The fact is that the moviegoing experience is not what it once was. Mostly gone are theaters with high-vaulted ceilings, art-deco lobbies, and theater screens which could wallpaper the front of most middle-class homes and still have enough material left over to paper the half the sides and the roof. Gone also are the comfortable reclining seats, replaced instead with stadium seating rigs which are so uncomfortable I believe they were taken straight out of the coach classes of retired 737's.
The theater experience used to be something that you couldn't get at home. Going to the movies was a sense of occasion. It was a gathering place.
Take away the comfort and the sensory deprivation and the immersion to the point where a person can, for a few thousand dollars investment in a low-end theater rig, get a better general experience at home watching a DVD, and you start to see theatrical release itself become a thing of the past.
I, for one, won't mourn the death of the BBM, since most of the movies I've seen over the past decade and a half having such crazy budgets didn't impress me nearly as much as the indie films I've seen, anyway.
The RIAA... a literal monopoly were it to be technically the one company that it realistically is, and who has treated its primary product, music, with the artistry of a ham sandwich and the elegance of a bowel movement, and who also treat its consumers as a puerile mosaic of criminals and witless dupes... is quibbling about a tiered payment scheme so that they can scratch yet more profit out of a normally substandard product?
You know I live in America, ringside seats to this horseshit. Pass the flippin' popcorn.
The ones who fear government are the ones who FOUNDED this country.
The Constitution of the United States was specifically fashioned in the still-fresh memory of the abuse of absolute authority. It was crafted in such a manner which affirms the inherent distrust the Founding Fathers had of a powerful, opaque government unaccountable to the people.
Freedom is for the brave. The sacrificing of freedom for security is for craven cowards who aren't worthy to look at the flag or prosper under the protections this country provides. Freedom is a risk but a risk worth taking as the Founding Fathers well knew.
You know what you don't want to admit? That NOTHING changed after 9/11... except that the utter cowardice that so-called "mainstream" America languishes under on a daily basis was revealed.
Please let the real men, women, and children with fortitude, courage, and gratitude for those noble principles of freedom speak for themselves. If you wish to sacrifice your freedoms for your own safety that is your own business, but ours are not bought so cheaply. Benjamin Franklin, one of the illustrious statesmen who were so vital to our nascent republic had something pretty vitriolic to say about people like yourselves as others have noted, so I won't repeat that truth here.
or seems to be that everyone should want to switch to Linux. Why would this be?
If I have a working XP machine which runs great, has tons of software on it, games, productivity, you name it, virus free, spyware free, plenty of peripherals, great sound...
why would I want to?
Additionally, I know the ins-and-outs of my WinBox down to the driver, and I'm going to sacrifice all that hard won knowledge for the devil I don't know?! Come on. The problem with Linux and why it can't break MS and Mac on the desktop is that it can't offer a valid reason to do so. MS and Mac simply do things better at the present time. All the reasons offered for the switch (security, etc.) are dubious at present. If you want Linux to unseat Mac and MS, it will have to offer ease-of-use comparable to both, a decent level of organized on-demand support, and THEN SOME. There must be more than just marginal value-added in excess of Mac and MS offer to get people to switch to that which is terra incognita.
Just ask yourself the question: "Why would someone intentionally make their life more difficult just to get less out of the deal?" Is there some undercurrent of masochism in the Linux community that I wasn't previously aware of?
Frankly, thats a load of horseshit, and if you don't know why I don't think there is anything anyone could say that could change your mind on the subject. If you like MS thats fine, but Linux people as a general rule don't and with good reason.
Let's take this one step at a time.
1) If I don't know why it is a load of horseshit means that anything anyone could say on the subject wouldn't be able to change my mind, well, that too falls into a pile of equine dung. I'm sure people have reasons, but they never seem to get halfway through explaining them without expressing some level of detestation for MS or its products. Honestly, I've never been able to understand the concept of loathing when it is applied to a tool that you have a choice to use or not use. It's as though that choice is not enough. You get the feeling that nothing short of burning or burial will be enough. Of course, I will entertain any reasonable explanation of the disgust/loathing/resentment if one was provided, but to date, no one has, as yet, really given one.
2) Like MS? Not really, I just don't have much against it. I don't have much against Linux or Mac either (other than the fanboyism I've seen, but that's not a failing of the OSes and/or products). That aside, I'd really love to hear the good reasons for the rancor.
Well, not saying you're wrong, but there really are other explanations.
1) If they exist only within my mind, then you didn't read any of the top-level replies under the 3 threshold. There's enough anti-MS invective in there for a claim of groupthink.
2) If a person wanted to refute my claim, all they would need to do is mod that up. In this regard, I fully expected to be modded up.
3) Or, in the most positive regard, there are those on this board who feel as I do about the inherent stupidity of the OS wars, and those vassals who frequently volunteer for service on either side, they're just the minority these days.
The fact is, you put a post like the original up, you'd swear you were on the banks of the Amazon watching piranha feed. Of course, you can obliquely claim the incipient fairness of Slashdotters if you want all while ignoring the seemingly infinite number of hackneyed jokes and hamhanded snipes even at the mere mention of MS if you like. Denial is the Internet's favorite antidepressant.
But, I'll indulge, just a little.
Now -- according to you, the everyone was seething about drobbins leaving for MSFT. It wasn't like that, we were all disappointed that drobbins had to end up at a place where we figured he wouldn't be happy and that was it.
Well, not according to me, since what I said was a reply to someone else's insinuation. Nevertheless, I won't divest myself from your statement in this regard. I've had enough friction with the Linux faithful to know that certainly some must feel like he was a sellout. I would like to believe your assessment as you've mentioned, because, well, it's a great deal more positive, however, Billy hasn't been rendered as Locutus because the Linux or Mac community is known for its fairness where MS is concerned.
This is just the sort of reason why, when one of these little Linux/MS "updates" shows up, I just shake my head in despondency, largely because of what you mentioned, that the purists in the Linux community looked at him like a sellout. These are the same sort of "enlightened anti-groupthink" individuals who've been tearing at the buttocks of MS for years, all to the delight of Slashdotters everywhere. And people call MS users "drones"... Whatever.
The longer I read Slashdot, the more I believe there should also a picture of Linus Torvalds in a Borg headgear with maybe a green laser instead of red, right aside of good ol' Billy G. Talk about an exercise in groupthink, 90+% of Slashdotters seem to have drank the Kool-Aid where Linux is concerned.
Now you'll excuse me while I brace for the inevitable modding down into the 10th Circle of Heck to which this post will be subjected.
Computers using the magnetic chips would boot up almost instantly. The magnetic chip's memory is nonvolatile, making it impervious to power interruptions, and it retains its data when the device is switched off.
Why, are they planning on replacing the hard drive and the data bus, the two major bottlenecks in boot speed? Or do they intend a "boot once, suspend thereafter" approach, flashing the computer state to some NVMRAM?
Of course, the whole article has so many implied exclamation points it reminds me of cold fusion.
It's idiotic to think that people should just start dropping conveniences from their lives for economic reasons that are being forced on them by artificially inflated prices.
Uh, wha? You just basically said "I'm owed convenience (read luxury) and at a reasonable price". Artificially inflated or not, nobody is owed a goddamned thing in this universe, and least of all are they owed this "my poor life just got a little less bright because this new tech is too 'spensive for me. UNFAIR!"
You want to know why the RIAA and the MPAA can get away with churning out crap, make millions on it, and use the proceeds to sue every file sharing nut out there? Because people REFUSE TO STOP BUYING. This gadgeteering and constant 'content' overload has got everyone addicted to the latest what-the-hell-ever. You want to kill DRM? You want to stick it to the man? BOYCOTT until they cave. The entertainment industry banks on your addiction to keep it afloat, and only a big fat slap to their coffers is ever going to back off this silly crusade against fair use.
Also, your analogous statements regarding the junk turned out by recording industries and necessities like food and heat are either a bit demagogic, or very telling.
Let me first issue a few disclaimers (again, a very American thing to do these days)...
I am not a psychologist, historian, or in any position to verify the truth of anything I'm about to say. I approach this from the standpoint of your somewhat-more-thoughtful-than-average American who has had cause to think about this very topic, and shares your bewilderment.
Why is it that it is always the US government that seems to have been up to all this stuff since WW2 and increasingly even after the Cold War? I thought you were supposed to be the people from the land of the free and whatnot, really suspicious of government intrusion into people's lives, et cetera.
Firstly let me commend you for asking both a very astute question, and making a very astute observation. I'll answer the question first. Long about the end of WW2, we'd established (as well as our allies in Europe) a pretty dense network of covert intelligence. Since letting people know that you're watching them will cause them to scatter and hide like roaches in the light, it, by necessity, had to be covert. Very obvious, and I'm not saying anything you've not already surmised.
Now, having established a very useful infrastructure for spying on one's enemies, and now confronted with the Soviet Union's very real spy network, there was no reason to abandon all of that in the Cold War. The Cold War was a war, not for geographical conquest (although that was a side effect for the USSR) but for ideological conquest on a global scale. Put that in the context of the Red Scare, where the government (and through its rather naked propagandism) declared Communism the most direct threat to the United States. Then, add in the fact that it wasn't a shooting war, it was a technological race and (by corollary) an exercise in espionage, all of a sudden the phrase "national security" comes to the fore in the American lexicon. Clearly, then, it was inferred that the most direct threats to the "American way-of-life", however you choose to define it, were already in the US, looking to steal our secrets (and we theirs).
It is from this point that freedom began to erode. A combination of real threat and fear (from enemies in your midst, to the very real threat of nuclear exchange) permitted the government to begin justifying taking wide swaths of power and secrecy for itself under the umbrella of "national security". After all, if the enemy had, in fact, infiltrated the population, then clearly the government could not trust the people with a great deal of what was happening in this shadowy, non-transparent area of governmental concern.
Now, this is, in the context of the time, justifiable. However, once power is ceded to government, it is very difficult to revoke.
In addition, entire generations have grown up with the reality of a "free" state where there seems to be no limitation on the amount of exceptions that may be imposed upon their "inalienable rights". Having to necessarily go about the business of living in this country and having WWII securely cementing the industry of the nation with its politics, it became clear that the voter was now a growing irrelevancy. Even when the Berlin wall came down and the Iron Curtain lifted, supposedly ushering in a new era of prolonged peace in this country, there were still enemies in the form of terrorists and despots that required dealing with. So our intelligence network had become, through a long standing existence and with certain undeniable utility, a mainstay of government. As a side effect of being trained to close our eyes and think happy thoughts when someone refused to be honest with us or took away one of our "less important" freedoms in the name of national security, we also had bred a nation of people who were willing to sacrifice all of their freedoms and protections against governmental overreach just to be safe and secure in their own little delusionary realities.
If, as the site states, this is part of a larger initiative to get to Mars, then clearly the equatorial landing is a no-go precisely because we have a better understanding of what's there. Determining the presence of water at the poles is going to be necessary for any attempts at permanent or semi-permanent basing at the moon (which will most likely be necessary to make a Mars launch feasible). Thus, it is imperative we do a little legwork up front to determine the best location for a base.
It may turn out that the abundance of mineral resources, used as part of the argument for an equatorial landing, is homogeneous across the whole of the lunar regolith and below (if modern theories of lunar formation are correct, this is quite likely).
But if there is water at the poles and equal abundance of minerals, this is just the sort of necessary information that an equatorial landing will not reveal.
Of course, I'm no NASA scientist. Then again, I don't use metric and imperial measure together without appropriate conversions, so they have more experience losing things and crashing things into other things than I do.
Maturity-n.- muh-CHUR-i-TEE (someone's going to have to tell me where to find the schwa character)
1. The state of being where a person derives a sense of realism and perspective where there was little or none previously.
2. The condition of being as in 1. with the corollary realization of one's previous lack in this regard and a desire to assume the responsibilities associated with that realization.
You know, I've read a few of the posts and I am relatively amused. Most of the people who have stated a knowledge of their own immaturity would be shocked to hear that this realization is a mark thereof.
It's the ones who think they've got it all figured out who are usually the most immature.
One thing that maturity has taught me is what a completely immature person I was when I was younger and thought I was mature. Seems like an ongoing process.
The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
Well, clearly then, we must all take metal shop and refuse to wear goggles.
Why, you may ask?
Well, it seems that you can't get an MRI if you have any metal in your head, and the most common restriction is metal workers with minute metal flakes that get caught in your orbits (eye sockets). As it turns out, the massive magnetic fields can cause these otherwise innocuous bits of metal to shift, vibrate, and ultimately lacerate or puncture the eye, resulting in impaired vision or blindness.
I had an MRI was and they were very adamant about me being SURE that I had no metals, insisting that I get a head X-ray just to be certain.
Welding or grinding, anyone?
The BBC is reporting that more than half of Britons do not believe in evolution, with a further 40% advocating that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science classes
This isn't the first time I've heard this particular turn of phrase where evolution is presented as an article of faith.
Of course, this kind of rhetoric supports the evolutionists in what they've been saying all along as to why ID and evolution don't belong in the same classroom. This is, of course, the simple fact that ID requires belief, as it is religion in secular clothing. That half or most or all of any group of people don't believe in evolution is immaterial, because neither do the scientists and individuals who support it as good, reasonable science! Science doesn't require belief nor does the underlying truth change simply because it isn't of majority acceptance!
To qualify as science, a conjecture must only subject its assertions to inquiry and attempts at proof or disproof. Evolution does this, and as such qualifies as science, and deserves to be taught as science in a science classroom.
Now here's the quandary:
If ID isn't science, and its own adherents don't call it religion (and as such probably couldn't be taught as philosophy, either), exactly what classroom could house this? Inane Conjectures 101?
I mean, really, if a company wants me to reveal my surfing habits, technically speaking, that's private information I control. If they want it, why do they get to get it for free? I mean, that's "my product", right? Why shouldn't you be able to charge for that information?
Personally, I don't care if some wonky ad-dweller wants my surfing habits, but why should the revenue stream go in one direction only?
My concerns involve the most recent major "security" issue, that being Sony's rootkit debacle. Having recently been subject to a malicious rootkit on my home machine, and having seen the fallout caused by Sony's "legitimate" use of Windows architecture to "hide" its DRM rootkit from even administrative level users, I wonder the following:
If the most devastating forms of attacks (rootkits, malicious keyloggers, password stealers) can hide from even experienced users and cannot be revealed without the use of home-rolled utilities created by the users themselves or white-hat coders, how does Microsoft reconcile the fact that this ability to patch the Windows API exists through the very design of Windows itself with its commitment to security?
Even Sony, a legitimate interest, can't seem to resist the temptation of invading the user's equipment in the protections of its own interests. Sony seems to believe that it is perfectly OK to turn one's PC into a 'tattletale' with the very design of Windows, and this is a legitimate company with a long standing history of trust!
How can Microsoft stand by its statement of protecting user's privacy from malicious interloping if it provides and maintains the means for even legitimate companies to hide stealth, information-divulgent, privacy-invading software on users' machines knowing full well that black-hat coders use this avenue of weakness all the time?
While I see your point that this is an informal forum and, as such, probably doesn't deserve highly focused editorial intervention with regard to grammar and spelling, there is a limit.
I, for one, find poorly written articles (at least with regard to copious misspellings and grammatical errors) actually pretty tiring to read. You want to understand what the author is trying to convey, not spend your time tripping over the grammatical and lexicographic speed bumps he/she is unintentionally putting in your way. Of course, I don't expect you or anyone else at Slashdot to be responsible for correcting it.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is that the moviegoing experience is not what it once was. Mostly gone are theaters with high-vaulted ceilings, art-deco lobbies, and theater screens which could wallpaper the front of most middle-class homes and still have enough material left over to paper the half the sides and the roof. Gone also are the comfortable reclining seats, replaced instead with stadium seating rigs which are so uncomfortable I believe they were taken straight out of the coach classes of retired 737's.
The theater experience used to be something that you couldn't get at home. Going to the movies was a sense of occasion. It was a gathering place.
Take away the comfort and the sensory deprivation and the immersion to the point where a person can, for a few thousand dollars investment in a low-end theater rig, get a better general experience at home watching a DVD, and you start to see theatrical release itself become a thing of the past.
I, for one, won't mourn the death of the BBM, since most of the movies I've seen over the past decade and a half having such crazy budgets didn't impress me nearly as much as the indie films I've seen, anyway.
The RIAA... a literal monopoly were it to be technically the one company that it realistically is, and who has treated its primary product, music, with the artistry of a ham sandwich and the elegance of a bowel movement, and who also treat its consumers as a puerile mosaic of criminals and witless dupes... is quibbling about a tiered payment scheme so that they can scratch yet more profit out of a normally substandard product?
You know I live in America, ringside seats to this horseshit. Pass the flippin' popcorn.
It's just you. ;)
The ones who fear government are the ones who FOUNDED this country.
The Constitution of the United States was specifically fashioned in the still-fresh memory of the abuse of absolute authority. It was crafted in such a manner which affirms the inherent distrust the Founding Fathers had of a powerful, opaque government unaccountable to the people.
Freedom is for the brave. The sacrificing of freedom for security is for craven cowards who aren't worthy to look at the flag or prosper under the protections this country provides. Freedom is a risk but a risk worth taking as the Founding Fathers well knew.
You know what you don't want to admit? That NOTHING changed after 9/11... except that the utter cowardice that so-called "mainstream" America languishes under on a daily basis was revealed.
Please let the real men, women, and children with fortitude, courage, and gratitude for those noble principles of freedom speak for themselves. If you wish to sacrifice your freedoms for your own safety that is your own business, but ours are not bought so cheaply. Benjamin Franklin, one of the illustrious statesmen who were so vital to our nascent republic had something pretty vitriolic to say about people like yourselves as others have noted, so I won't repeat that truth here.
or seems to be that everyone should want to switch to Linux. Why would this be?
If I have a working XP machine which runs great, has tons of software on it, games, productivity, you name it, virus free, spyware free, plenty of peripherals, great sound...
why would I want to?
Additionally, I know the ins-and-outs of my WinBox down to the driver, and I'm going to sacrifice all that hard won knowledge for the devil I don't know?! Come on. The problem with Linux and why it can't break MS and Mac on the desktop is that it can't offer a valid reason to do so. MS and Mac simply do things better at the present time. All the reasons offered for the switch (security, etc.) are dubious at present. If you want Linux to unseat Mac and MS, it will have to offer ease-of-use comparable to both, a decent level of organized on-demand support, and THEN SOME. There must be more than just marginal value-added in excess of Mac and MS offer to get people to switch to that which is terra incognita.
Just ask yourself the question: "Why would someone intentionally make their life more difficult just to get less out of the deal?" Is there some undercurrent of masochism in the Linux community that I wasn't previously aware of?
Frankly, thats a load of horseshit, and if you don't know why I don't think there is anything anyone could say that could change your mind on the subject. If you like MS thats fine, but Linux people as a general rule don't and with good reason.
Let's take this one step at a time.
1) If I don't know why it is a load of horseshit means that anything anyone could say on the subject wouldn't be able to change my mind, well, that too falls into a pile of equine dung. I'm sure people have reasons, but they never seem to get halfway through explaining them without expressing some level of detestation for MS or its products. Honestly, I've never been able to understand the concept of loathing when it is applied to a tool that you have a choice to use or not use. It's as though that choice is not enough. You get the feeling that nothing short of burning or burial will be enough. Of course, I will entertain any reasonable explanation of the disgust/loathing/resentment if one was provided, but to date, no one has, as yet, really given one.
2) Like MS? Not really, I just don't have much against it. I don't have much against Linux or Mac either (other than the fanboyism I've seen, but that's not a failing of the OSes and/or products). That aside, I'd really love to hear the good reasons for the rancor.
Well, not saying you're wrong, but there really are other explanations.
1) If they exist only within my mind, then you didn't read any of the top-level replies under the 3 threshold. There's enough anti-MS invective in there for a claim of groupthink.
2) If a person wanted to refute my claim, all they would need to do is mod that up. In this regard, I fully expected to be modded up.
3) Or, in the most positive regard, there are those on this board who feel as I do about the inherent stupidity of the OS wars, and those vassals who frequently volunteer for service on either side, they're just the minority these days.
The fact is, you put a post like the original up, you'd swear you were on the banks of the Amazon watching piranha feed. Of course, you can obliquely claim the incipient fairness of Slashdotters if you want all while ignoring the seemingly infinite number of hackneyed jokes and hamhanded snipes even at the mere mention of MS if you like. Denial is the Internet's favorite antidepressant.
But, I'll indulge, just a little. Now -- according to you, the everyone was seething about drobbins leaving for MSFT. It wasn't like that, we were all disappointed that drobbins had to end up at a place where we figured he wouldn't be happy and that was it.
Well, not according to me, since what I said was a reply to someone else's insinuation. Nevertheless, I won't divest myself from your statement in this regard. I've had enough friction with the Linux faithful to know that certainly some must feel like he was a sellout. I would like to believe your assessment as you've mentioned, because, well, it's a great deal more positive, however, Billy hasn't been rendered as Locutus because the Linux or Mac community is known for its fairness where MS is concerned.
This is just the sort of reason why, when one of these little Linux/MS "updates" shows up, I just shake my head in despondency, largely because of what you mentioned, that the purists in the Linux community looked at him like a sellout. These are the same sort of "enlightened anti-groupthink" individuals who've been tearing at the buttocks of MS for years, all to the delight of Slashdotters everywhere. And people call MS users "drones"... Whatever.
The longer I read Slashdot, the more I believe there should also a picture of Linus Torvalds in a Borg headgear with maybe a green laser instead of red, right aside of good ol' Billy G. Talk about an exercise in groupthink, 90+% of Slashdotters seem to have drank the Kool-Aid where Linux is concerned.
Now you'll excuse me while I brace for the inevitable modding down into the 10th Circle of Heck to which this post will be subjected.
Computers using the magnetic chips would boot up almost instantly. The magnetic chip's memory is nonvolatile, making it impervious to power interruptions, and it retains its data when the device is switched off.
Why, are they planning on replacing the hard drive and the data bus, the two major bottlenecks in boot speed? Or do they intend a "boot once, suspend thereafter" approach, flashing the computer state to some NVMRAM?
Of course, the whole article has so many implied exclamation points it reminds me of cold fusion.
It's idiotic to think that people should just start dropping conveniences from their lives for economic reasons that are being forced on them by artificially inflated prices.
Uh, wha? You just basically said "I'm owed convenience (read luxury) and at a reasonable price". Artificially inflated or not, nobody is owed a goddamned thing in this universe, and least of all are they owed this "my poor life just got a little less bright because this new tech is too 'spensive for me. UNFAIR!" You want to know why the RIAA and the MPAA can get away with churning out crap, make millions on it, and use the proceeds to sue every file sharing nut out there? Because people REFUSE TO STOP BUYING. This gadgeteering and constant 'content' overload has got everyone addicted to the latest what-the-hell-ever. You want to kill DRM? You want to stick it to the man? BOYCOTT until they cave. The entertainment industry banks on your addiction to keep it afloat, and only a big fat slap to their coffers is ever going to back off this silly crusade against fair use. Also, your analogous statements regarding the junk turned out by recording industries and necessities like food and heat are either a bit demagogic, or very telling.
Multitasking PsychologyBot Mark IV... (OS Ver 6.92)...
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RUN
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Author of website was excommunicated from the Church of the Subgenius for getting his bulldada all over Bob Dobbs.
But I'm going to venture a guess anyway.
Let me first issue a few disclaimers (again, a very American thing to do these days)...
I am not a psychologist, historian, or in any position to verify the truth of anything I'm about to say. I approach this from the standpoint of your somewhat-more-thoughtful-than-average American who has had cause to think about this very topic, and shares your bewilderment.
Why is it that it is always the US government that seems to have been up to all this stuff since WW2 and increasingly even after the Cold War? I thought you were supposed to be the people from the land of the free and whatnot, really suspicious of government intrusion into people's lives, et cetera.
Firstly let me commend you for asking both a very astute question, and making a very astute observation. I'll answer the question first. Long about the end of WW2, we'd established (as well as our allies in Europe) a pretty dense network of covert intelligence. Since letting people know that you're watching them will cause them to scatter and hide like roaches in the light, it, by necessity, had to be covert. Very obvious, and I'm not saying anything you've not already surmised.
Now, having established a very useful infrastructure for spying on one's enemies, and now confronted with the Soviet Union's very real spy network, there was no reason to abandon all of that in the Cold War. The Cold War was a war, not for geographical conquest (although that was a side effect for the USSR) but for ideological conquest on a global scale. Put that in the context of the Red Scare, where the government (and through its rather naked propagandism) declared Communism the most direct threat to the United States. Then, add in the fact that it wasn't a shooting war, it was a technological race and (by corollary) an exercise in espionage, all of a sudden the phrase "national security" comes to the fore in the American lexicon. Clearly, then, it was inferred that the most direct threats to the "American way-of-life", however you choose to define it, were already in the US, looking to steal our secrets (and we theirs).
It is from this point that freedom began to erode. A combination of real threat and fear (from enemies in your midst, to the very real threat of nuclear exchange) permitted the government to begin justifying taking wide swaths of power and secrecy for itself under the umbrella of "national security". After all, if the enemy had, in fact, infiltrated the population, then clearly the government could not trust the people with a great deal of what was happening in this shadowy, non-transparent area of governmental concern.
Now, this is, in the context of the time, justifiable. However, once power is ceded to government, it is very difficult to revoke.
In addition, entire generations have grown up with the reality of a "free" state where there seems to be no limitation on the amount of exceptions that may be imposed upon their "inalienable rights". Having to necessarily go about the business of living in this country and having WWII securely cementing the industry of the nation with its politics, it became clear that the voter was now a growing irrelevancy. Even when the Berlin wall came down and the Iron Curtain lifted, supposedly ushering in a new era of prolonged peace in this country, there were still enemies in the form of terrorists and despots that required dealing with. So our intelligence network had become, through a long standing existence and with certain undeniable utility, a mainstay of government. As a side effect of being trained to close our eyes and think happy thoughts when someone refused to be honest with us or took away one of our "less important" freedoms in the name of national security, we also had bred a nation of people who were willing to sacrifice all of their freedoms and protections against governmental overreach just to be safe and secure in their own little delusionary realities.
Now, let's thi
We're better off with a pill than hoping beyond hope that the glorified animals that are "we" do the constructive and logical thing.
If, as the site states, this is part of a larger initiative to get to Mars, then clearly the equatorial landing is a no-go precisely because we have a better understanding of what's there. Determining the presence of water at the poles is going to be necessary for any attempts at permanent or semi-permanent basing at the moon (which will most likely be necessary to make a Mars launch feasible). Thus, it is imperative we do a little legwork up front to determine the best location for a base.
It may turn out that the abundance of mineral resources, used as part of the argument for an equatorial landing, is homogeneous across the whole of the lunar regolith and below (if modern theories of lunar formation are correct, this is quite likely).
But if there is water at the poles and equal abundance of minerals, this is just the sort of necessary information that an equatorial landing will not reveal.
Of course, I'm no NASA scientist. Then again, I don't use metric and imperial measure together without appropriate conversions, so they have more experience losing things and crashing things into other things than I do.
Maturity -n.- muh-CHUR-i-TEE (someone's going to have to tell me where to find the schwa character)
1. The state of being where a person derives a sense of realism and perspective where there was little or none previously.
2. The condition of being as in 1. with the corollary realization of one's previous lack in this regard and a desire to assume the responsibilities associated with that realization.
You know, I've read a few of the posts and I am relatively amused. Most of the people who have stated a knowledge of their own immaturity would be shocked to hear that this realization is a mark thereof.
It's the ones who think they've got it all figured out who are usually the most immature.
One thing that maturity has taught me is what a completely immature person I was when I was younger and thought I was mature. Seems like an ongoing process.
The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
*BEEP* *BOP* *BOOP* CHICKACHICKACHICKA *ZIP* *BOOP*
Readout:
We write software! NOT YOU!
No matter which card I buy, the better one will always be the OTHER one. :(
Well, clearly then, we must all take metal shop and refuse to wear goggles. Why, you may ask? Well, it seems that you can't get an MRI if you have any metal in your head, and the most common restriction is metal workers with minute metal flakes that get caught in your orbits (eye sockets). As it turns out, the massive magnetic fields can cause these otherwise innocuous bits of metal to shift, vibrate, and ultimately lacerate or puncture the eye, resulting in impaired vision or blindness. I had an MRI was and they were very adamant about me being SURE that I had no metals, insisting that I get a head X-ray just to be certain. Welding or grinding, anyone?
The BBC is reporting that more than half of Britons do not believe in evolution, with a further 40% advocating that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science classes
This isn't the first time I've heard this particular turn of phrase where evolution is presented as an article of faith.
Of course, this kind of rhetoric supports the evolutionists in what they've been saying all along as to why ID and evolution don't belong in the same classroom. This is, of course, the simple fact that ID requires belief, as it is religion in secular clothing. That half or most or all of any group of people don't believe in evolution is immaterial, because neither do the scientists and individuals who support it as good, reasonable science! Science doesn't require belief nor does the underlying truth change simply because it isn't of majority acceptance!
To qualify as science, a conjecture must only subject its assertions to inquiry and attempts at proof or disproof. Evolution does this, and as such qualifies as science, and deserves to be taught as science in a science classroom.
Now here's the quandary:
If ID isn't science, and its own adherents don't call it religion (and as such probably couldn't be taught as philosophy, either), exactly what classroom could house this? Inane Conjectures 101?
I mean, really, if a company wants me to reveal my surfing habits, technically speaking, that's private information I control. If they want it, why do they get to get it for free? I mean, that's "my product", right? Why shouldn't you be able to charge for that information?
Personally, I don't care if some wonky ad-dweller wants my surfing habits, but why should the revenue stream go in one direction only?
Hmmm... (this is the sound of one plan hatching)
99.999999% uptime is an unreasonable expectation for any service. Funny how the Internet is expected to be though.
Sounds like an addiction to me...
I think we need an intervention.
Mr. Nash,
My concerns involve the most recent major "security" issue, that being Sony's rootkit debacle. Having recently been subject to a malicious rootkit on my home machine, and having seen the fallout caused by Sony's "legitimate" use of Windows architecture to "hide" its DRM rootkit from even administrative level users, I wonder the following:
If the most devastating forms of attacks (rootkits, malicious keyloggers, password stealers) can hide from even experienced users and cannot be revealed without the use of home-rolled utilities created by the users themselves or white-hat coders, how does Microsoft reconcile the fact that this ability to patch the Windows API exists through the very design of Windows itself with its commitment to security?
Even Sony, a legitimate interest, can't seem to resist the temptation of invading the user's equipment in the protections of its own interests. Sony seems to believe that it is perfectly OK to turn one's PC into a 'tattletale' with the very design of Windows, and this is a legitimate company with a long standing history of trust!
How can Microsoft stand by its statement of protecting user's privacy from malicious interloping if it provides and maintains the means for even legitimate companies to hide stealth, information-divulgent, privacy-invading software on users' machines knowing full well that black-hat coders use this avenue of weakness all the time?
While I see your point that this is an informal forum and, as such, probably doesn't deserve highly focused editorial intervention with regard to grammar and spelling, there is a limit.
I, for one, find poorly written articles (at least with regard to copious misspellings and grammatical errors) actually pretty tiring to read. You want to understand what the author is trying to convey, not spend your time tripping over the grammatical and lexicographic speed bumps he/she is unintentionally putting in your way. Of course, I don't expect you or anyone else at Slashdot to be responsible for correcting it.