An MCSE has nothing to do with ODBC or named pipes (just a point of reference that in this context that note was irrelevant. BTW: The "albatross" comment is just silly -> You don't have to tell anyone that you have it).
Anyways named pipes is being deprecated, as of SQL Server 7, in lieu of TCP/IP Sockets.
We also have 10,000,000 sq. KM of territory which is why the major carriers are apprehensive about jumping on a new technology that might only be a stop-gap for two years when you have to do it all again (As opposed to say Japan or other small Asian countries where it is much, much easier to upgrade the infrastructure to support whatever is new). Having said that here in the Greater Toronto Area we've had digital as long as the US has. The one thing we didn't get due to arguments between the various carriers was CDPD, but alas.
Anyways pretty soon, as guaranteed by some terrorists, Canada and the US will be in an EU type union so we're going to further integrate common technologies.
You know you're probably getting blank stares right now because I imagine a lot of the Slashdot `community' is the calculator watch crowd. Honestly I find calculator watches absolutely hilarious.
"The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
Methane isn't just a natural resource and can easily be synthesized, hence you can view it purely as a very clean chemical battery: Expend some energy creating a CH4 molecule, and then extract the energy catalyzing with oxygen (or whatever).
Games do not need a GeForce 3 of any race in my experience. I have a GeForce 2 MX (the cheapo one) and an Athlon 850 and have had no slow-downs at all.
I beg to differ. The only reason games like Serious Sam can run fairly effectively is that it's a square world inside a box and the only reasonably detailed objects are the enemies with pretty simplistic effects. Play a game like Operation Flashpoint and you'll see a game that is a game of contrasts: On the one hand the textures aren't that great, and trees are a couple of textured polygons jutting out of a square stump, but on the other hand there are hundreds of such trees and you can see for over a kilometer. Operation Flashpoint is just the BEGINNING of games of that genre, and personally I get some pretty seriously chunking on a GeForce 2 in heavily forested areas (hence I'm eyeballing that GeForce3 Ti200 pretty seriously). When the Ti200 becomes the new entry point (which it will be quite quickly) OF2 will have much more realistic forest areas, they'll be able to create maps with more enemy units in a given area (as it is thye have to constrain them somewhat), and the bar will be for players to play at 1600x1200 which is going to be the new standard resolution in very short order. Already 1024x768 at 32-bit is barely sufficient.
It's hardware is better, but the drivers are restricting it from performing to its potential. Once that is worked out, it will outperform the Geforce3 ti 500.
Sure it will...Seriously that particular sales technique of "oh it's just the drivers, but once they're sorted out it'll kick ass!" is absolute rubbish and should be treated as such. ATI has a horrendous reputation for drivers and it is, IMHO, a very deserved reputation: I'm certainly not going to buy anything on the premise that THAT company is going to improve their drivers. Another "funny" thing they do is orphaning products frequently: "Oh you want drivers for Windows XP? Sorry, you'll have to upgrade to our new product line." nvidia has set new standards in continuing to upgrade and improve drivers for long existing products and I give them great accolades for that.
So in closing ATIs theoretical performance means absolutely nothing if it isn't delivered and in the public's hands (what was that S3 card with fantastic T&L that never actually had drivers delivered that enabled it? Yet there were S3 pimps out there talking up the hypotheticals fo this super duper T&L engine). The fact that AnandTech pimped the 8500 using the driver excuse on page after page after page was absolutely despicable.
As a contrast, nvidia stays quiet about drivers and delivers what they deliver despite the fact that they actually do improve performance with each driver release. Hell someone with a GeForce 1 is still reaping performance improvements upgrading to the new Detonator XP drivers.
That article merely says that it heats up after 15 minutes (i.e. It doesn't say that it overheats. My laptop heats up pretty wickedly but it still works). Every technology has to start somewhere. This will give them the capital to make v2 that has a long battery life and is commercially accepted.
How many people know that George Orwell was just his pen name?
Who cares? No serious who cares? I know two things: Someone publishing under the name George Orwell wrote two absolutely brilliant books - 1984 and Animal Farm. Here in Canada at least when I was in Grade 9 it was required reading (and rightly so). However the real life of the person who wrote it, and whether their name was Kooky Deedooky or they ate monkey butter on their bagles means absolutely, positively nothing to me. A parallel is people who read People magazine to know whether Brad Pitt and Scooby Doobie are back together, etc: Who gives a shit? Either they can act or they can't, and beyond that I don't care. I'm not looking for a cult of personality.
This is total bullshit. If there was a clear enemy for whom attacking will actually achieve anything except strengthen the enemy most so-called pacifists would be suiting up and loading up their clips. As it is though it's a bunch of kill-hungry moroons without the slightest concept what they're doing.
Let me turn this around a bit: If you're for dropping bombs right now with no clear conviction of who you're fighting or what it will achieve, you are HELPING THE ENEMY. You are strengthening their resolve and helping them recruit many more terrorists who will be willing to kill thousands more Americans. If you are busy running to Slashdot to push articles like this inherently you love Osama because you pray for him or his successor to grow stronger. Perhaps you should be imprisoned as a traitor.
I don't feel threatened by our government. The reason I'm not afraid of the government is because I really do believe that the government is made up of citizens. Those citizens are endowed with a common set of values and one of those values is respect for personal freedom. Citizens may disagree with specific issues regarding those freedoms but the basic concept remains intact.
You should fear unrestrained government, which is the position that the government is trying to get itself into in the past couple of weeks. The reality of humanity is a very simple concept: People look out for #1->Themselves. The war with Japan ended not because of the painful loses of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but rather because the royal family in Japan knew that THEY could easily be dead as well. Indeed in almost any war the people behind the war can do so because they see themselves as impervious, but in the era of nuclear war wars between super powers have disappeared: The people who make the "decisions for the people" suddenly don't have the nerve when they themselves are largely guaranteed to be dead. In government powers are abused daily and to the greatest extent possible to protect political positions, to get funding for the next endeaver and pet project, to make examples to get political points, etc. These are not selfless people and they need an incredible number of checks and balances.
1) Correct: You don't have any expectation of privacy in the *ADDRESS* of the person you are corresponding with. You *DO* have an expectation of privacy with the contents of the envelope (let's not even go near postcards). In fact, the USPS has been known to photograph the outside of the envelopes for DECADES of people they want to learn more about, but don't have a warrant for just yet...
What is the legalities of the police getting your phone records? (Honest question I don't know) i.e. If they want a list of every person who has phoned you and every person you've phoned do they have to get a warrant? It seems that this is largely paralleled to that.
The reality is this: Despite clowns like Ashcroft yapping about how technology has left them behind, the reality is that technology has put far more power into governments hands than ever before: Never have they had so much information to follow and track people's every move. But instead of restricting how they (ab)use this power these people actually claim that they require more powers. Absolutely unbelievable, and the sad thing is that people (not you I'm just ranting) fall for it. I had a friend who is barely involved in technology tell me that "they need to ban encryption because it helped the terrorists". Unbelievable.
There is more wisdom in Franklin's words and Orwell's 1984 than you will ever understand, and that is the reason why they're brought up so frequently (and those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it).
It is interesting that you first state that 1984 is "50 years old" (apparently this somehow disparages it?), and then you say that oh, about 50 years ago, people had balls. Funny paradox there. So was it an era of heroism, or an era of cynicism?
Also it isn't having "balls" to say "send in the military" when you're not there on the front lines with a M16A2 in your hands. Yeah it's easy to say "So what if we lose a couple thousand: It's for infinite justice!" What a hero you are. SEND THE TROOPS! SEND THE TANKS! SEND THE FIGHTERS! I'VE GOT BALLS!
The reality is that this is a complex situation that will not be won by troops on a battlefield despite the simplistic and misguided beliefs that it will. Hell, send in the CIA with hit squads sure (I'm all for that if you're 100% certain that you know the right people), but don't carpet bomb from 32,000 feet killing thousands of civilians while talking about justice, especially when your actions will indirectly lead to more American deaths later. You see every time some trigger happy gung-ho idiot with "balls" goes globe hopping it tends to piss a lot of people off, and those people are the ones who smash planes into the WTC taking their own lives. They are pure shit in my mind, but at the same time I do try to understand them.
The sad thing is that by retaliating against muslims in general the US would be playing exactly into Osama's hands because it would polarize the muslim world against the US (a billion+ strong I believe), or do you believe that somehow we'll somehow know everyone who is related to terrorists and single them out? Is this like some mob type retribution? The reality is that history has shown that we'd more than likely kill 90% totally innocent people, 10% villains.
Oh what a bunch of bullshit. It's funny how no one cared about the women of Afghanistan until it was pertinent for propaganda reasons (and if you don't realize how obviously you're being played...). Just like the Kuwaiti babies. The reality is that there are a lot of nasty places on the Earth where a lot of nasty things happen and the US and other Western nations are blind to it...until it serves their purposes propaganda wise at which point suddenly everyone cares. How very 1984.
The funny thing is that most of the people urging caution and restraint are far from peaceniks: They're just intelligent, reasonable, and rational. To ask "What is the point of doing this? What will it achieve? What will best achieve our goals?" apparently is "left wing" to the whackos in these times of crisis.
Let me put it this way: If the US goes and bombs the hell out of whereever-land, and that pushes 100 more fanatics to join the anti-US crusade, and they come over and poison the water and blow up some aircraft, I hope every looney that pushed for instant reaction no matter what the results should be tried for murder. The simple reality is that it is a vicious cycle of cause and effects, and it's a sad day that so many people don't try whatsoever to understand the situation or how to solve it. I don't know myself, but I do know that declaring war on the world isn't the solution.
I heard a funny caller on a call-in show last night (here in Ontario) that proclaimed "Nuke em all and shoot em when they glow", and while that is funny and humorous and all, when their children come back and kill YOU are partly responsible for it. As the old saying goes: "If it was an eye for an eye then everyone would be blind" and that's 100% true. When some wanker US politicians proclaims that this is "retaliation" he should realize that his words could just as likely be coming out of terrorist's mouths for the many atrocities doled out to their people.
BTW: I am not a peacenik, and if it solved things then warm up the nukes and send in the M1A1s: IF IT SOLVES ANYTHING. If it's just to stroke yourself and show you might while continuing the hate then lay off.
So, when we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was spiffy?
No, nor are any of the examples of the same type : It isn't the EVENT that people can be amazed or fascinated by, but the specifics. The atomic bomb is fascinating. The blast pattern is intriguing. The CIP of a dropped atomic bomb is interesting.
And when we use deep penetrating nukes to collapse caves in Afghanistan that will be kewl?
You see if they did use deep penetrating nukes, and then someone came on with an article about the technology behind deep penetrating nukes that would be interesting (I don't remember anyone calling any of this "kewl", and your use of coolio lingo is intriguingly misplaced) to anyone with >50% of a brain, but I have no doubt that it wouldn't be long before someone ranted "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!". It's technology and analysis, and as that's the field that most of us are in then it intrigues and fascinates us.
Its a small difference but when speaking I don't know a single person that rounds this number up.
So true. You know it's funny how people see numbers: i.e. If I want something and my wife knows about it, she rounds it up : "Is that video card worth it for $200?" when it's actually $159.95. Yet when she wants something it goes downwards to a similarly extreme degree. i.e. "For $100 that's quite a good deal" (for a product that's $140). Rounding is something that we seem to do a lot as a society for psychological reasons.
Is this a troll? Graphics technology is just touching on what it could be. For instance in Operation Flashpoint it's one of the very first games to actually have forests, yet to have the forest the trees are very simplistic boxes, and of course trees outside are several polygons jutting out with a tree texture on them. The reality is that the only situation where current 3D cards are visually adequate is simplistic indoor situations, but if you try to visually model the outdoors even a GeForce 3 Titanium is woefully ill equipped. I dream of "OpFlashpoint" in the future when there are ditches, better foliage (despite the fact that it already has CLEARLY the best foliage of any game yet created, though years ago people were already saying that computer grpahics had gone as far as they need to go), a deformable world, etc.
I noticed that this post went to a score of 4 (I see the moderations in my "messages"), but then suddenly it dropped to 3 and I presume because people metamoderated one of the upmods downwards so it was revoked? I find it odd that the system then strangely takes a mod point from my 50, despite the fact that I have been at 50 for a long time. Seems rather silly.
This is purely a humor point that is because I'm curious about how meta-moderation works. I've actually had that "losing one from 50" happen before despite not being modded down.
Yeah you ARE being oversensitive. The maps on CNN are nifty. It is amazing that technology moves forward by an event so tragic (in fact it's amazing that most of the technological advances tend to come in periods of war when we're really motivated to find ways to kill people). It if fascinating that a terrorist group used the latent energy in the WTC, coupled with jumbo jets, to achieve their deadly goal. It is amazing how the buildings held up for about an hour after being hit, until finally collapsing because of heat. It is very sad that 6000+ people died (though 1000+ were of other nationalities actually. It would probably seem more reasonable if you cut out the "6,700 innocent Americans" and left it as human beings), but it doesn't diminish from the amazing/neat/fascinating/stunning/awesome factors of the technologies or breakthroughs determined. Now if someone said it was "neat" that people were dismembered or something then you and your croonies would have a case to run to Slashdot shedding your crocodile tears and slowly waving your flag while singing Amazing Grace or something, but otherwise just save it: The overwhelming number of Slashdotters are just thinking "Aw STFU".
I 100% agree that there are a very large percentage of US citizens that don't agree with a lot of what the "powers that be" say, and that is the true benefit of democracy. You know this whole situation is incredibly disturbing: Firstly you have droves of crocodile tears idiots offering up all of their personal freedoms to "stop the killing" in the future (however dubious and clearly unrelated the freedom restraints will be at preventing terrorism) and to say that is a dangerous situation is an understatement. Secondly everyone with an agenda is coming out of the woodwork to use this situation for their own benefit: Here in Canada I have seen about 40 articles in the National Post (http://www.nationalpost.com) yapping about "America-Bashing" and how it somehow contributed to this situation, etc. Of course "America-Bashing" is honest, relevant and extremely valuable criticism of countries foreign policy and again that is why we live in a free country, but people are coming out of the shadows to squelch free speech. I've heard several instances now of people who stated something publicly about the US getting what it sows or whatever (I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS FOR A SECOND, BTW! I do not prescribe to this belief at all and I believe that violence has seldom in the history of mankind solved problems or earned consensus) and they were basically censored and forced into retracting their statements. I've argued with people who have referred to the terrorists as "irrational psychos", yet when you contemplate that these people have been pursuing this plan for years earning their pilots license and all, only to smash a plane to their death you realize that they probably spent more time thinking about what they were doing than most of us do in our day to day lives. I find what they did abhorrent and extraordinarily unjust, yet at the same time I realize that if you villify them and cast them as simpletons, and you pursue a mandate of basically "killing the head vampire", then you're begging for the situation to happen again, and again, and again. One of the first precepts of warfare is to understand the enemy, and it is extraordinarily sad how many people have no interest in understanding the enemy. Understanding does not mean sympathizing or agreeing with in any degree whatsoever, btw.
Oh you've never heard about police corruption charges? You know silly things where police steal evidence from locker rooms, plant evidence, or even drug deal and sometimes kill people? The reality is that it is a fairly common occurence, and I'm saddened to say that it's probably even more common than we know. In Ontario we have a separate watchdog agency to watch the police: Do we have abnormally dirty cops? Not even remotely, but we have realized that these are people which means that people among the fine ranks will occasionally make very poor choices, hence the need for checks and balances. Ergo police generally have to ask a judges permission for a wiretap warrant as a check on their powers to ensure that they down persue personal agendas, or furthermore that politically they aren't tasked with pursuing someone elses agenda.
Remember that while most in law enforcement are honest, reasonable people sometimes their coworkers and/or superiors got into the business for the exact same reason that people get into the mob: It gives them power over other people. They get to carry a gun and impose their will on other human beings through force or the threat of force. If you think there won't be bad apples among them then you're an idiot.
There is a very clear reason why "the law" has restraints put on it and has checks and balances limiting what they can do: History, which so many idiots fail to learn from, show that when you give "law enforcement" unrestrained information and abilities it ALWAYS gets abused, often in ways that lead to crime and/or death. We're not saying maybe, we're saying for sure. Does everyone here truly believe that every FBI agent is clean and isn't busy snorting cocaine while handing over information to the mob? Do you really think that there aren't CIA agents taking information from one pile and putting it in another to help out/screw a buddy? These are just people too, and as such they have all the flaws that people have and need to be never be given such powers.
In any case this situation after the WTC is an absolute disgrace: I bitched about it in other posts and I'll bitch about it again-> The US is looking for easy, knee-jerk solutions. Hey who cares that they have zero proof that these individuals were using encryption: Ban encryption (yeah pretend that the glaring galaxy sized hole in their human intelligence was just because they were thwarted by encryption). Despite the fact that at most claims of them coming "from Canada" the simple fact is that most, if not ALL, landed at US airports and went through the obviously grossly pourous US immigration checkpoints I'm hearing asshole, quick fix congressmen calling Canada a haven for terrorists! As a newspaper article today stated: "American cries for increased security at Canadian airports goes under the presumption that Canadian security is worse, a dubious presumption given recent events.". Canadian airline safety has far eclipsed US airport security for years and years yet again there was concern about letting those "lax" Canadian planes into US airspace. Unbelievable. A US baseball team complained about playing in Montreal because they wanted to know that we had "US standards" of security in place: Uh, how many times has Canada been attacked? Sorry I just had to gripe a bit, as personally I think politicians in Canada have been far too accepting of US criticism without calling them on it.
Give me a break! How about looking inwards for once?
Businesses that sell AMD machines state that the failure rate for AMD processors is approximately equal to the failure rate for Intel processors. I believe the words from the people who sell 10s or 100s of thousands of machines moreso than I believe anecdotal evident.
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An MCSE has nothing to do with ODBC or named pipes (just a point of reference that in this context that note was irrelevant. BTW: The "albatross" comment is just silly -> You don't have to tell anyone that you have it).
Anyways named pipes is being deprecated, as of SQL Server 7, in lieu of TCP/IP Sockets.
We also have 10,000,000 sq. KM of territory which is why the major carriers are apprehensive about jumping on a new technology that might only be a stop-gap for two years when you have to do it all again (As opposed to say Japan or other small Asian countries where it is much, much easier to upgrade the infrastructure to support whatever is new). Having said that here in the Greater Toronto Area we've had digital as long as the US has. The one thing we didn't get due to arguments between the various carriers was CDPD, but alas.
Anyways pretty soon, as guaranteed by some terrorists, Canada and the US will be in an EU type union so we're going to further integrate common technologies.
You know you're probably getting blank stares right now because I imagine a lot of the Slashdot `community' is the calculator watch crowd. Honestly I find calculator watches absolutely hilarious.
"The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
Methane isn't just a natural resource and can easily be synthesized, hence you can view it purely as a very clean chemical battery: Expend some energy creating a CH4 molecule, and then extract the energy catalyzing with oxygen (or whatever).
Games do not need a GeForce 3 of any race in my experience. I have a GeForce 2 MX (the cheapo one) and an Athlon 850 and have had no slow-downs at all.
I beg to differ. The only reason games like Serious Sam can run fairly effectively is that it's a square world inside a box and the only reasonably detailed objects are the enemies with pretty simplistic effects. Play a game like Operation Flashpoint and you'll see a game that is a game of contrasts: On the one hand the textures aren't that great, and trees are a couple of textured polygons jutting out of a square stump, but on the other hand there are hundreds of such trees and you can see for over a kilometer. Operation Flashpoint is just the BEGINNING of games of that genre, and personally I get some pretty seriously chunking on a GeForce 2 in heavily forested areas (hence I'm eyeballing that GeForce3 Ti200 pretty seriously). When the Ti200 becomes the new entry point (which it will be quite quickly) OF2 will have much more realistic forest areas, they'll be able to create maps with more enemy units in a given area (as it is thye have to constrain them somewhat), and the bar will be for players to play at 1600x1200 which is going to be the new standard resolution in very short order. Already 1024x768 at 32-bit is barely sufficient.
It's hardware is better, but the drivers are restricting it from performing to its potential. Once that is worked out, it will outperform the Geforce3 ti 500.
Sure it will...Seriously that particular sales technique of "oh it's just the drivers, but once they're sorted out it'll kick ass!" is absolute rubbish and should be treated as such. ATI has a horrendous reputation for drivers and it is, IMHO, a very deserved reputation: I'm certainly not going to buy anything on the premise that THAT company is going to improve their drivers. Another "funny" thing they do is orphaning products frequently: "Oh you want drivers for Windows XP? Sorry, you'll have to upgrade to our new product line." nvidia has set new standards in continuing to upgrade and improve drivers for long existing products and I give them great accolades for that.
So in closing ATIs theoretical performance means absolutely nothing if it isn't delivered and in the public's hands (what was that S3 card with fantastic T&L that never actually had drivers delivered that enabled it? Yet there were S3 pimps out there talking up the hypotheticals fo this super duper T&L engine). The fact that AnandTech pimped the 8500 using the driver excuse on page after page after page was absolutely despicable.
As a contrast, nvidia stays quiet about drivers and delivers what they deliver despite the fact that they actually do improve performance with each driver release. Hell someone with a GeForce 1 is still reaping performance improvements upgrading to the new Detonator XP drivers.
That article merely says that it heats up after 15 minutes (i.e. It doesn't say that it overheats. My laptop heats up pretty wickedly but it still works). Every technology has to start somewhere. This will give them the capital to make v2 that has a long battery life and is commercially accepted.
How many people know that George Orwell was just his pen name?
Who cares? No serious who cares? I know two things: Someone publishing under the name George Orwell wrote two absolutely brilliant books - 1984 and Animal Farm. Here in Canada at least when I was in Grade 9 it was required reading (and rightly so). However the real life of the person who wrote it, and whether their name was Kooky Deedooky or they ate monkey butter on their bagles means absolutely, positively nothing to me. A parallel is people who read People magazine to know whether Brad Pitt and Scooby Doobie are back together, etc: Who gives a shit? Either they can act or they can't, and beyond that I don't care. I'm not looking for a cult of personality.
This is total bullshit. If there was a clear enemy for whom attacking will actually achieve anything except strengthen the enemy most so-called pacifists would be suiting up and loading up their clips. As it is though it's a bunch of kill-hungry moroons without the slightest concept what they're doing.
Let me turn this around a bit: If you're for dropping bombs right now with no clear conviction of who you're fighting or what it will achieve, you are HELPING THE ENEMY. You are strengthening their resolve and helping them recruit many more terrorists who will be willing to kill thousands more Americans. If you are busy running to Slashdot to push articles like this inherently you love Osama because you pray for him or his successor to grow stronger. Perhaps you should be imprisoned as a traitor.
I don't feel threatened by our government. The reason I'm not afraid of the government is because I really do believe that the government is made up of citizens. Those citizens are endowed with a common set of values and one of those values is respect for personal freedom. Citizens may disagree with specific issues regarding those freedoms but the basic concept remains intact.
You should fear unrestrained government, which is the position that the government is trying to get itself into in the past couple of weeks. The reality of humanity is a very simple concept: People look out for #1->Themselves. The war with Japan ended not because of the painful loses of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but rather because the royal family in Japan knew that THEY could easily be dead as well. Indeed in almost any war the people behind the war can do so because they see themselves as impervious, but in the era of nuclear war wars between super powers have disappeared: The people who make the "decisions for the people" suddenly don't have the nerve when they themselves are largely guaranteed to be dead. In government powers are abused daily and to the greatest extent possible to protect political positions, to get funding for the next endeaver and pet project, to make examples to get political points, etc. These are not selfless people and they need an incredible number of checks and balances.
1) Correct: You don't have any expectation of privacy in the *ADDRESS* of the person you are corresponding with. You *DO* have an expectation of privacy with the contents of the envelope (let's not even go near postcards). In fact, the USPS has been known to photograph the outside of the envelopes for DECADES of people they want to learn more about, but don't have a warrant for just yet...
What is the legalities of the police getting your phone records? (Honest question I don't know) i.e. If they want a list of every person who has phoned you and every person you've phoned do they have to get a warrant? It seems that this is largely paralleled to that.
The reality is this: Despite clowns like Ashcroft yapping about how technology has left them behind, the reality is that technology has put far more power into governments hands than ever before: Never have they had so much information to follow and track people's every move. But instead of restricting how they (ab)use this power these people actually claim that they require more powers. Absolutely unbelievable, and the sad thing is that people (not you I'm just ranting) fall for it. I had a friend who is barely involved in technology tell me that "they need to ban encryption because it helped the terrorists". Unbelievable.
There is more wisdom in Franklin's words and Orwell's 1984 than you will ever understand, and that is the reason why they're brought up so frequently (and those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it).
It is interesting that you first state that 1984 is "50 years old" (apparently this somehow disparages it?), and then you say that oh, about 50 years ago, people had balls. Funny paradox there. So was it an era of heroism, or an era of cynicism?
Also it isn't having "balls" to say "send in the military" when you're not there on the front lines with a M16A2 in your hands. Yeah it's easy to say "So what if we lose a couple thousand: It's for infinite justice!" What a hero you are. SEND THE TROOPS! SEND THE TANKS! SEND THE FIGHTERS! I'VE GOT BALLS!
The reality is that this is a complex situation that will not be won by troops on a battlefield despite the simplistic and misguided beliefs that it will. Hell, send in the CIA with hit squads sure (I'm all for that if you're 100% certain that you know the right people), but don't carpet bomb from 32,000 feet killing thousands of civilians while talking about justice, especially when your actions will indirectly lead to more American deaths later. You see every time some trigger happy gung-ho idiot with "balls" goes globe hopping it tends to piss a lot of people off, and those people are the ones who smash planes into the WTC taking their own lives. They are pure shit in my mind, but at the same time I do try to understand them.
The sad thing is that by retaliating against muslims in general the US would be playing exactly into Osama's hands because it would polarize the muslim world against the US (a billion+ strong I believe), or do you believe that somehow we'll somehow know everyone who is related to terrorists and single them out? Is this like some mob type retribution? The reality is that history has shown that we'd more than likely kill 90% totally innocent people, 10% villains.
Oh what a bunch of bullshit. It's funny how no one cared about the women of Afghanistan until it was pertinent for propaganda reasons (and if you don't realize how obviously you're being played...). Just like the Kuwaiti babies. The reality is that there are a lot of nasty places on the Earth where a lot of nasty things happen and the US and other Western nations are blind to it...until it serves their purposes propaganda wise at which point suddenly everyone cares. How very 1984.
The funny thing is that most of the people urging caution and restraint are far from peaceniks: They're just intelligent, reasonable, and rational. To ask "What is the point of doing this? What will it achieve? What will best achieve our goals?" apparently is "left wing" to the whackos in these times of crisis.
Let me put it this way: If the US goes and bombs the hell out of whereever-land, and that pushes 100 more fanatics to join the anti-US crusade, and they come over and poison the water and blow up some aircraft, I hope every looney that pushed for instant reaction no matter what the results should be tried for murder. The simple reality is that it is a vicious cycle of cause and effects, and it's a sad day that so many people don't try whatsoever to understand the situation or how to solve it. I don't know myself, but I do know that declaring war on the world isn't the solution.
I heard a funny caller on a call-in show last night (here in Ontario) that proclaimed "Nuke em all and shoot em when they glow", and while that is funny and humorous and all, when their children come back and kill YOU are partly responsible for it. As the old saying goes: "If it was an eye for an eye then everyone would be blind" and that's 100% true. When some wanker US politicians proclaims that this is "retaliation" he should realize that his words could just as likely be coming out of terrorist's mouths for the many atrocities doled out to their people.
BTW: I am not a peacenik, and if it solved things then warm up the nukes and send in the M1A1s: IF IT SOLVES ANYTHING. If it's just to stroke yourself and show you might while continuing the hate then lay off.
So, when we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was spiffy?
No, nor are any of the examples of the same type : It isn't the EVENT that people can be amazed or fascinated by, but the specifics. The atomic bomb is fascinating. The blast pattern is intriguing. The CIP of a dropped atomic bomb is interesting.
And when we use deep penetrating nukes to collapse caves in Afghanistan that will be kewl?
You see if they did use deep penetrating nukes, and then someone came on with an article about the technology behind deep penetrating nukes that would be interesting (I don't remember anyone calling any of this "kewl", and your use of coolio lingo is intriguingly misplaced) to anyone with >50% of a brain, but I have no doubt that it wouldn't be long before someone ranted "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!". It's technology and analysis, and as that's the field that most of us are in then it intrigues and fascinates us.
Its a small difference but when speaking I don't know a single person that rounds this number up.
So true. You know it's funny how people see numbers: i.e. If I want something and my wife knows about it, she rounds it up : "Is that video card worth it for $200?" when it's actually $159.95. Yet when she wants something it goes downwards to a similarly extreme degree. i.e. "For $100 that's quite a good deal" (for a product that's $140). Rounding is something that we seem to do a lot as a society for psychological reasons.
Is this a troll? Graphics technology is just touching on what it could be. For instance in Operation Flashpoint it's one of the very first games to actually have forests, yet to have the forest the trees are very simplistic boxes, and of course trees outside are several polygons jutting out with a tree texture on them. The reality is that the only situation where current 3D cards are visually adequate is simplistic indoor situations, but if you try to visually model the outdoors even a GeForce 3 Titanium is woefully ill equipped. I dream of "OpFlashpoint" in the future when there are ditches, better foliage (despite the fact that it already has CLEARLY the best foliage of any game yet created, though years ago people were already saying that computer grpahics had gone as far as they need to go), a deformable world, etc.
I noticed that this post went to a score of 4 (I see the moderations in my "messages"), but then suddenly it dropped to 3 and I presume because people metamoderated one of the upmods downwards so it was revoked? I find it odd that the system then strangely takes a mod point from my 50, despite the fact that I have been at 50 for a long time. Seems rather silly.
This is purely a humor point that is because I'm curious about how meta-moderation works. I've actually had that "losing one from 50" happen before despite not being modded down.
Yeah you ARE being oversensitive. The maps on CNN are nifty. It is amazing that technology moves forward by an event so tragic (in fact it's amazing that most of the technological advances tend to come in periods of war when we're really motivated to find ways to kill people). It if fascinating that a terrorist group used the latent energy in the WTC, coupled with jumbo jets, to achieve their deadly goal. It is amazing how the buildings held up for about an hour after being hit, until finally collapsing because of heat. It is very sad that 6000+ people died (though 1000+ were of other nationalities actually. It would probably seem more reasonable if you cut out the "6,700 innocent Americans" and left it as human beings), but it doesn't diminish from the amazing/neat/fascinating/stunning/awesome factors of the technologies or breakthroughs determined. Now if someone said it was "neat" that people were dismembered or something then you and your croonies would have a case to run to Slashdot shedding your crocodile tears and slowly waving your flag while singing Amazing Grace or something, but otherwise just save it: The overwhelming number of Slashdotters are just thinking "Aw STFU".
Would it make more sense if you said that the skeletons et. all will emerge on the last day of October?
I 100% agree that there are a very large percentage of US citizens that don't agree with a lot of what the "powers that be" say, and that is the true benefit of democracy. You know this whole situation is incredibly disturbing: Firstly you have droves of crocodile tears idiots offering up all of their personal freedoms to "stop the killing" in the future (however dubious and clearly unrelated the freedom restraints will be at preventing terrorism) and to say that is a dangerous situation is an understatement. Secondly everyone with an agenda is coming out of the woodwork to use this situation for their own benefit: Here in Canada I have seen about 40 articles in the National Post (http://www.nationalpost.com) yapping about "America-Bashing" and how it somehow contributed to this situation, etc. Of course "America-Bashing" is honest, relevant and extremely valuable criticism of countries foreign policy and again that is why we live in a free country, but people are coming out of the shadows to squelch free speech. I've heard several instances now of people who stated something publicly about the US getting what it sows or whatever (I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS FOR A SECOND, BTW! I do not prescribe to this belief at all and I believe that violence has seldom in the history of mankind solved problems or earned consensus) and they were basically censored and forced into retracting their statements. I've argued with people who have referred to the terrorists as "irrational psychos", yet when you contemplate that these people have been pursuing this plan for years earning their pilots license and all, only to smash a plane to their death you realize that they probably spent more time thinking about what they were doing than most of us do in our day to day lives. I find what they did abhorrent and extraordinarily unjust, yet at the same time I realize that if you villify them and cast them as simpletons, and you pursue a mandate of basically "killing the head vampire", then you're begging for the situation to happen again, and again, and again. One of the first precepts of warfare is to understand the enemy, and it is extraordinarily sad how many people have no interest in understanding the enemy. Understanding does not mean sympathizing or agreeing with in any degree whatsoever, btw.
Wow I really digressed there. :-)
Oh you've never heard about police corruption charges? You know silly things where police steal evidence from locker rooms, plant evidence, or even drug deal and sometimes kill people? The reality is that it is a fairly common occurence, and I'm saddened to say that it's probably even more common than we know. In Ontario we have a separate watchdog agency to watch the police: Do we have abnormally dirty cops? Not even remotely, but we have realized that these are people which means that people among the fine ranks will occasionally make very poor choices, hence the need for checks and balances. Ergo police generally have to ask a judges permission for a wiretap warrant as a check on their powers to ensure that they down persue personal agendas, or furthermore that politically they aren't tasked with pursuing someone elses agenda.
Remember that while most in law enforcement are honest, reasonable people sometimes their coworkers and/or superiors got into the business for the exact same reason that people get into the mob: It gives them power over other people. They get to carry a gun and impose their will on other human beings through force or the threat of force. If you think there won't be bad apples among them then you're an idiot.
There is a very clear reason why "the law" has restraints put on it and has checks and balances limiting what they can do: History, which so many idiots fail to learn from, show that when you give "law enforcement" unrestrained information and abilities it ALWAYS gets abused, often in ways that lead to crime and/or death. We're not saying maybe, we're saying for sure. Does everyone here truly believe that every FBI agent is clean and isn't busy snorting cocaine while handing over information to the mob? Do you really think that there aren't CIA agents taking information from one pile and putting it in another to help out/screw a buddy? These are just people too, and as such they have all the flaws that people have and need to be never be given such powers.
In any case this situation after the WTC is an absolute disgrace: I bitched about it in other posts and I'll bitch about it again-> The US is looking for easy, knee-jerk solutions. Hey who cares that they have zero proof that these individuals were using encryption: Ban encryption (yeah pretend that the glaring galaxy sized hole in their human intelligence was just because they were thwarted by encryption). Despite the fact that at most claims of them coming "from Canada" the simple fact is that most, if not ALL, landed at US airports and went through the obviously grossly pourous US immigration checkpoints I'm hearing asshole, quick fix congressmen calling Canada a haven for terrorists! As a newspaper article today stated: "American cries for increased security at Canadian airports goes under the presumption that Canadian security is worse, a dubious presumption given recent events.". Canadian airline safety has far eclipsed US airport security for years and years yet again there was concern about letting those "lax" Canadian planes into US airspace. Unbelievable. A US baseball team complained about playing in Montreal because they wanted to know that we had "US standards" of security in place: Uh, how many times has Canada been attacked? Sorry I just had to gripe a bit, as personally I think politicians in Canada have been far too accepting of US criticism without calling them on it.
Give me a break! How about looking inwards for once?
Businesses that sell AMD machines state that the failure rate for AMD processors is approximately equal to the failure rate for Intel processors. I believe the words from the people who sell 10s or 100s of thousands of machines moreso than I believe anecdotal evident.