Or because their own site was taken down last night, and, well, they decided a "Hey, look how quickly we can respond!" PR opportunity is better than sitting and waiting to catch the rest.
They got exposed, so now they're going after even more high profile targets which would net them even more jail time? How does that make any sense whatsoever?
Just because they've yet to succeed in their goals doesn't mean it's not a revolution. It's still a revolution, it may eventually be a succesful revolution, or it may eventually be a failed revolution, but it's a revolution all the same.
Besides, it's really questionable if Gaddafi is in charge, in charge of who or what exactly? Certainly all his funding sources have been cut off, certainly much political contact with his regime have been cut off, certainly much of his country aren't listening too him. In contrast the rebel transitional council has commercial ties externally with oil sales, it has ever increasing political standing in the world, and it has a large population supportive of it. About the only thing Gaddafi is in charge of is his own regime, a now isolated, crippled, and increasingly irrelevant regime.
Meh, ignore that quote, it was a copy and paste fail from another comment I posted, looks like I didn't manage to properly copy over it what I properly intended:
"Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
I know some people like to think of them as Al Qaeda sympathisers, but on the contrary, they're one of the best news organisations around today, and are largely quite supportive of the Western mindset. They did a great analysis on Turkey last year for example that was one of the most objective and insightful peices of journalism I've ever seen, and on TV they had a great documentary charting the Egyptian revolution from start to finish with much better footage than I'd seen elsewhere.
The BBC doesn't do too bad a job, but they're not brilliant, certainly their reports on for example the Libyan revolution are sporadic rather than ongoing for example.
Don't get me wrong, I suspect part the reason why Al Jazeera stands out at the moment is because it's very Middle East/African-centric and that's where much of the action is right now, I suspect they'd be much less good at reporting on for example, South America, although I may be wrong. Certainly for the Middle East goings on though they've been like no other in terms of quality and objectivity of reporting.
That's how it started off in the UK but it has changed somewhat now at least with ASDA.
In Yorkshire for example ASDA used to do it as you say- from local supermarkets as the bases, but now they have a large distribution centre near Leeds which they cover most of Yorkshire from.
Either way seems to work though, I guess ASDA just figured they could do it cheaper by centralising it, at least in Yorkshire.
It's a fair point but it's also worth pointing out that many of the US' major cities including Phoenix have much better road systems than the UK and fuel costs half as much.
In the UK we're stuck with expensive fuel (again, twice that of the US), and a roman road system.
I'm sure in many US cities this would certainly counteract the lower population density in making it feasible to at least some extent.
"Um, no. You are totally misunderstanding what "hypocrisy" means."
No actually, you simply haven't managed to comprehend my argument, even though it's quite simple.
My argument is that if he's about personal freedom then it's hypocritical to suggest the best way to ensure that is to move power to individual states, because it's likely individual states will vote in ways that actually decrease personal freedom- i.e. banning gay marriage, banning abortions.
If he were truly about personal freedom then instead he would mandate at a federal level that those freedoms would be guaranteed no matter who someone is, or where they are based. This is after all however much progressive civil rights law has had to be implemented across the globe throughout history- it's long been demonstrated that it's often the only way to ensure people's personal rights and freedoms are protected.
The point is simply that you can't say you're for something, then push for something that runs counter to that- that is why it's hypocritical.
"She never said she wanted him silenced."
Okay, taking the direct quote, she said:
"Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Either way, the effect is the same even if she didn't explicitly say "silenced", it's pretty clear what she meant. If she genuinely believed in free speech, why even suggest he should be pursued at all, he was after all merely exercising free speech. The very fact she's calling for some kind of pursuit of him even if not explicitly his assassination has the explicit implication that she believes speech she disagrees with does in the very least lead to harassment of the person exercising it. It's hypocritical however you try and spin it.
"Uhhh, never. But he has been a congressman for decades. Idiot."
Yes, because that's real power, isn't it? No really it's not, his vote is one of many. The point is this isn't a particularly corrupting form of power, and you can say and vote however you want to, because whilst your vote counts, it's one of many. When you become president you have real presidential powers, you have influence over the agenda, and you can exercise this power in some cases, with very little restraint. It is at this point that power corrupts.
"And if you didn't get my meaning, it is that Ron Paul is not like other Republicans, especially pretentious windbags like Palin. But then, you, like most of the libtrolls I have ever met, are so arrogant you just can't get over yourself, and feel the need to talk down to anyone and everyone who doesn't agree with you. Even if they are agreeing with you on many points."
Right, you seem to be making the mistake in thinking I'm American, or that I'm particularly partisan at all, you'd be wrong to make either of those assumptions.
In the UK, prior to the election there were high hopes for a guy called Nick Clegg, he was the leader of the third party, a party that has never really had a chance at being elected, but this time in the UK we had televised debates, and he rocked them, much to the surprise of the two main opposition parties. That support didn't fully come out on election day, he only got 23% of the vote, but neither of the other parties held a majority so he was able to broker a coalition government agreement, and as part of that he became deputy PM, with real influence over government policy.
Prior to this, he was staunchly against students having to pay university tuition fees, he signed a pledge in front the cameras during the election campaigj saying he'd oppose them if elected, it has long been a centrepiece of his party's policy.
So what happened as deputy PM? Well, he voted for a £6,000 increase in tuition fees from the previous £3,000. The result? well, his party has dropped to around 8% support in the polls, and he's not done himself any favours since such that he's public enemy number 1, but he doesn't care, because he has power, and he keeps making the wrong choices.
You see, when you're in opposition you can do and say what you want, hell, you might really even genuinely believe it or support it. But get into power? New realities hit you, power corrupts you, and the combination means that politicians will always go against what they have said, and sure the degree to which they do that changes, but it happens regardless.
Look at Obama, for all his faults, I think he genuinely did at least want to close Guantanamo, but had no idea what kind of task was at hand and has thus failed quite miserably in fulfilling that pledge.
Now put the trolling a side for a second, tell me, why do you think Ron Paul would be particularly different? Do you genuinely believe he's the first politician in history to be able to resist the influence of power and the realities and responsibilities of presidency? More so than people like Nelson Mandela for example who even he changed his views to an extent once in power? To me that just seems to be rather unlikely, much more rational is to expect that any politician once in a true position of power will not stick fully to their pledges, and that is hence why it seems, in my opinion, a little naive, to just write off the negative sides of a particular politician's viewpoint- they simply have to be factored in because in reality they are far more likely to come out once in power than for SuperKendall for example seemed to believe.
"Ron Paul never acted differently in power than what he said he would do. You don't know what you are talking about."
Sorry when exactly was Ron Paul president? Oh wait, you don't actually understand that politicians throughout history can say what they want when they're in opposition to the leadership, but change what they say and do once they reach a position of power.
"You should take your slander, and shove it up your ass. Or Sarah Palin's, for that matter. Lying bitch."
lol, did mummy take your toys away? Maybe she can get you a tissue for those tears? Perhaps she could read you a nursery rhyme before bed to calm you down?
Right, so you believe every question can be broken down into a simple yes / no and there are no shades of gray where it would be reasonable to define it otherwise because it's primarily a defensive action?
However you wish to define it- I wont say one way or another, the fact is it's not as simple as just yes or no. Again, there's a fundamental question of who it's hostile to- hostile to the Libyan regime? sure, hostile to Libya as a country? arguably not, the majority of the population would certainly not think so, quite the opposite.
Now, perhaps I'm missing something here, but I wasn't aware it had failed.
Is it's failure a US centric issue?
The reason I ask is here in the UK we've had home delivery for years, and pretty much every supermarket offers it.
It's highly succesful here and even Occado which is a home delivery only brand with no high street presceience I believe is even turning a decnt profit at last.
Perhaps companies in the US are just doing it wrong? I understand it'd be an issue in some parts of the US because of the distances involved, but certainly most of the UK is covered by such services and I see little reason why major population centres in the US at the very least couldn't have a similarly succesful model.
So is it just the US it's failed in? has it failed in other countries? In the countries it's failed in what were seen to be the causes?
Here's it's great, if you've got a busy week just order online during work and have it delivered in a 2hr timeslot such as say 8pm - 10pm one evening, even the next day, when you know you'll be home.
So you'd prefer to just allow Srebrenica style masacres to happen more regularly through inaction?
That's fine if you do, but personally I think it's a bit silly. Killing has happened throughout human history no matter what, the key is to minimise it. The question is whether it's worth taking the lives of a few aggressors to save the lives of thousands of innocents. To me it seems reasonable in such a context for it to be easier to act against aggression against civilians as it's pretty clear cut morally the right thing to do, that's in stark contrast to being the aggressor, which really requires much more debate over justification and should rightly have much greater limits on use of such action.
"This is the one thing that is somewhat evangelical, but so what if his position is to remove all power from the federal state?"
So what is that he's a hypocrit, and therein lies the problem.
Just like Palin that you also mention, she's a hypocrit. She cries about free speech and how she's a major supporter of it, oh, but she wants Julian Assange silenced, because his flavour of free speech doesn't suit her.
Here's the problem, politicians always act differently in power to how they say they will act out of power. You can be rest assured that where there's hypocrisy you will see this to be very much more the case.
I would be willing to gamble a small fortune on the idea that if Palin or Ron Paul got into power that they wouldn't simply let those personal feelings stay that way, I would be willing to bet that either of them would suddenly find it impossible to resist the temptation to push their personal agenda with their new found power. I would bet you that Palin would introduce laws further limiting some speech, or push for some other subversive action to silence detractors. I would be willing to bet Ron Paul would push his views on homosexuality and abortion far more than he implies he would right now.
"it's up to the states (as it should be)"
Really? I thought Ron Paul said he was about personal freedom? Leaving it upto the states means that an individual who wants an abortion in a state that does not support it, or wants a same sex marriage in a state that doesn't support it is likely to have less individual freedom than they would if federal government manated the opposite, this suggests his agenda is at very least highly contradictory.
Ask yourself this, at what level was pressure needed for the abolition of slavery? what level was it needed to remove racial discrimination? I'll give you a hint, abolition of those issues wasn't working out too well when it was all handled at state level.
Ron Paul and Sarah Palin are classic examples of politicians that say one thing, but really, want another, and if they were in power, they'd certainly veer towards their personal opinion, rather than their public opinion, which are two very different things. Bush did it, Obama did it, and you can guarantee someone intellectually inferior to even George Bush like Sarah Palin wouldn't be able to resist doing it.
Power corrupts, and few people can stay rational in the face of that, much less those weak minded enough to fall for the utter irrationality and hypocrisy of evangelical movements.
But let's be realistic, the situation isn't that simple in Libya.
In Libya the UN mandate is about protecting civilians, if Gaddaffi's troops are firing artillery at civilian areas then is it a hostile act against Gaddaffi's troops, or a defensive act protecting civilians? Really it's both, but which is prioritised?
I would say drone strikes in the invasion of Iraq against Iraqi forces would've been clear cut hostile as there was no real clear mandate or evidence that there was a defensive role being played in any way whatsoever, I would say the Pakistan drone attacks are slightly less clear cut but still largely hostile because whilst there is no immediate role in protecting civilians but arguably a longer term role in preventing terrorist attacks. Then again there's Libya, there's an immediate protection of civilian lives, and so the waters are much more muddy- is it really a hostile act or is it a defensive act?
You're right that a drone attack on the US as the US stands now would be a hostile act, if the US government was using the military to subdue an uprising by the majority of US civilians (majority might be key here) and a foreign nation launched a strike to protect those civilians from that agression then sure in the eyes of the US government it'd be hostile, but in the eyes of the majority of the civilian population it would be a defensive action.
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, really different people will have different opinions on it, but I don't think it's fair to say such an attack is purely hostile- whilst in the real world we can simply say it's both hostile and defensive, hence, hostile to degree at least, in the legal world things are as always much more muddied, and I'd bet that's what Obama is relying on - the fact that the mandate is a defensive one, and the action is a defensive one. Whether he's right to rely on that I imagine only time will tell.
"and they could be punished for software licence violations."
That's not what it says.
It says if you use something unapproved to interface with it that might send commands that could break it then your warranty is void.
You'll probably find the same with your graphics card, if you use some third party drivers/tweaks that overclock it and burn it out, I doubt your warranty would be valid either.
Still, nice try with the anti-Microsoft troll, you know, just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean you HAVE to troll them, it is possible that not every single thing they do is bad/evil. This SDK is a good thing, they deserve commendation- they've not tried to take down the open source efforts, they're just not offering to spend their money supporting and issues that may be caused by them.
When I was there it was more a case of "Hi, I know this is last minute but this needs doing by Friday" on a Monday.
Then on Tuesday morning "Why isn't it done yet, I said it needed to be done by last night?".
i.e. no planning, no scheduling, no competence, random decisions as to what needed doing and when!
But I did find IT deeply polarised there, amongst a team of around 40 IT staff I'd say only about 10 were truly competent and were holding organisation up for the other 30 by fixing the things they broke and doing their work for them.
Without a doubt public sector has competent people, but in my experience, more often than not, they're an absolute minority, and when they raise issues like security flaws they're treated as troublemakers creating extra work which was an affront to the work-shy co-workers rather than being seen as people who just want to honestly do a good job and make sure tax payers were getting what they paid for.
"1. maximising free ram usage is a fallacy. If you have the entire system to yourself, then it is fine, suck up as much as possible. However, our systems do not have that luxury - I have several apps running, and if each one is written to use RAM like its going out of fashion, they'll only end up starving each other for resources. the GC will be kicking in much more often, or worse case - you'll be swapping. I understand the theory, but the practice is quite different. There's another aspect to this that people forget - RAM is not a free resource, it costs quite a bit to copy that data in and out, which we see with today's monumentally slow startup times."
So you still don't get it in other words. High RAM usage only occurs when there's enough free RAM to make that a possibility. It wont swap because as RAM usage on the overall system increases, RAM usage for a particular Java application can decrease to match, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't increase usage when there's room to do so.
"Performance. I know script languages are crap, but when you have a situation where a slow tool is acceptable, you'd be right to use it. UI is a slow task - human reactions are dreadful in computer terms, so if the UI can be written in script and it performs fast enough, then you'd be choosing the right tool to write your UIs with it as hopefully development time would be insignificant."
That's true if your UI only performs simple tasks, but if you're doing something with your UI then scripting languages will be too slow, where Java wouldn't.
"Java does not scale, absolutely not, and enterprise java is really a synonym for 'horrible crap' (think Siebel, or similar examples)."
This is unbelievably incorrect and I can't believe you're repeating it, it shows you know absolutely nothing about the topic at hand. eBay does not use C++ for the "good stuff", it uses Java through and through. Similarly Google uses Java for much of it's backend that does need to be scalable. It's used in banking, commerce, it's used in so many places on the backend where scalability is a must that I'm amazed someone would claim it's not scalable- that's always been it'sbest bit, the fact it does handle scalable and distributed systems better than pretty much any other.
"As it is, I am a very competent developer."
Right, maybe within a small area of expertise, but your comments about Java are so utterly wrong it shows that your knowledge of the topic is massively limited outside of that comfort zone.
"Maybe that's why I can code stuff up in C++ and not have to fall back on the 'easy' stuff like Java and C#."
Hohoho. Line you up against an equally competent developer, get you to produce vast amounts of code, and I guarantee you will be slower, and your code will be more vulnerable to security exploits and issues such as memory leaks. It doesn't matter how good you think you are, these are simply the inherent disadvantages of C++ in this day and age. You're not perfect, no one is, there's no way you can guarantee your code is perfect, and there's most definitely no way you can develop as fast in C++ as you can with managed languages simply by virtue of the fact you just have to write more code with C++.
These are the fundamental facts, if you do not get this, you are not as good a developer as you seem to think you are. Let me just restate this to make it clear- yes you can develop something in C++ to perform better than you can Java, but there is much less of a security blanket against mistakes, much more code must be written (if not only because you have to remember to manually clean up memory)- it's a simple logical implication of these facts that this inherently means you will take longer to develop with C++ and are more likely to have more serious errors, and so again, this is why there's often no point using C++ over Java or C# for most applications.
If you still don't get it, let me just give you something to think about, because the answer and reasons are EXACTLY the same, so here goes- you surely wouldn't use C to develop dynamic web applications on the server side anymore using CGI, why do you think that is?
I somewhat agree with what you're saying but I think valuable feedback particularly for MMOs can still be gained by listening to users.
I think Dark Age of Camelot was a fine example of Mythic doing a bad job of this, when they release a new character class into the game that's capable of killing 4 other equally or more skilled players simply by virtue of the fact that class is overpowered, and you have thousands and thousands of users screaming about it on forums but then choose to ignore it anyway and not weaken the class for over 18 months then there is something very wrong.
In DAoC certain issues were very very obvious by complaints on forums, yet little was done because the devs felt they knew better even with them observing the game, and worse, sometimes they even made overpowered classes stronger again when already too powerful.
So yes, I know users often don't really know what they want (particularly in business software development), but sometimes, just sometimes they do, and I honestly believe that in MMOs this is particularly the case because you have so many users, if a few thousand of them are screaming about a problem then the chances are, they're not all wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Out of interest, does anyone know at $185k a pop what exactly ICANN will be doing with it's new found millions?
Or because their own site was taken down last night, and, well, they decided a "Hey, look how quickly we can respond!" PR opportunity is better than sitting and waiting to catch the rest.
I read it and it doesn't really make sense.
They got exposed, so now they're going after even more high profile targets which would net them even more jail time? How does that make any sense whatsoever?
touche :)
Just because they've yet to succeed in their goals doesn't mean it's not a revolution. It's still a revolution, it may eventually be a succesful revolution, or it may eventually be a failed revolution, but it's a revolution all the same.
Besides, it's really questionable if Gaddafi is in charge, in charge of who or what exactly? Certainly all his funding sources have been cut off, certainly much political contact with his regime have been cut off, certainly much of his country aren't listening too him. In contrast the rebel transitional council has commercial ties externally with oil sales, it has ever increasing political standing in the world, and it has a large population supportive of it. About the only thing Gaddafi is in charge of is his own regime, a now isolated, crippled, and increasingly irrelevant regime.
Yeah but I think that's more about trying to knock some sense into them for their own good than doing them harm.
Meh, ignore that quote, it was a copy and paste fail from another comment I posted, looks like I didn't manage to properly copy over it what I properly intended:
http://english.aljazeera.net/
Try Al Jazeera:
"Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
I know some people like to think of them as Al Qaeda sympathisers, but on the contrary, they're one of the best news organisations around today, and are largely quite supportive of the Western mindset. They did a great analysis on Turkey last year for example that was one of the most objective and insightful peices of journalism I've ever seen, and on TV they had a great documentary charting the Egyptian revolution from start to finish with much better footage than I'd seen elsewhere.
The BBC doesn't do too bad a job, but they're not brilliant, certainly their reports on for example the Libyan revolution are sporadic rather than ongoing for example.
Don't get me wrong, I suspect part the reason why Al Jazeera stands out at the moment is because it's very Middle East/African-centric and that's where much of the action is right now, I suspect they'd be much less good at reporting on for example, South America, although I may be wrong. Certainly for the Middle East goings on though they've been like no other in terms of quality and objectivity of reporting.
That's how it started off in the UK but it has changed somewhat now at least with ASDA.
In Yorkshire for example ASDA used to do it as you say- from local supermarkets as the bases, but now they have a large distribution centre near Leeds which they cover most of Yorkshire from.
Either way seems to work though, I guess ASDA just figured they could do it cheaper by centralising it, at least in Yorkshire.
It's a fair point but it's also worth pointing out that many of the US' major cities including Phoenix have much better road systems than the UK and fuel costs half as much.
In the UK we're stuck with expensive fuel (again, twice that of the US), and a roman road system.
I'm sure in many US cities this would certainly counteract the lower population density in making it feasible to at least some extent.
"Um, no. You are totally misunderstanding what "hypocrisy" means."
No actually, you simply haven't managed to comprehend my argument, even though it's quite simple.
My argument is that if he's about personal freedom then it's hypocritical to suggest the best way to ensure that is to move power to individual states, because it's likely individual states will vote in ways that actually decrease personal freedom- i.e. banning gay marriage, banning abortions.
If he were truly about personal freedom then instead he would mandate at a federal level that those freedoms would be guaranteed no matter who someone is, or where they are based. This is after all however much progressive civil rights law has had to be implemented across the globe throughout history- it's long been demonstrated that it's often the only way to ensure people's personal rights and freedoms are protected.
The point is simply that you can't say you're for something, then push for something that runs counter to that- that is why it's hypocritical.
"She never said she wanted him silenced."
Okay, taking the direct quote, she said:
"Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Either way, the effect is the same even if she didn't explicitly say "silenced", it's pretty clear what she meant. If she genuinely believed in free speech, why even suggest he should be pursued at all, he was after all merely exercising free speech. The very fact she's calling for some kind of pursuit of him even if not explicitly his assassination has the explicit implication that she believes speech she disagrees with does in the very least lead to harassment of the person exercising it. It's hypocritical however you try and spin it.
"Uhhh, never. But he has been a congressman for decades. Idiot."
Yes, because that's real power, isn't it? No really it's not, his vote is one of many. The point is this isn't a particularly corrupting form of power, and you can say and vote however you want to, because whilst your vote counts, it's one of many. When you become president you have real presidential powers, you have influence over the agenda, and you can exercise this power in some cases, with very little restraint. It is at this point that power corrupts.
"And if you didn't get my meaning, it is that Ron Paul is not like other Republicans, especially pretentious windbags like Palin. But then, you, like most of the libtrolls I have ever met, are so arrogant you just can't get over yourself, and feel the need to talk down to anyone and everyone who doesn't agree with you. Even if they are agreeing with you on many points."
Right, you seem to be making the mistake in thinking I'm American, or that I'm particularly partisan at all, you'd be wrong to make either of those assumptions.
In the UK, prior to the election there were high hopes for a guy called Nick Clegg, he was the leader of the third party, a party that has never really had a chance at being elected, but this time in the UK we had televised debates, and he rocked them, much to the surprise of the two main opposition parties. That support didn't fully come out on election day, he only got 23% of the vote, but neither of the other parties held a majority so he was able to broker a coalition government agreement, and as part of that he became deputy PM, with real influence over government policy.
Prior to this, he was staunchly against students having to pay university tuition fees, he signed a pledge in front the cameras during the election campaigj saying he'd oppose them if elected, it has long been a centrepiece of his party's policy.
So what happened as deputy PM? Well, he voted for a £6,000 increase in tuition fees from the previous £3,000. The result? well, his party has dropped to around 8% support in the polls, and he's not done himself any favours since such that he's public enemy number 1, but he doesn't care, because he has power, and he keeps making the wrong choices.
You see, when you're in opposition you can do and say what you want, hell, you might really even genuinely believe it or support it. But get into power? New realities hit you, power corrupts you, and the combination means that politicians will always go against what they have said, and sure the degree to which they do that changes, but it happens regardless.
Look at Obama, for all his faults, I think he genuinely did at least want to close Guantanamo, but had no idea what kind of task was at hand and has thus failed quite miserably in fulfilling that pledge.
Now put the trolling a side for a second, tell me, why do you think Ron Paul would be particularly different? Do you genuinely believe he's the first politician in history to be able to resist the influence of power and the realities and responsibilities of presidency? More so than people like Nelson Mandela for example who even he changed his views to an extent once in power? To me that just seems to be rather unlikely, much more rational is to expect that any politician once in a true position of power will not stick fully to their pledges, and that is hence why it seems, in my opinion, a little naive, to just write off the negative sides of a particular politician's viewpoint- they simply have to be factored in because in reality they are far more likely to come out once in power than for SuperKendall for example seemed to believe.
"Ron Paul never acted differently in power than what he said he would do. You don't know what you are talking about."
Sorry when exactly was Ron Paul president? Oh wait, you don't actually understand that politicians throughout history can say what they want when they're in opposition to the leadership, but change what they say and do once they reach a position of power.
"You should take your slander, and shove it up your ass. Or Sarah Palin's, for that matter. Lying bitch."
lol, did mummy take your toys away? Maybe she can get you a tissue for those tears? Perhaps she could read you a nursery rhyme before bed to calm you down?
Right, so you believe every question can be broken down into a simple yes / no and there are no shades of gray where it would be reasonable to define it otherwise because it's primarily a defensive action?
However you wish to define it- I wont say one way or another, the fact is it's not as simple as just yes or no. Again, there's a fundamental question of who it's hostile to- hostile to the Libyan regime? sure, hostile to Libya as a country? arguably not, the majority of the population would certainly not think so, quite the opposite.
Now, perhaps I'm missing something here, but I wasn't aware it had failed.
Is it's failure a US centric issue?
The reason I ask is here in the UK we've had home delivery for years, and pretty much every supermarket offers it.
It's highly succesful here and even Occado which is a home delivery only brand with no high street presceience I believe is even turning a decnt profit at last.
Perhaps companies in the US are just doing it wrong? I understand it'd be an issue in some parts of the US because of the distances involved, but certainly most of the UK is covered by such services and I see little reason why major population centres in the US at the very least couldn't have a similarly succesful model.
So is it just the US it's failed in? has it failed in other countries? In the countries it's failed in what were seen to be the causes?
Here's it's great, if you've got a busy week just order online during work and have it delivered in a 2hr timeslot such as say 8pm - 10pm one evening, even the next day, when you know you'll be home.
So you'd prefer to just allow Srebrenica style masacres to happen more regularly through inaction?
That's fine if you do, but personally I think it's a bit silly. Killing has happened throughout human history no matter what, the key is to minimise it. The question is whether it's worth taking the lives of a few aggressors to save the lives of thousands of innocents. To me it seems reasonable in such a context for it to be easier to act against aggression against civilians as it's pretty clear cut morally the right thing to do, that's in stark contrast to being the aggressor, which really requires much more debate over justification and should rightly have much greater limits on use of such action.
"This is the one thing that is somewhat evangelical, but so what if his position is to remove all power from the federal state?"
So what is that he's a hypocrit, and therein lies the problem.
Just like Palin that you also mention, she's a hypocrit. She cries about free speech and how she's a major supporter of it, oh, but she wants Julian Assange silenced, because his flavour of free speech doesn't suit her.
Here's the problem, politicians always act differently in power to how they say they will act out of power. You can be rest assured that where there's hypocrisy you will see this to be very much more the case.
I would be willing to gamble a small fortune on the idea that if Palin or Ron Paul got into power that they wouldn't simply let those personal feelings stay that way, I would be willing to bet that either of them would suddenly find it impossible to resist the temptation to push their personal agenda with their new found power. I would bet you that Palin would introduce laws further limiting some speech, or push for some other subversive action to silence detractors. I would be willing to bet Ron Paul would push his views on homosexuality and abortion far more than he implies he would right now.
"it's up to the states (as it should be)"
Really? I thought Ron Paul said he was about personal freedom? Leaving it upto the states means that an individual who wants an abortion in a state that does not support it, or wants a same sex marriage in a state that doesn't support it is likely to have less individual freedom than they would if federal government manated the opposite, this suggests his agenda is at very least highly contradictory.
Ask yourself this, at what level was pressure needed for the abolition of slavery? what level was it needed to remove racial discrimination? I'll give you a hint, abolition of those issues wasn't working out too well when it was all handled at state level.
Ron Paul and Sarah Palin are classic examples of politicians that say one thing, but really, want another, and if they were in power, they'd certainly veer towards their personal opinion, rather than their public opinion, which are two very different things. Bush did it, Obama did it, and you can guarantee someone intellectually inferior to even George Bush like Sarah Palin wouldn't be able to resist doing it.
Power corrupts, and few people can stay rational in the face of that, much less those weak minded enough to fall for the utter irrationality and hypocrisy of evangelical movements.
But let's be realistic, the situation isn't that simple in Libya.
In Libya the UN mandate is about protecting civilians, if Gaddaffi's troops are firing artillery at civilian areas then is it a hostile act against Gaddaffi's troops, or a defensive act protecting civilians? Really it's both, but which is prioritised?
I would say drone strikes in the invasion of Iraq against Iraqi forces would've been clear cut hostile as there was no real clear mandate or evidence that there was a defensive role being played in any way whatsoever, I would say the Pakistan drone attacks are slightly less clear cut but still largely hostile because whilst there is no immediate role in protecting civilians but arguably a longer term role in preventing terrorist attacks. Then again there's Libya, there's an immediate protection of civilian lives, and so the waters are much more muddy- is it really a hostile act or is it a defensive act?
You're right that a drone attack on the US as the US stands now would be a hostile act, if the US government was using the military to subdue an uprising by the majority of US civilians (majority might be key here) and a foreign nation launched a strike to protect those civilians from that agression then sure in the eyes of the US government it'd be hostile, but in the eyes of the majority of the civilian population it would be a defensive action.
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, really different people will have different opinions on it, but I don't think it's fair to say such an attack is purely hostile- whilst in the real world we can simply say it's both hostile and defensive, hence, hostile to degree at least, in the legal world things are as always much more muddied, and I'd bet that's what Obama is relying on - the fact that the mandate is a defensive one, and the action is a defensive one. Whether he's right to rely on that I imagine only time will tell.
"and they could be punished for software licence violations."
That's not what it says.
It says if you use something unapproved to interface with it that might send commands that could break it then your warranty is void.
You'll probably find the same with your graphics card, if you use some third party drivers/tweaks that overclock it and burn it out, I doubt your warranty would be valid either.
Still, nice try with the anti-Microsoft troll, you know, just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean you HAVE to troll them, it is possible that not every single thing they do is bad/evil. This SDK is a good thing, they deserve commendation- they've not tried to take down the open source efforts, they're just not offering to spend their money supporting and issues that may be caused by them.
You're lucky you even had schedules :)
When I was there it was more a case of "Hi, I know this is last minute but this needs doing by Friday" on a Monday.
Then on Tuesday morning "Why isn't it done yet, I said it needed to be done by last night?".
i.e. no planning, no scheduling, no competence, random decisions as to what needed doing and when!
But I did find IT deeply polarised there, amongst a team of around 40 IT staff I'd say only about 10 were truly competent and were holding organisation up for the other 30 by fixing the things they broke and doing their work for them.
Without a doubt public sector has competent people, but in my experience, more often than not, they're an absolute minority, and when they raise issues like security flaws they're treated as troublemakers creating extra work which was an affront to the work-shy co-workers rather than being seen as people who just want to honestly do a good job and make sure tax payers were getting what they paid for.
"1. maximising free ram usage is a fallacy. If you have the entire system to yourself, then it is fine, suck up as much as possible. However, our systems do not have that luxury - I have several apps running, and if each one is written to use RAM like its going out of fashion, they'll only end up starving each other for resources. the GC will be kicking in much more often, or worse case - you'll be swapping. I understand the theory, but the practice is quite different. There's another aspect to this that people forget - RAM is not a free resource, it costs quite a bit to copy that data in and out, which we see with today's monumentally slow startup times."
So you still don't get it in other words. High RAM usage only occurs when there's enough free RAM to make that a possibility. It wont swap because as RAM usage on the overall system increases, RAM usage for a particular Java application can decrease to match, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't increase usage when there's room to do so.
"Performance. I know script languages are crap, but when you have a situation where a slow tool is acceptable, you'd be right to use it. UI is a slow task - human reactions are dreadful in computer terms, so if the UI can be written in script and it performs fast enough, then you'd be choosing the right tool to write your UIs with it as hopefully development time would be insignificant."
That's true if your UI only performs simple tasks, but if you're doing something with your UI then scripting languages will be too slow, where Java wouldn't.
"Java does not scale, absolutely not, and enterprise java is really a synonym for 'horrible crap' (think Siebel, or similar examples)."
This is unbelievably incorrect and I can't believe you're repeating it, it shows you know absolutely nothing about the topic at hand. eBay does not use C++ for the "good stuff", it uses Java through and through. Similarly Google uses Java for much of it's backend that does need to be scalable. It's used in banking, commerce, it's used in so many places on the backend where scalability is a must that I'm amazed someone would claim it's not scalable- that's always been it'sbest bit, the fact it does handle scalable and distributed systems better than pretty much any other.
"As it is, I am a very competent developer."
Right, maybe within a small area of expertise, but your comments about Java are so utterly wrong it shows that your knowledge of the topic is massively limited outside of that comfort zone.
"Maybe that's why I can code stuff up in C++ and not have to fall back on the 'easy' stuff like Java and C#."
Hohoho. Line you up against an equally competent developer, get you to produce vast amounts of code, and I guarantee you will be slower, and your code will be more vulnerable to security exploits and issues such as memory leaks. It doesn't matter how good you think you are, these are simply the inherent disadvantages of C++ in this day and age. You're not perfect, no one is, there's no way you can guarantee your code is perfect, and there's most definitely no way you can develop as fast in C++ as you can with managed languages simply by virtue of the fact you just have to write more code with C++.
These are the fundamental facts, if you do not get this, you are not as good a developer as you seem to think you are. Let me just restate this to make it clear- yes you can develop something in C++ to perform better than you can Java, but there is much less of a security blanket against mistakes, much more code must be written (if not only because you have to remember to manually clean up memory)- it's a simple logical implication of these facts that this inherently means you will take longer to develop with C++ and are more likely to have more serious errors, and so again, this is why there's often no point using C++ over Java or C# for most applications.
If you still don't get it, let me just give you something to think about, because the answer and reasons are EXACTLY the same, so here goes- you surely wouldn't use C to develop dynamic web applications on the server side anymore using CGI, why do you think that is?
Oh my god, they have dark skin, they must be all about Al Qaeda!
Seriously, do you know how fucking ignorant your comment is?
I somewhat agree with what you're saying but I think valuable feedback particularly for MMOs can still be gained by listening to users.
I think Dark Age of Camelot was a fine example of Mythic doing a bad job of this, when they release a new character class into the game that's capable of killing 4 other equally or more skilled players simply by virtue of the fact that class is overpowered, and you have thousands and thousands of users screaming about it on forums but then choose to ignore it anyway and not weaken the class for over 18 months then there is something very wrong.
In DAoC certain issues were very very obvious by complaints on forums, yet little was done because the devs felt they knew better even with them observing the game, and worse, sometimes they even made overpowered classes stronger again when already too powerful.
So yes, I know users often don't really know what they want (particularly in business software development), but sometimes, just sometimes they do, and I honestly believe that in MMOs this is particularly the case because you have so many users, if a few thousand of them are screaming about a problem then the chances are, they're not all wrong.
Or like most public sector organisations across the globe.
They're just pretty fucking incompetent when it comes to this kind of thing.
Having worked in public sector, for 6 years, I know where I'd place my bets.
"they're just bullies out to hurt easy targets."
Yeah, I know the FBI and CIA have made numerous major cock ups over the years, but calling them "easy targets"? that's a bit harsh isn't it?