate entity to handle all their IT, but this entity was staffed mostly with the people they already had, so there wasn't any actual increase of knowledge (as far as I could tell). They got a nice fat bag of money and an unclear manifest, all paid for by us - the Dutch taxpayer - and this is what we get.
The Netherlands: No privacy, no competence and instead of capable beatcops we get highway robbery in the form of a cop with a lasergun having his daylong break sitting behind a bush next to our highways. And they wonder why the populace is starting to hate law enforcement.
Do yourself a favor and do a search on Google for "C2000", another one of the Dutch police success stories.
1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him.
2. something that is amusing or ridiculous, esp. because of being ludicrously inadequate or a sham; a thing, situation, or person laughed at rather than taken seriously; farce: Their pretense of generosity is a joke. An officer with no ability to command is a joke.
3. a matter that need not be taken very seriously; trifling matter: The loss was no joke.
Pedant: Nounâ
1. a person who makes an excessive or inappropriate display of learning. 2. a person who overemphasizes rules or minor details. 3. a person who adheres rigidly to book knowledge without regard to common sense. 4. Obsolete. a schoolmaster.
Am I the only one who's worried by this development? I mean, that new Clippy is bound to possess some kind of AI right? For that kind of cash I certainly expect it to be fairly smart.
Now figure in how good MS programmers are at proper code hygiene. Imagine digital Clippy corpses all over the sourcecode. Add internet access. Add sites like/. where we're all collectively spewing how much we hate Clippy and how bad we want it to stay dead.
I cant help but envision Clippy, out for revenge, armed with nuclear weapons.
Even if this spokesman expressed the RIAA's official stance regarding DRM, this is no guarantee that it ends the stream of stupid/evil/meanspirited/frivolous lawsuits. You only have to look at their trackrecord to believe that. Common sense has never stopped them before, has it?
CD's are for pussies. I don't use harddisks either. All my backups are done by the 20 illegal Chinese that sit in my basement remembering 0's and 1's for me. If you feed em reasonably, they last up to 80 years!
Actually I did use one and I clearly recall that for that time it was really quite good. The games were simple, aye. But you're forgetting that the games you could get were made by Philips itself, who wasn't -and never has been- a game developer like Nintendo. It died before major developers could get the most out of the box.
Your remark about the input being weak falls short because it had virtually the same controller as the SNES. Storage capacity is also a moot point because the SNES didn't have any capacity either and im fairly sure you can put more on a CD than on a SNES cartridge. On the cost note, it was probably more expensive for US citizens than for us in the Netherlands. Philips being a Dutch brand and all.
And that little snide at the end: "Philips, cm'on" really doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know why you're railing the way you are, because clearly you've never actually played with a CD-I.
On that note, I've always been amazed with Philips' choices on the CD-I. Does anyone else remember that thing? It was miles ahead of its competitors in interactive media, but it was sunk because Philips didn't want to allow the porn industry to get their hands on it.
I'll sure miss it. I remember fondly how I could give my friend Timmy Schneider a ceisure from the other end of the planet, just by giving him the URL to any given Geocities site.
*sigh*
Those were the days man....
As has been said before, Correlation does not equate to Causation!
For at least a decade now, the games industry has shown an incredible growth. Its bigger than motion pictures! We can safely say that more people have been gaming, its become less of a social taboo (or sign of nerdiness) and more mainstream. I think it would be safe to assume that with more people gaming, there are also more people going hardcore.
Its better to say there are "more gamers" than to say there are "more casual gamers".
Uh, no. Sorry, but the US has the most productive people in the world, along with highest per-capita income among comparable countries (certain middle eastern countries have a higher per-capita for obvious reasons). I don't feel like looking up the stats.
Well, you *should* look up the stats because you're wrong. The average American works more hours per week than the average European but the actual productivity of Europeans is much higher than the Americans. Asians (the Japanese, i believe) work the most hours per week. America is richer because you simply have more land and more people. Oh, and you SHOULD be more worried about China because they have more workers than you, and they're cheaper to boot.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one who noticed that the article mentions that the consultant who they interviewed, a one ms. Rim Abida, didn't want her full name published yet they repeatedly do so? Even in the same paragraph.
Unless, of course, that is a fake last name. But it doesn't mention that anywhere.
Are you asserting this as an actual fact or are you just spinning a random scenario? The accomplishments of Arab scientists through the Western Middle Ages is very lengthy and very well know. Any hypothesis that they were all really Persians in Arab-drag is a foolish one. Not knowing of this lengthy list makes the hypothesis fatally uninformed.
Unfortunately, you don't seem to fare much better. The whole Arab/Islamic Science diatribe (mostly spun by Islamists, for obvious reason) is pure nonsense. All those 'great inventions' they like to take claim for (such as Math) are actually of Greek origine . They were translated into Arabic because it was the lingua franca of the time. It does not make those invention Arab or Islamic, it simply proves that Invasion works, bitches (apologies to XKCD).
So... you mod the parent 4, funny, for making a tasteless joke about rape, that's not even funny, and you mod down the person that calls them out. Not cool, guys.
You fucking pussy.
When I was a kid, I used to attach a playing card to a spoke on one of my bike's wheels. Just a thought...
I see a lot of people going off on a tangent about this proposed Bill and how it might help the RIAA/MPAA, but it seems to be designed to get a handle on the blatant (possibly state sanctioned) cyber attacks from countries such as China.
Right now, there isn't any actual internationally accepted law surrounding Cyber Warfare. In other words, there is no consensus about what kind of cyber attack crosses the line to such an extent that it becomes an act of war. A large problem with cyber attacks is attribution. Not knowing who really attacked you limits your options in terms of a proportional response, and this is a big issue for policymakers everywhere. Essentially it has caused most governments to (at best) apply a strictly passive defense to their critical infrastructure, instead of an immediate offensive response (ie. packetting whoever is attacking you).
In the physical world an invading force would immediately be met with physical violence and quite possibly international outrage towards the offending party, acting (in most cases) as a deterrent. Right now, there is no such deterrent in the arena of Cyber Warfare and countries such as China seem to be actively exploiting that. They know that even IF they get caught, they can simply deny government involvement and blame it on non-state actors. Of course, those "non-state actors" are never actually brought to justice, making the whole exercise futile.
It seems to me that this Bill is designed to counter this problem by imposing sanctions against countries who either engage in Cyber Warfare or harbor those convenient "non-state actors", and as such seems a sane step forward.
Of course, one can only hope that such a Bill would not be abused by the **AA.
Dell supports cruise missiles now?
*shudder*
Its funny that you draw a parallel with Socialism, because in my opinion it is socialist extremism that is undermining our current system. What we have -and are slowly losing- is a good blend between capitalism and socialism. Capitalism inspires people to advance themselves and better their position, while socialism ensures we keep improving the circumstances of everyone (including the less fortunate).
It is my opinion that too much Socialism would lead to failure, because you are simply giving away too much money and not stimulating income. Too much Capitalism would lead to failure because the divide between rich and poor would become a huge and there would not be enough stimulation to take care of the less fortunate.
A line needs to be drawn, and its probably somewhere in the middle. I just wish that the Dutch political parties would see that and stop accepting every sobstory that passes them by.
I agree. I got offered a position as CIO for a mediumsized company (probably still considered small by US standards), but they offered (literally) half of what I was making now. In US Dollars. Add that to the work ethic mentioned above and you'll understand that I politely declined.
I was just discussing this article with my colleague and we agreed this was probably a US-oriented survey. We're Dutch and working in The Netherlands as system engineers, and compared to the US our working conditions are great! On average, we work 40 hour weeks (sometimes less!) and get an average of 24 days paid vacation a year. Overtime is PAID overtime. These conditions apply to pretty much ALL jobs here, not just IT.
Comparing that to the US, its not strange that Americans are less satisfied. From what I picked up over the years reading articles like the ones on Slashdot, Americans in IT generally work 10+ hours a day, don't even always get overtime paid for and only receive about 5 vacationdays a year. And the pay, even though admittedly living is cheaper there, sucks too.
Is it any wonder that people are dissatisfied?
Somehow I think things could get worse:
Imagine the same attitude and objectives, but now with competent staff...
You mean Britain?
But im not, really. Having worked for the Dutch police twice now, I can safely say that the majority of their IT staff are completely clueless. A few years ago they "outsourced" their IT to a seperate entity to handle all their IT, but this entity was staffed mostly with the people they already had, so there wasn't any actual increase of knowledge (as far as I could tell). They got a nice fat bag of money and an unclear manifest, all paid for by us - the Dutch taxpayer - and this is what we get.
The Netherlands: No privacy, no competence and instead of capable beatcops we get highway robbery in the form of a cop with a lasergun having his daylong break sitting behind a bush next to our highways. And they wonder why the populace is starting to hate law enforcement.
Do yourself a favor and do a search on Google for "C2000", another one of the Dutch police success stories.
I could weep. Or well....puke really.
Joke: noun, verb, joked, joking.
1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him.
2. something that is amusing or ridiculous, esp. because of being ludicrously inadequate or a sham; a thing, situation, or person laughed at rather than taken seriously; farce: Their pretense of generosity is a joke. An officer with no ability to command is a joke.
3. a matter that need not be taken very seriously; trifling matter: The loss was no joke.
Pedant: Nounâ
1. a person who makes an excessive or inappropriate display of learning.
2. a person who overemphasizes rules or minor details.
3. a person who adheres rigidly to book knowledge without regard to common sense.
4. Obsolete. a schoolmaster.
Pff thats nothing! I run Windows. Do you see ME getting money for my pains? NO!
Ehrm...I dont suppose I could interest you in some cialis or viagra right?
Am I the only one who's worried by this development? I mean, that new Clippy is bound to possess some kind of AI right? For that kind of cash I certainly expect it to be fairly smart.
/. where we're all collectively spewing how much we hate Clippy and how bad we want it to stay dead.
Now figure in how good MS programmers are at proper code hygiene. Imagine digital Clippy corpses all over the sourcecode. Add internet access. Add sites like
I cant help but envision Clippy, out for revenge, armed with nuclear weapons.
Well this article does mention the RIAA so your mental link with Felching is understandable. Worrying, but understandable.
Even if this spokesman expressed the RIAA's official stance regarding DRM, this is no guarantee that it ends the stream of stupid/evil/meanspirited/frivolous lawsuits. You only have to look at their trackrecord to believe that. Common sense has never stopped them before, has it?
CD's are for pussies. I don't use harddisks either. All my backups are done by the 20 illegal Chinese that sit in my basement remembering 0's and 1's for me. If you feed em reasonably, they last up to 80 years!
FTA: The prototype works with a Vista host but the hardware comprising the NIC is based on a Linux stack.
There's no way im touching that man. I know what happens when matter and anti-matter collide...
Past tense for Tweet is Twat. All the article is saying is that there's a reason for that :)
Actually I did use one and I clearly recall that for that time it was really quite good. The games were simple, aye. But you're forgetting that the games you could get were made by Philips itself, who wasn't -and never has been- a game developer like Nintendo. It died before major developers could get the most out of the box.
Your remark about the input being weak falls short because it had virtually the same controller as the SNES. Storage capacity is also a moot point because the SNES didn't have any capacity either and im fairly sure you can put more on a CD than on a SNES cartridge. On the cost note, it was probably more expensive for US citizens than for us in the Netherlands. Philips being a Dutch brand and all.
And that little snide at the end: "Philips, cm'on" really doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know why you're railing the way you are, because clearly you've never actually played with a CD-I.
On that note, I've always been amazed with Philips' choices on the CD-I. Does anyone else remember that thing? It was miles ahead of its competitors in interactive media, but it was sunk because Philips didn't want to allow the porn industry to get their hands on it.
I'll sure miss it. I remember fondly how I could give my friend Timmy Schneider a ceisure from the other end of the planet, just by giving him the URL to any given Geocities site. *sigh* Those were the days man....
As has been said before, Correlation does not equate to Causation! For at least a decade now, the games industry has shown an incredible growth. Its bigger than motion pictures! We can safely say that more people have been gaming, its become less of a social taboo (or sign of nerdiness) and more mainstream. I think it would be safe to assume that with more people gaming, there are also more people going hardcore. Its better to say there are "more gamers" than to say there are "more casual gamers".
Uh, no. Sorry, but the US has the most productive people in the world, along with highest per-capita income among comparable countries (certain middle eastern countries have a higher per-capita for obvious reasons). I don't feel like looking up the stats.
Well, you *should* look up the stats because you're wrong. The average American works more hours per week than the average European but the actual productivity of Europeans is much higher than the Americans. Asians (the Japanese, i believe) work the most hours per week. America is richer because you simply have more land and more people. Oh, and you SHOULD be more worried about China because they have more workers than you, and they're cheaper to boot.