I'd be amazed if the CEO of Sun, the company that created and owned Java at the time didn't actually know what strain of Java or what Google had done to Java in Android.
I agree, and I said to my girlfriend quite early on when this was hitting the news it was unlikely to be Al Qaeda, and, in Norway, was probably the far right, particularly when we heard about the shootings being carried out by the same guy that set the bomb, and the fact both attacks actually worked, the more news that came in about the fact the guy was ethnic Norwegian and it became more clear.
The profile was just wrong for Al Qaeda in Europe, but that's precisely what's scary. Al Qaeda has shown itself to be terribly inept, sure the Madrid train bombings worked, and sure 7/7 worked, but look at the latter- 4 suicide bombers and 52 casualties, vs. one gunman here and 76 casualties. The 21/7 bombings failed miserably, the failed London car bombs and subsequent Glasgow airport attack were a flop, the bomb attack in Sweden only took out the bomber and one else because he fucked up, and the underpants bomber failed miserably.
Al Qaeda relies on taking people who are willing to sacrifice their lives, and this by and large means taking on people who are, to put it bluntly, pretty fucking stupid. Because they're stupid enough to kill themselves, rather than do what this guy did- stay alive and create even more carnage, it almost certainly means they're pretty unlikely to be able to even pull off the plot succesfully.
Of course there are exception, 9/11 of course being the most notable, one might argue a large part the reason the plot succeded was because the US was innocent and naive to the threat of such terrorism at the time, but a degree of competence was required to learn to fly the planes.
But generally I fear the likes of the resurgent IRA activists, far right extremists, and outright nut jobs than I do Al Qaeda in Europe. Look at Derrick Bird, the guy who just lost it one day and went on a shooting spree in Cumbria, England- even he killed 12 people + himself, that's roughly the same as the number of victims per attacker in Al Qaeda's most succesful attack on UK soil to date - 7/7, and the only reason he didn't kill more is not because he was stopped, but because he seemingly came back to reality for a moment, realised what he'd done, and killed himself- if he was a determined attacker, he could likely have increased that count more. A similar story occured at Virginia Tech where a lone gunman who had simply flipped was more devastating and catastrophic than 7/7.
If we're going to consider terrorism a priority then we should at least be rational about it- stop profiling muslims and do a little more to deal with the real threats- the ones actually capable of doing some real damage. This Anders guy was smart, educated, motivated, but politically went off the rails, those former traits demonstrate how much more deadly a home grown extremist who wants to cause carnage more than they want to die rather than vice versa as commonly seems the case with most Al Qaeda attacks. Or to put it another way, the genuinely idealist, motivated, extremist intent on causing carnage is a far bigger problem than the brainwashed idiot, who basically just wants to die so they can go on to live a life amongst their freshly granted quota of virgins, the latter of which includes most of al Qaeda, because nearly all of al Qaeda's most vocal ideologists don't actually have the balls to follow through in furthering their ideology themselves.
As a Brit however, I also agree with you, it's nothing to lose sleep over, god only knows if the blitz didn't take out my grandparents, the IRA didn't finish my parents off in the 70s and me off in the 80s, and Al Qaeda haven't been able to touch me in the 00s I'm not likely to live in fear of terrorism if not only because that would mean terrorism was effective, and people not altering their lives because of it, means it's not- terrorism can only be terrorism if it actually effects change through terror. These people are such statistically insignificant threats to daily life that they should be treated as such, and thought of as such- less likely to cause you any harm than a rogue lightning strike hitting you on the head at the end of the day.
"But it should be an established source of news FIRST. For self-protection."
Right, because that worked out so well for Assange, who when he fell out with his media partners such as the NYT and The Guardian started attacking his character? Sorry no, the established press has shown itself irresponsible and easily bought. There's no protection there, at best an illusion of it.
"Second (AFAIK they did not do this, but others have): don't try to blackmail actions out of somebody in exchange for not releasing the information. Extortion is extortion."
Yeah, except they've not tried to blackmail any actions, so extortion might be extortion, but this isn't extortion.
"If you say you are going to release the information, then you'd better release it, or else (a) you lose all credibility, and (b) somebody might try to hold you responsible for extortion after all."
Right, and that's exactly what they've said they're going to do, what's the problem exactly? Let's give them chance to release this before we start bitching at them for not releasing it shall we? We can use that argument against Wikileaks because they still haven't release the financial institution data they were saying they would a fair while ago, and so likely were just shit talking, but this lot have hardly had chance yet.
"Which is why I say (c) they should dump the information and be done with it,"
Which is what they've said they're going to do, again, what's the problem?
Not zero, because those of us who were around when they were zero remember a generation of people who really just used the tax payer funded 3 year stay away from their parents as an excuse not to work, not because they have an inherent interest in further education. However I agree they should be much lower- the old style fees were more reasonable, £5000 max perhaps. But my point is that I don't really see how the Lib Dems are to blame here, Labour in 97 promised continuation of no fees, then introduced them, the Lib Dems this time round said they didn't want them, but weren't given enough support from the electorate to achieve that goal- the electorate gave the highest vote count to the Tories who wanted £12k fees, they got a decrease by £3k, not brilliant, but better than nothing.
I agree the Lib dems have shot themselves in the foot but I think it's more that they haven't stood up to their partners- they've let their partners blame them for all the bad decisions whilst their partners take the credit for the better stuff themselves. Clegg is acting like a love sick puppy rather than standing up when he thinks something is wrong. He's finally started to show at least some balls over the whole Murdoch thing but hardly enough, he still defended Cameron the other day which was stupid.
However, looking back despite all the stupidity of the current government it still is at least better than the previous Brown led government by a longshot. Would it be better than an Ed Milliband led government? Time will tell I guess. Personally I'm certainly swaying towards Labour now but the idea of it still sickens me because to this day they've STILL not dropped the painfully expensive, fundamentally flawed, and grossly intrusive ID card database, so what can one do? The minor parties are stupid- I'd vote Green but it's become an over the top feminist rights party rather than a party with better environment policies so I can't back that. Most of the rest of them are just a bunch of racists and the likes of The Pirate Party will likely never run in my constituency. The only alternative is of course to just not vote, which despite always being told you must vote blah blah looks like the only sensible option- I want my say, but I also don't want to back a party that's going to infringe my rights, or shit on me in some other way, but those are the only choices now.
Of course it's not like I have a real vote anyway seeing as the electorate was brainwashed by the Tory lobby into keeping the "lol I only have to satisfy around 25% of my constituents to win 100% of the power in my seat" voting system and live in a safe seat area such that if I don't vote Labour my vote is meaningless.
"MS need to give some attention to helping promote and discover good games"
It kind of does, the best indie games at review stage have been given license to shift to be Live Arcade releases instead, but that doesn't help the middle of the road games that are better than the shite in indie games, but not good enough for live arcade.
That article you linked hurt my eyes, it was like the embodiment of the Apple fanboy playbook.
Choice quotes:
"Clearly, Strategy Analytics are talking about unit shipments, not sales."
Clearly, that's why they said shipments.
"(But in Appleâ(TM)s case, unit shipments are the same thing as sales, because theyâ(TM)re selling iPads to customers as fast as they can make them.)"
Oh I see, and of course, Android tablets aren't? Sorry but what evidence is there for this exactly? Companies don't make things that are just going to be sat on shelves, they make things to sell them.
So he continues, to then build on this fundamentally flawed premise. How can he possible taken seriously when he's made a massively speculative unfounded jump right from the outset?
But it gets worse:
"As for Android tablets, Robert Synnott suggested on Twitter a way to approximate actual tablets sold. First, five days ago Google CEO Larry Page announced that Android was in use on 135 million total devices. Second, Googleâ(TM)s Android developer site publishes a regularly-updated breakdown of the Android OS version numbers in active use. For the 14-day period ending July 5, 0.9 percent of Android devices were using Android 3.0 or 3.1 â" a.k.a. Honeycomb, the versions of Android specifically for â" and only for â" tablets.
Round that up to an even 1 percent to be generous, multiply by 135 million devices, and you get 1.35 million tablets."
Except that's a complete misrepresentation of what the Android breakdown stats show. The stats show the number of Android devices that have accessed Google's Android Marketplace in the last 14 days (which is stated quite clearly above the stats at android.com), so these stats fail to take into account devices that simply aren't internet connected, and devices that are using some of the many 3rd party app stores. Worse, he discounts Android 2.x tablets:
"I donâ(TM)t know how to estimate how many Android 2.x tablets have been sold, but given that everyone seems to agree that Android 2.x did not make for a good tablet OS, itâ(TM)s hard to believe thatâ(TM)s a bigger number than that for Honeycomb tablets."
Really? It's hard to believe? are you sure? seeing as many of the sub $200 tablets, the sort that will be shifted as impulse buys, I don't think it's actually that hard to believe. Linux wasn't a barrier for the netbooks initial surge in popularity despite not being what people were used to or compatible with many people's usual software. The low price alone drove the market.
So basically, what we've got is a blog post, from someone whose blog history suggests a massive Apple fan, which fails to prove it's fundamental premises, and that makes unfounded assumptions about over things whilst making one rule for Apple, and then pretending it works completely differently for other manufacturers.
This is one of the finest examples of Apple fanboyism I've seen in a while. Each time their penis extension shows any sign of being threatened they jump forward with made up numbers, major assumptions and so forth to defend their pet product. Steve would be proud indeed. Even if the guy is right then he could at least do the honest thing and check his assertions are actually correct, and actually provide some evidence to backup the claims he makes without founding that are fundamental to the correctness of his overall post.
Seriously it's a device, get the fuck over it, it might not be popular forever, it might take over the world, who cares? just drop the bullshit and buy whatever you prefer to buy at the time, we're not interested in your FUD. Android flew past Apple in the cellphone market, it might do the same in the tablet market, does it matter if it does? does anyone care if it doesn't? is Apple going to say "Oh shit, we lost guys, let's pack up and go home, sorry guys, we're deactivating all Apple products"? No of course it's not, there's room in the market for both, you'll still be able to
"And now we know who it was they still aren't locked up. If it was an ordinary person doing this there would be an Interpol arrest warrant out and massive punishments."
Well, that and a Norwegian terrorist attack followed by the death of a drug addict skank means the whole thing is all but forgotten now. Not to mention the British political class are all off on their holidays for the summer for a few weeks now so simply wont care until late August or September or so when it'll all have conveniently blown over.
Worse, much of the rest of the British press has found the spotlight shining uncomfortably on it now, The Daily Mail has spent the last week or so trying to deflect attention away from the whole scandal because it knows that what will be dug out of it's closet will likely make the News of the World scandal look quite tame, Murodch's press will want to try and silence the issue, and The Daily Mirror amongst others are also looking quite suspect, so I similarly wouldn't expect the press to try and ressurect it in a month or so's time.
Hopefully I'll be proven wrong, but oh well, seeing Rupert and his empire get a well deserved kicking was fun whilst it lasted at least.
"Check where this initiative originates from, indeed, and observe how it follows a pattern. This is something that we are seeing more and more, like in UK with the creation of the Lib Dems. The creation of new parties, so-called centrists but mostly taking votes on the left, ensuring the election of conservatives, or at least of a coalition government dominated by the conservatives."
What a complete and utter load of tosh. Seriously. I suggest you have a look at the history of the Lib Dems, they weren't merely just a party that appeared out of nowhere, but grew from the liberal party of old, having a history that goes back over a hundred years.
Further, you appear to have swallowed the MurdochMedia line of how the Lib Dems are just letting the Tories run the country and so forth but this is further a crock of shit. Tuition fees is the most common stick that is waved, a raise to £9,000! how could the Lib Dems do this! Well, it's quite obvious- the Tories were actually gunning for £12,000 fees, but the Lib Dems were able to at least pull it to £9,000, which, given their share of the vote, is a fairly fair proportional decrease. Their biggest mistake though is not advertising this fact more widely, and not standing up for themselves a bit more.
They would have gone into coalition with Labour - and even tried - but it was a spent force, even at that point, even at the edge of losing all power, they wouldn't agree to drop the likes of the ID card programme and so forth. What were the Lib Dems to do? allow an unstable government when our country was near bankrupt? allow the Tories to try and get away with doing things fully their own way? have a weak non-majority coalition with a party that had so far lost it's way, it was more right wing then than even the Lib Dems are now, whilst not knowing who that parties new leader would be - hoping for David and ending up with Ed as is the case now? No thank you.
Look I hate the Tories too, I hate much of what Clegg has done since being elected, but it's hard to look back and think that any of the alternatives would've been better. Clegg should be more vocal about where they're swaying the Tories, but to suggest they're helping them because they're a secret bunch of underground right wing sleepers is utterly absurd.
An interesting thing came out of the whole News of the World scandal and that was party leaders publcations of meetings with press leaders. It was rather interesting to see that Clegg had actually still had more meetings with Left leaning press leaders than anyone else including union puppet Miliband. It was interesting that Cameron hadn't met up with some left wing press such as The Guardian, at all.
If the Lib Dems are so right wing, why have they been out to destroy Murdoch for so long rather than courting him? Why have they been courting the left wing press?
The fact is, your conspiracy theory utterly ignores the real full history of Liberals in Britain, and makes even less sense in the face of important fundamental facts.
"As she was admiring all the beautiful flora and fauna she said "This is proof that God must exist. How else could all this beauty just instantly appear out of nowhere?""
For what it's worth, when faced with this in the past my response has been to tell them to think of a beautiful plant, such as an orchid like a Phaleonopsis, or a large cactus such as a mature Echinopsis in full bloom, and to imagine growing it from seed. You start out with nothing but a pot with brown mud in it and a little seed, but then after time a green sprout appears, and it grows, and grows, over a few years, and with a little patience we get our first flowers, and a little later we get a beautiful bloom of many flowers. I point out that if nature can produce something so beautiful with a bit of patience over 3 or 4 years, then why shouldn't it produce something as beautiful as the natural world in which we live in over millions of years? Why does it have to be created? The plant grown from seed isn't, it finds it's own way with the right natural conditions, why shouldn't that happen on a larger scale?
When you start posing it to them like this then some of them can be reached, but it depends if they're the type of person who is a die hard zealot, or someone whose capable of being open minded but never really taken the effort to think about it and simply swallowed what they were taught.
"without adding in a bunch about Macroevolution which we *can't* prove(Did *you* see personally see fish evolve into something else? )"
There isn't some fixed cutoff point where one species becomes another, taxonomic definitions are rather arbitrary, one taxonomists cutoff point is completely different to another's.
Or to put it another way for you, something doesn't just "turn into" something else, it starts evolving the traits of what is later defined as a new species over time, such that there is a gradual spectrum of change from one species to another, and there are no real consistent guidelines that hold through all families of living beings as to when we say, right, it's changed enough to be a new species now. As such, it's enough to say that if we can see "microevolution" in the lab, then we're seeing "macroevolution" too, because we can simply say that the changes we see in the lab from one generation to the next are enough to say right, we've got a new species now, simply because it is entirely arbitrary.
You'll get flamed, because you show a basic lack of understanding of evolution and it's link with taxonomy, and then try to assert something based on your lack of knowledge- only assert things based on what you do know, not what you don't. Taxonomy is a rather flawed science, because it relies on being able to say "Right now it's a fish, okay, now it's an amphibian", it's an attempt to provide very digital logic in a very analog world. Taxonomy tries to group living beings based on arbitrary differences between two species, but can sometimes miss intermediate entities in those species that then blur that line, and make it questionable. Worse, in the past it's often been based on visual traits and similar, which falls flat in the face of evolutionary convergence where two seperate species show similar traits such that they have been lumped into the same genus even when DNA testing has shown that to be a false lumping of the species because they were much more distantly related than the classification suggested. One example is in the plant world, very often in the past two relatively unrelated plants have been lumped in the same genus because they have had identical looking flowers, when in fact they were not closely related at all, and had only evolved the same flower because they shared the same pollinators, and the flower they both evolved was the best fit to date for that pollinator.
Pushing evolution is NOT misguided, it's pushed because we do have adequate proof for evolution, only stupid people think we do not, and using your further lack of knowledge about taxonomy and classification as your justification for suggesting that because you don't understand it, it must be wrong, is just pathetic.
I think the problem is you're suggesting that the number of humans you safe is the sheer definition of humanity. I'm not sure that's the case. There's a far argument that if you're willing to torture even one person, or animal, even if it's to save many other people, then you've already lost your humanity - you've already allowed yourself to descend to a very primitive level.
I'm not saying you're wrong, or even that you can be wrong- as you say, it's a very subjective scenario. But I think we have to ask whether the number of people saved is really the only, or best measure of humanity.
We have this growing problem in that we're increasing life expectancy and growing our population much faster than we're able to produce resources and maintain infrastructure to cope with such growing population. It is in this context that I am a little more unsure as to whether it's more important to save as many lives as possible, or whether it's better to simply allow nature to keep our population levels more stable, and keep some of the fundamental pillars of humanity intact in the process such as the ability to be compassionate towards all living things.
I certainly think the ratio of numbers hurt/killed vs. numbers saved is a far too simplistic measure in the modern world- particularly in some places such as areas of Africa where there are severe resource shortages where increased population fed by foreign aid has simply resorted in some of the worst conflicts mankind has known in the modern world. Fundamentally most conflicts do stem back to resources above all else (even above religion- the whole Israeli-Palestine thing is as much about access fresh water for example). So then the question becomes, is it worth torturing one person, to save a million lives, which may overtime lead to war which results in misery, death, and rape of well over 1 million people? So I'm not sure it is responsible to maximise lives saved, at least, in every case, particularly when we're nowhere near having the resources problem solved, which, in itself, may actually require stabilisation or decrease of human population. If we solve the malaria and aids problems in Africa as a result of testing on animals without improving infrastructure, and see more and more brutal wars with more deaths than ever before as a result, have we really gained anything by making those animals, or people suffer? Are we any more human for what we have done?
I think really the solution is to look at the bigger picture and not just everything in isolation- take this for example:
There's a fundamental problem where we simply think "great, I've cured AIDs!" but then what? what happens next? Is it really a better world for more people as a result? The couple in San Francisco may be happy, but life my be a whole lot worse for many more than it ever has been in some of the sub-saharan African villages.
"I would gladly personally torture an animal or a dozen to death if it would save a million human lives, and that is a natural instinct"...and if it wasn't something that could be tested on animals, would you also be willing to torture a human or a dozen to death if it would save a million human lives?
"Google wanted to partner to save money, but Sun wanted $100mil and I'm pretty sure Google didn't want to invest that much so they decided not to. But Google used the code anyway and that's where they are in the wrong."
That or they figured out a way to work around the patents and avoid being guilty of infringement.
"People have known about Google being in the wrong for about a year. "
Oh, it's written in a blog on the internet. It must be true then. Perhaps we could update Wikipedia to reference the blog just to confirm it to be the case.
"It's pretty obvious they knew about these patents but ignored them so that puts them in the wrong."
Ignored them, or found them to be almost certainly invalid, or simply worked around them? You seem to be rather blindly dismissing some perfectly credible alternative possibilities here.
More realistically the chance are Google examined the patents, felt they were probably not valid and invalidated by prior art or similar, but to avoid having to deal with the hassle of a costly court case, figured it'd approach Sun about licensing. When Sun gave the $100mill figure they quite possibly figured that the risk of the cost of court was probably worth it, Sun probably didn't take it any further knowing that they themselves saw little point in stumping up the cash for a case they'd probably lose. Oracle however obviously thought differently, but, as some of Oracle's patents have already been dismissed as not valid, then perhaps there's some truth to this theory.
You seem to have made a very strong assertion, based on very little fact, whilst ignoring perfectly valid alternative possible events.
Please, elaborate. Obviously with your years of experience as a judge in computer patent cases and with the full access to all the relevant documentation in the case you can provide us with the explanation as to why this is the case now, rather than us having to wait for the lengthy court proceedings to finish!
The problem is that species have evolved with what they have over time, so that problematic and crippling mutations are rapidly selected out.
If you start creating hybrids, you create traits for which a species has not evolved, and as such those traits may have massively debilitating effects on the creature.
Effectively, when we've long learnt that sometimes the best thing to do for an animal that is suffering, is to put it down, because it's more ethical than letting it suffer, then is it not ethically wrong to create creatures that will suffer with the intention of keeping them alive for experiments?
Would it be fair to manipulate a human embryo to make it grow up with skin cancer all over it's body to examine skin cancer? is it fair to do it to an animal?
I'll admit I side with the activists here, I think it is cruel and quite horrible, however, I'm also not sure that if we want to advance science that there's any alternative, and that leaves us at a disturbing crossroads- is the advancement of science worth ignoring ethical concerns? If it is in this case then where does it stop, where is the line drawn at which point it is not worth it? or do we carry on until we really do have mad scientists like in the movies!
- If hacks rely on social engineering, or even being able to understand what a page, for example, an admin page, is saying to figure out whether there's something you an exploit there, then language may be a massive barrier. Then even if they did leak it their Western audience wouldn't be able to understand it. It's challenge enough trawling through a dump of Western documents when you know the language to spot something important, let alone in a foreign language. Let those who know that language deal with that.
- The West is much more interested in documenting things because it believes it's the right thing to do in terms of accountability, but then never follows through on releasing said documents in response to controversal incidents and covers it up anyway- effectively it often becomes a box ticking exercise, to say "We're transparent and accountable". Other nations like Iran, North Korea etc. just drop the charade and don't even waste their time pretending to be accountable/transparent, or at least don't bother digitising everything
- There have been some foreign leaks, IIRC anonymous grabbed about 10,000 Iranian interior ministry files or similar not so long ago.
- These hackers are really mainly just interested in cleaning up their own backyard first- they're sick of government encroachment on their lives, or government spending their tax dollars on wars the citizens of said nation don't really agree with etc. and want to deal with that primarily.
There was the Greenday and Beatles too or were they rock band or something?
That was really part the problem too, you didn't just have your Guitar Hero, you had rock band, DJ hero, and all the other similar shit too, so you just lost track of what was what, when it was coming out, and what it would have in it. Take the Greenday thing for example, it seemed to have like less than half their tracks, the rest you had to buy as DLC, so why the fuck would I even bother with it if it's only half-arsed? I'm not going to pay like £35 for half a game.
Not to mention the instruments kept changing, my original drums were completely different to those used in Guitar Hero: Band camp or whatever the hell they came up with.
Error in reading comprehension detected. I never made such an assumption, nor stated such an assumption, I merely pointed out that the situation could potentially be completely the opposite of the commonly portrayed idea that China is hacking the US left right and centre, ignoring what the US may or may not be doing back.
"By now, with all that happened in the last 6 months on this front, you would have though that any computer holding sensitive information was already moved behind an air gap."
It goes a bit like this:
"Nah, it's nothing to worry about, it'll never happen to us. Now get on with doing your Office 2010 upgrades."
I hear this sentiment a lot, but it would imply that the Chinese government is more competent than Western governments who allow for this type of fuck up in the first place.
Is there any evidence that Chinese public sector is somehow more competent than that in the West?
It's quite possible that the opposite is true, that the Chinese are managing to acquire fuck all, and that Chinese government systems themselves are equally vulnerable.
I'm not sure about the US, but in British courts, when you swear "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" then you are swearing specifically not to omit anything relevant too.
The "whole truth" section was added precisely for this sort of reason, as the oath originally was merely "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth" under which it was recognised that this meant you could tell half-truths, and omit important facts, but still fulfil the oath in that what you said was indeed the truth, hence why it was changed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be amazed if the CEO of Sun, the company that created and owned Java at the time didn't actually know what strain of Java or what Google had done to Java in Android.
I agree, and I said to my girlfriend quite early on when this was hitting the news it was unlikely to be Al Qaeda, and, in Norway, was probably the far right, particularly when we heard about the shootings being carried out by the same guy that set the bomb, and the fact both attacks actually worked, the more news that came in about the fact the guy was ethnic Norwegian and it became more clear.
The profile was just wrong for Al Qaeda in Europe, but that's precisely what's scary. Al Qaeda has shown itself to be terribly inept, sure the Madrid train bombings worked, and sure 7/7 worked, but look at the latter- 4 suicide bombers and 52 casualties, vs. one gunman here and 76 casualties. The 21/7 bombings failed miserably, the failed London car bombs and subsequent Glasgow airport attack were a flop, the bomb attack in Sweden only took out the bomber and one else because he fucked up, and the underpants bomber failed miserably.
Al Qaeda relies on taking people who are willing to sacrifice their lives, and this by and large means taking on people who are, to put it bluntly, pretty fucking stupid. Because they're stupid enough to kill themselves, rather than do what this guy did- stay alive and create even more carnage, it almost certainly means they're pretty unlikely to be able to even pull off the plot succesfully.
Of course there are exception, 9/11 of course being the most notable, one might argue a large part the reason the plot succeded was because the US was innocent and naive to the threat of such terrorism at the time, but a degree of competence was required to learn to fly the planes.
But generally I fear the likes of the resurgent IRA activists, far right extremists, and outright nut jobs than I do Al Qaeda in Europe. Look at Derrick Bird, the guy who just lost it one day and went on a shooting spree in Cumbria, England- even he killed 12 people + himself, that's roughly the same as the number of victims per attacker in Al Qaeda's most succesful attack on UK soil to date - 7/7, and the only reason he didn't kill more is not because he was stopped, but because he seemingly came back to reality for a moment, realised what he'd done, and killed himself- if he was a determined attacker, he could likely have increased that count more. A similar story occured at Virginia Tech where a lone gunman who had simply flipped was more devastating and catastrophic than 7/7.
If we're going to consider terrorism a priority then we should at least be rational about it- stop profiling muslims and do a little more to deal with the real threats- the ones actually capable of doing some real damage. This Anders guy was smart, educated, motivated, but politically went off the rails, those former traits demonstrate how much more deadly a home grown extremist who wants to cause carnage more than they want to die rather than vice versa as commonly seems the case with most Al Qaeda attacks. Or to put it another way, the genuinely idealist, motivated, extremist intent on causing carnage is a far bigger problem than the brainwashed idiot, who basically just wants to die so they can go on to live a life amongst their freshly granted quota of virgins, the latter of which includes most of al Qaeda, because nearly all of al Qaeda's most vocal ideologists don't actually have the balls to follow through in furthering their ideology themselves.
As a Brit however, I also agree with you, it's nothing to lose sleep over, god only knows if the blitz didn't take out my grandparents, the IRA didn't finish my parents off in the 70s and me off in the 80s, and Al Qaeda haven't been able to touch me in the 00s I'm not likely to live in fear of terrorism if not only because that would mean terrorism was effective, and people not altering their lives because of it, means it's not- terrorism can only be terrorism if it actually effects change through terror. These people are such statistically insignificant threats to daily life that they should be treated as such, and thought of as such- less likely to cause you any harm than a rogue lightning strike hitting you on the head at the end of the day.
"But it should be an established source of news FIRST. For self-protection."
Right, because that worked out so well for Assange, who when he fell out with his media partners such as the NYT and The Guardian started attacking his character? Sorry no, the established press has shown itself irresponsible and easily bought. There's no protection there, at best an illusion of it.
"Second (AFAIK they did not do this, but others have): don't try to blackmail actions out of somebody in exchange for not releasing the information. Extortion is extortion."
Yeah, except they've not tried to blackmail any actions, so extortion might be extortion, but this isn't extortion.
"If you say you are going to release the information, then you'd better release it, or else (a) you lose all credibility, and (b) somebody might try to hold you responsible for extortion after all."
Right, and that's exactly what they've said they're going to do, what's the problem exactly? Let's give them chance to release this before we start bitching at them for not releasing it shall we? We can use that argument against Wikileaks because they still haven't release the financial institution data they were saying they would a fair while ago, and so likely were just shit talking, but this lot have hardly had chance yet.
"Which is why I say (c) they should dump the information and be done with it,"
Which is what they've said they're going to do, again, what's the problem?
"Big deal, they should be zero."
Not zero, because those of us who were around when they were zero remember a generation of people who really just used the tax payer funded 3 year stay away from their parents as an excuse not to work, not because they have an inherent interest in further education. However I agree they should be much lower- the old style fees were more reasonable, £5000 max perhaps. But my point is that I don't really see how the Lib Dems are to blame here, Labour in 97 promised continuation of no fees, then introduced them, the Lib Dems this time round said they didn't want them, but weren't given enough support from the electorate to achieve that goal- the electorate gave the highest vote count to the Tories who wanted £12k fees, they got a decrease by £3k, not brilliant, but better than nothing.
I agree the Lib dems have shot themselves in the foot but I think it's more that they haven't stood up to their partners- they've let their partners blame them for all the bad decisions whilst their partners take the credit for the better stuff themselves. Clegg is acting like a love sick puppy rather than standing up when he thinks something is wrong. He's finally started to show at least some balls over the whole Murdoch thing but hardly enough, he still defended Cameron the other day which was stupid.
However, looking back despite all the stupidity of the current government it still is at least better than the previous Brown led government by a longshot. Would it be better than an Ed Milliband led government? Time will tell I guess. Personally I'm certainly swaying towards Labour now but the idea of it still sickens me because to this day they've STILL not dropped the painfully expensive, fundamentally flawed, and grossly intrusive ID card database, so what can one do? The minor parties are stupid- I'd vote Green but it's become an over the top feminist rights party rather than a party with better environment policies so I can't back that. Most of the rest of them are just a bunch of racists and the likes of The Pirate Party will likely never run in my constituency. The only alternative is of course to just not vote, which despite always being told you must vote blah blah looks like the only sensible option- I want my say, but I also don't want to back a party that's going to infringe my rights, or shit on me in some other way, but those are the only choices now.
Of course it's not like I have a real vote anyway seeing as the electorate was brainwashed by the Tory lobby into keeping the "lol I only have to satisfy around 25% of my constituents to win 100% of the power in my seat" voting system and live in a safe seat area such that if I don't vote Labour my vote is meaningless.
"MS need to give some attention to helping promote and discover good games"
It kind of does, the best indie games at review stage have been given license to shift to be Live Arcade releases instead, but that doesn't help the middle of the road games that are better than the shite in indie games, but not good enough for live arcade.
The headline made me lol, it reminded me of something like:
WHO IS BETTER, Chuck Norris, or Mr T?
The summary was at least slightly more intelligent, but still inevitably silly.
I'd say something about it being a slow news day, but looking at the BBC's frontpage, it's actually not.
That article you linked hurt my eyes, it was like the embodiment of the Apple fanboy playbook.
Choice quotes:
"Clearly, Strategy Analytics are talking about unit shipments, not sales."
Clearly, that's why they said shipments.
"(But in Appleâ(TM)s case, unit shipments are the same thing as sales, because theyâ(TM)re selling iPads to customers as fast as they can make them.)"
Oh I see, and of course, Android tablets aren't? Sorry but what evidence is there for this exactly? Companies don't make things that are just going to be sat on shelves, they make things to sell them.
So he continues, to then build on this fundamentally flawed premise. How can he possible taken seriously when he's made a massively speculative unfounded jump right from the outset?
But it gets worse:
"As for Android tablets, Robert Synnott suggested on Twitter a way to approximate actual tablets sold. First, five days ago Google CEO Larry Page announced that Android was in use on 135 million total devices. Second, Googleâ(TM)s Android developer site publishes a regularly-updated breakdown of the Android OS version numbers in active use. For the 14-day period ending July 5, 0.9 percent of Android devices were using Android 3.0 or 3.1 â" a.k.a. Honeycomb, the versions of Android specifically for â" and only for â" tablets.
Round that up to an even 1 percent to be generous, multiply by 135 million devices, and you get 1.35 million tablets."
Except that's a complete misrepresentation of what the Android breakdown stats show. The stats show the number of Android devices that have accessed Google's Android Marketplace in the last 14 days (which is stated quite clearly above the stats at android.com), so these stats fail to take into account devices that simply aren't internet connected, and devices that are using some of the many 3rd party app stores. Worse, he discounts Android 2.x tablets:
"I donâ(TM)t know how to estimate how many Android 2.x tablets have been sold, but given that everyone seems to agree that Android 2.x did not make for a good tablet OS, itâ(TM)s hard to believe thatâ(TM)s a bigger number than that for Honeycomb tablets."
Really? It's hard to believe? are you sure? seeing as many of the sub $200 tablets, the sort that will be shifted as impulse buys, I don't think it's actually that hard to believe. Linux wasn't a barrier for the netbooks initial surge in popularity despite not being what people were used to or compatible with many people's usual software. The low price alone drove the market.
So basically, what we've got is a blog post, from someone whose blog history suggests a massive Apple fan, which fails to prove it's fundamental premises, and that makes unfounded assumptions about over things whilst making one rule for Apple, and then pretending it works completely differently for other manufacturers.
This is one of the finest examples of Apple fanboyism I've seen in a while. Each time their penis extension shows any sign of being threatened they jump forward with made up numbers, major assumptions and so forth to defend their pet product. Steve would be proud indeed. Even if the guy is right then he could at least do the honest thing and check his assertions are actually correct, and actually provide some evidence to backup the claims he makes without founding that are fundamental to the correctness of his overall post.
Seriously it's a device, get the fuck over it, it might not be popular forever, it might take over the world, who cares? just drop the bullshit and buy whatever you prefer to buy at the time, we're not interested in your FUD. Android flew past Apple in the cellphone market, it might do the same in the tablet market, does it matter if it does? does anyone care if it doesn't? is Apple going to say "Oh shit, we lost guys, let's pack up and go home, sorry guys, we're deactivating all Apple products"? No of course it's not, there's room in the market for both, you'll still be able to
"And now we know who it was they still aren't locked up. If it was an ordinary person doing this there would be an Interpol arrest warrant out and massive punishments."
OT, but who was it? I missed this.
Well, that and a Norwegian terrorist attack followed by the death of a drug addict skank means the whole thing is all but forgotten now. Not to mention the British political class are all off on their holidays for the summer for a few weeks now so simply wont care until late August or September or so when it'll all have conveniently blown over.
Worse, much of the rest of the British press has found the spotlight shining uncomfortably on it now, The Daily Mail has spent the last week or so trying to deflect attention away from the whole scandal because it knows that what will be dug out of it's closet will likely make the News of the World scandal look quite tame, Murodch's press will want to try and silence the issue, and The Daily Mirror amongst others are also looking quite suspect, so I similarly wouldn't expect the press to try and ressurect it in a month or so's time.
Hopefully I'll be proven wrong, but oh well, seeing Rupert and his empire get a well deserved kicking was fun whilst it lasted at least.
"Check where this initiative originates from, indeed, and observe how it follows a pattern. This is something that we are seeing more and more, like in UK with the creation of the Lib Dems. The creation of new parties, so-called centrists but mostly taking votes on the left, ensuring the election of conservatives, or at least of a coalition government dominated by the conservatives."
What a complete and utter load of tosh. Seriously. I suggest you have a look at the history of the Lib Dems, they weren't merely just a party that appeared out of nowhere, but grew from the liberal party of old, having a history that goes back over a hundred years.
Further, you appear to have swallowed the MurdochMedia line of how the Lib Dems are just letting the Tories run the country and so forth but this is further a crock of shit. Tuition fees is the most common stick that is waved, a raise to £9,000! how could the Lib Dems do this! Well, it's quite obvious- the Tories were actually gunning for £12,000 fees, but the Lib Dems were able to at least pull it to £9,000, which, given their share of the vote, is a fairly fair proportional decrease. Their biggest mistake though is not advertising this fact more widely, and not standing up for themselves a bit more.
They would have gone into coalition with Labour - and even tried - but it was a spent force, even at that point, even at the edge of losing all power, they wouldn't agree to drop the likes of the ID card programme and so forth. What were the Lib Dems to do? allow an unstable government when our country was near bankrupt? allow the Tories to try and get away with doing things fully their own way? have a weak non-majority coalition with a party that had so far lost it's way, it was more right wing then than even the Lib Dems are now, whilst not knowing who that parties new leader would be - hoping for David and ending up with Ed as is the case now? No thank you.
Look I hate the Tories too, I hate much of what Clegg has done since being elected, but it's hard to look back and think that any of the alternatives would've been better. Clegg should be more vocal about where they're swaying the Tories, but to suggest they're helping them because they're a secret bunch of underground right wing sleepers is utterly absurd.
An interesting thing came out of the whole News of the World scandal and that was party leaders publcations of meetings with press leaders. It was rather interesting to see that Clegg had actually still had more meetings with Left leaning press leaders than anyone else including union puppet Miliband. It was interesting that Cameron hadn't met up with some left wing press such as The Guardian, at all.
If the Lib Dems are so right wing, why have they been out to destroy Murdoch for so long rather than courting him? Why have they been courting the left wing press?
The fact is, your conspiracy theory utterly ignores the real full history of Liberals in Britain, and makes even less sense in the face of important fundamental facts.
"As she was admiring all the beautiful flora and fauna she said "This is proof that God must exist. How else could all this beauty just instantly appear out of nowhere?""
For what it's worth, when faced with this in the past my response has been to tell them to think of a beautiful plant, such as an orchid like a Phaleonopsis, or a large cactus such as a mature Echinopsis in full bloom, and to imagine growing it from seed. You start out with nothing but a pot with brown mud in it and a little seed, but then after time a green sprout appears, and it grows, and grows, over a few years, and with a little patience we get our first flowers, and a little later we get a beautiful bloom of many flowers. I point out that if nature can produce something so beautiful with a bit of patience over 3 or 4 years, then why shouldn't it produce something as beautiful as the natural world in which we live in over millions of years? Why does it have to be created? The plant grown from seed isn't, it finds it's own way with the right natural conditions, why shouldn't that happen on a larger scale?
When you start posing it to them like this then some of them can be reached, but it depends if they're the type of person who is a die hard zealot, or someone whose capable of being open minded but never really taken the effort to think about it and simply swallowed what they were taught.
"without adding in a bunch about Macroevolution which we *can't* prove(Did *you* see personally see fish evolve into something else? )"
There isn't some fixed cutoff point where one species becomes another, taxonomic definitions are rather arbitrary, one taxonomists cutoff point is completely different to another's.
Or to put it another way for you, something doesn't just "turn into" something else, it starts evolving the traits of what is later defined as a new species over time, such that there is a gradual spectrum of change from one species to another, and there are no real consistent guidelines that hold through all families of living beings as to when we say, right, it's changed enough to be a new species now. As such, it's enough to say that if we can see "microevolution" in the lab, then we're seeing "macroevolution" too, because we can simply say that the changes we see in the lab from one generation to the next are enough to say right, we've got a new species now, simply because it is entirely arbitrary.
You'll get flamed, because you show a basic lack of understanding of evolution and it's link with taxonomy, and then try to assert something based on your lack of knowledge- only assert things based on what you do know, not what you don't. Taxonomy is a rather flawed science, because it relies on being able to say "Right now it's a fish, okay, now it's an amphibian", it's an attempt to provide very digital logic in a very analog world. Taxonomy tries to group living beings based on arbitrary differences between two species, but can sometimes miss intermediate entities in those species that then blur that line, and make it questionable. Worse, in the past it's often been based on visual traits and similar, which falls flat in the face of evolutionary convergence where two seperate species show similar traits such that they have been lumped into the same genus even when DNA testing has shown that to be a false lumping of the species because they were much more distantly related than the classification suggested. One example is in the plant world, very often in the past two relatively unrelated plants have been lumped in the same genus because they have had identical looking flowers, when in fact they were not closely related at all, and had only evolved the same flower because they shared the same pollinators, and the flower they both evolved was the best fit to date for that pollinator.
Pushing evolution is NOT misguided, it's pushed because we do have adequate proof for evolution, only stupid people think we do not, and using your further lack of knowledge about taxonomy and classification as your justification for suggesting that because you don't understand it, it must be wrong, is just pathetic.
I think the problem is you're suggesting that the number of humans you safe is the sheer definition of humanity. I'm not sure that's the case. There's a far argument that if you're willing to torture even one person, or animal, even if it's to save many other people, then you've already lost your humanity - you've already allowed yourself to descend to a very primitive level.
I'm not saying you're wrong, or even that you can be wrong- as you say, it's a very subjective scenario. But I think we have to ask whether the number of people saved is really the only, or best measure of humanity.
We have this growing problem in that we're increasing life expectancy and growing our population much faster than we're able to produce resources and maintain infrastructure to cope with such growing population. It is in this context that I am a little more unsure as to whether it's more important to save as many lives as possible, or whether it's better to simply allow nature to keep our population levels more stable, and keep some of the fundamental pillars of humanity intact in the process such as the ability to be compassionate towards all living things.
I certainly think the ratio of numbers hurt/killed vs. numbers saved is a far too simplistic measure in the modern world- particularly in some places such as areas of Africa where there are severe resource shortages where increased population fed by foreign aid has simply resorted in some of the worst conflicts mankind has known in the modern world. Fundamentally most conflicts do stem back to resources above all else (even above religion- the whole Israeli-Palestine thing is as much about access fresh water for example). So then the question becomes, is it worth torturing one person, to save a million lives, which may overtime lead to war which results in misery, death, and rape of well over 1 million people? So I'm not sure it is responsible to maximise lives saved, at least, in every case, particularly when we're nowhere near having the resources problem solved, which, in itself, may actually require stabilisation or decrease of human population. If we solve the malaria and aids problems in Africa as a result of testing on animals without improving infrastructure, and see more and more brutal wars with more deaths than ever before as a result, have we really gained anything by making those animals, or people suffer? Are we any more human for what we have done?
I think really the solution is to look at the bigger picture and not just everything in isolation- take this for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8686750.stm
There's a fundamental problem where we simply think "great, I've cured AIDs!" but then what? what happens next? Is it really a better world for more people as a result? The couple in San Francisco may be happy, but life my be a whole lot worse for many more than it ever has been in some of the sub-saharan African villages.
"I would gladly personally torture an animal or a dozen to death if it would save a million human lives, and that is a natural instinct" ...and if it wasn't something that could be tested on animals, would you also be willing to torture a human or a dozen to death if it would save a million human lives?
"Google wanted to partner to save money, but Sun wanted $100mil and I'm pretty sure Google didn't want to invest that much so they decided not to. But Google used the code anyway and that's where they are in the wrong."
That or they figured out a way to work around the patents and avoid being guilty of infringement.
"People have known about Google being in the wrong for about a year. "
Oh, it's written in a blog on the internet. It must be true then. Perhaps we could update Wikipedia to reference the blog just to confirm it to be the case.
"It's pretty obvious they knew about these patents but ignored them so that puts them in the wrong."
Ignored them, or found them to be almost certainly invalid, or simply worked around them? You seem to be rather blindly dismissing some perfectly credible alternative possibilities here.
More realistically the chance are Google examined the patents, felt they were probably not valid and invalidated by prior art or similar, but to avoid having to deal with the hassle of a costly court case, figured it'd approach Sun about licensing. When Sun gave the $100mill figure they quite possibly figured that the risk of the cost of court was probably worth it, Sun probably didn't take it any further knowing that they themselves saw little point in stumping up the cash for a case they'd probably lose. Oracle however obviously thought differently, but, as some of Oracle's patents have already been dismissed as not valid, then perhaps there's some truth to this theory.
You seem to have made a very strong assertion, based on very little fact, whilst ignoring perfectly valid alternative possible events.
"Google is in the wrong here"
Please, elaborate. Obviously with your years of experience as a judge in computer patent cases and with the full access to all the relevant documentation in the case you can provide us with the explanation as to why this is the case now, rather than us having to wait for the lengthy court proceedings to finish!
The problem is that species have evolved with what they have over time, so that problematic and crippling mutations are rapidly selected out.
If you start creating hybrids, you create traits for which a species has not evolved, and as such those traits may have massively debilitating effects on the creature.
Effectively, when we've long learnt that sometimes the best thing to do for an animal that is suffering, is to put it down, because it's more ethical than letting it suffer, then is it not ethically wrong to create creatures that will suffer with the intention of keeping them alive for experiments?
Would it be fair to manipulate a human embryo to make it grow up with skin cancer all over it's body to examine skin cancer? is it fair to do it to an animal?
I'll admit I side with the activists here, I think it is cruel and quite horrible, however, I'm also not sure that if we want to advance science that there's any alternative, and that leaves us at a disturbing crossroads- is the advancement of science worth ignoring ethical concerns? If it is in this case then where does it stop, where is the line drawn at which point it is not worth it? or do we carry on until we really do have mad scientists like in the movies!
A few points:
- If hacks rely on social engineering, or even being able to understand what a page, for example, an admin page, is saying to figure out whether there's something you an exploit there, then language may be a massive barrier. Then even if they did leak it their Western audience wouldn't be able to understand it. It's challenge enough trawling through a dump of Western documents when you know the language to spot something important, let alone in a foreign language. Let those who know that language deal with that.
- The West is much more interested in documenting things because it believes it's the right thing to do in terms of accountability, but then never follows through on releasing said documents in response to controversal incidents and covers it up anyway- effectively it often becomes a box ticking exercise, to say "We're transparent and accountable". Other nations like Iran, North Korea etc. just drop the charade and don't even waste their time pretending to be accountable/transparent, or at least don't bother digitising everything
- There have been some foreign leaks, IIRC anonymous grabbed about 10,000 Iranian interior ministry files or similar not so long ago.
- These hackers are really mainly just interested in cleaning up their own backyard first- they're sick of government encroachment on their lives, or government spending their tax dollars on wars the citizens of said nation don't really agree with etc. and want to deal with that primarily.
NHibernate and ADO.NET are tools for interacting with a data store, this article is about the data stores themselves, not the tools of interaction.
NHibernate is an ORM, more of a competitor to Microsoft's Entity Framework than to ADO.NET.
There was the Greenday and Beatles too or were they rock band or something?
That was really part the problem too, you didn't just have your Guitar Hero, you had rock band, DJ hero, and all the other similar shit too, so you just lost track of what was what, when it was coming out, and what it would have in it. Take the Greenday thing for example, it seemed to have like less than half their tracks, the rest you had to buy as DLC, so why the fuck would I even bother with it if it's only half-arsed? I'm not going to pay like £35 for half a game.
Not to mention the instruments kept changing, my original drums were completely different to those used in Guitar Hero: Band camp or whatever the hell they came up with.
Error in reading comprehension detected. I never made such an assumption, nor stated such an assumption, I merely pointed out that the situation could potentially be completely the opposite of the commonly portrayed idea that China is hacking the US left right and centre, ignoring what the US may or may not be doing back.
"By now, with all that happened in the last 6 months on this front, you would have though that any computer holding sensitive information was already moved behind an air gap."
It goes a bit like this:
"Nah, it's nothing to worry about, it'll never happen to us. Now get on with doing your Office 2010 upgrades."
I hear this sentiment a lot, but it would imply that the Chinese government is more competent than Western governments who allow for this type of fuck up in the first place.
Is there any evidence that Chinese public sector is somehow more competent than that in the West?
It's quite possible that the opposite is true, that the Chinese are managing to acquire fuck all, and that Chinese government systems themselves are equally vulnerable.
I'm not sure about the US, but in British courts, when you swear "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" then you are swearing specifically not to omit anything relevant too.
The "whole truth" section was added precisely for this sort of reason, as the oath originally was merely "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth" under which it was recognised that this meant you could tell half-truths, and omit important facts, but still fulfil the oath in that what you said was indeed the truth, hence why it was changed.
I just tried it, and entered Dog, Horse, and Goat, then clicked small set.
It all looked great until the second last entry and so I have to ask, what the fuck kind of animal is a "various"?