> Just out of curiosity, have you ever personally tried to subdue a large angry person who doesn't want you to subdue him? Have you ever held someone down while trying to put handcuffs on them as they put up a fight and grab at your leg, right next to where you keep your metal baton and your sidearm?
As a matter of fact, my Army-vet buddy is a former LAPD cop who frequently had to subdue and apprehend suspects. He learned grappling techniques and submission holds from Bob Koga, and made it a point to *never* use violence when carefully applied force would do the job. As Mr. Koga himself explained, "If you have to beat up the suspect to arrest him, you've already lost control of the situation. Besides, why knock yourself out when you can use these techniques with much less effort?"
The basic problem with police situations is that the emotions and adrenaline run so high that it's easy for the cops to get carried away. However, the cops *can't* afford to get carried away because it interferes with their judgement, which means they can no longer do their job in a professional manner. As my friend often puts it, a cop has to be able to "step outside of himself" and view the situation as though he were someone else, otherwise his mind will be clouded with too much emotion.
Too few of his fellow officers understood and practiced this, however. Typically when they brought a violent, struggling suspect into the station, the cops were all sweaty and out of breath from trying to subdue and handcuff the guy. If my friend was in the station at the time and saw them come in, he'd shake his head and yell, "You dumb sons of bitches, don't you know how to arrest someone without wearing yourselves out?"
Then he'd take over and haul the suspect to holding -- and demonstrate to the other cops how it's done. If the suspect tried anything, my friend would simply apply a finger lock, an arm lock, or a pain grip to keep the suspect under control. And if the suspect was *really* uncooperative... he'd discover just how fast a strangulation hold worked (unlike a choke hold, which cuts off the air, a strangle hold cuts off the blood supply; when properly done, the victim goes unconscious within seconds). All of this my friend would do without breaking a sweat!
> Which professional manner where you thinking about, exactly? A comic-book style magic net-thrower with immobilizing sneeze powder? Or perhaps you were thinking of just politely asking the career criminal to step into your police cruiser, all professional-like? Or perhaps you were thinking that after you've put your hands on the bad guy who is refusing arrest, that he'd say... "Ah! You got me. My career in repeat crimes is at an end, and I'll just come along with you polite, professional men, now."
Ahem...I believe this thread was about the police, not the samurai -- so go and put away your strawman.
>> But that doesn't mean anyone in a uniform deserves jack shit from you. > > The only way that sentiment makes any sense is if most police officers and soldiers were crazy, sadistic, power-abusing jerks. That isn't the case, and it's really quite the opposite. The uniform can be abused by the rare few, just like the liberties and responsibilities of being a citizen are abused by, well, rather a lot of people.
My Army vet buddy (who served in both Korea and 'Nam) is also an ex-cop from the LAPD, and he holds a double master's degree in criminal justice and administration. Now he's a private investigator who specializes in cases involving "police misconduct" -- and he is downright brutal when it comes to going after the cops.
Why is my friend, a former police officer, so keen on investigating police wrongdoing? Because he knows how they work and how they think -- and when police commit acts of deception and unjustifiable violence *they betray the public trust*. Furthermore, the betrayal isn't limitted to the cops who commit those acts, it's also done by the cops who cover up for and refuse to speak out against those acts. As my friend himself puts it, it's not just the guy who did the dirty deed that's at fault, it's also the other guy who knew of the dirty deed AND DID NOTHING ABOUT IT. (Ever heard of the "Blue Wall of Silence"?)
Moreover, police departments across the country are infamous for "circling the wagons" against any accusation or criticism against its members -- the LAPD merely being an especially notorious example. So, if the law-enforcement system repeatedly "malfunctions" as it were, fails to correct itself and resists all outside attempts to improve the system, how can it be deserving of *anyone's* respect? If you had a computer system that thrashed your data as often as our law-enforcement system thrashes our people, and it stubbornly refused to let anyone fix it, would you trust it? Would you even go near it?
> Ugh... I just had a bit of a debate on this subject with a female friend who works in a university library in my city. > > She maintained that schools teaching kids to "do research on the Internet" does them little good, and it's a farce that it's even called "research". She had an obvious bias towards printed books as superior media.
Very good post. It sounds like your friend is a "treeware" bigot -- the kind who gets extremely annoyed at software packages that no longer include one or more pounds of slaughtered, pulped, and mashed trees.
There's an old saying: "Bigots are like mountains...they will always be there." I dealt with more than a few "vinyl" bigots back when compact disc was gaining popularity over LPs and cassettes. One such bigot was particularly obnoxious about how CDs could never compare to a vinyl record played on top-notch phonograph equipment (never mind that the sticker shock might kill you first).
I listened to him argue his case, then asked, "So, have you ever needed to replace the needle on your record player?"
"Yes, every now and then."
"How much does the needle on a precision player cost?"
"Whew, enough to buy dinner at a fancy restaurant, maybe two."
"Okay...You know, I've sold quite a few CD players here" (this was at the Radio Shack I worked part-time at during my college years) "and I've yet to hear *anyone* complain or ask about having to replace a worn-out laser lens on their CD player."
That kind of pulled the rug out from under him....;-)
This is like trying to dig up a small tree or a bush [pun intended] -- you think there isn't much to dig up, but as you excavate you keep finding more and more roots entwined under the ground.
So to recap: we have the telco industry handing over *all* our phone call logs to the NSA, and the FBI is involved in a wireless LAN snooping program. You have to wonder what the hell we're going to find out next about the US government intelligence / law enforcement community.
"Come on, man -- I mean, *look* at this shit! It isn't a question of whether or not you're paranoid; it's a question of whether or not you're paranoid ENOUGH." -- from the movie _Strange_Days_
> So the number of problems increases in line with the number of users ? Who'da thunk it ?
Actually, we (or now "they") typically didn't sell Windows systems to complete newbies, so we weren't significantly increasing the Micro$oft user base. The majority of our clientele were repeat customers, and usually when we sold Windows it was either an upgrade version being installed on the customer's current machine or a fresh OEM install on a new system meant to replace an older (retired) PC.
Basically, the initial user base for a new Windows version had to play catch-up with the previous, well-established user base for previous versions, and even early on we had the technical complaints and irate customers coming in about how the new Windows installations were fucking shit up more frequently and severely. *That* doesn't indicate to me a natural, unavoidable proportion of [no. of Windows problems] vs. [no. of Windows users] -- it points out a worsening of software design and quality control.
The tragically ridiculous part is that Windows has flaws in it that are not merely intolerable, they're easily avoidable -- if only M$ would have pulled their heads out of their asses:
Remember how Win98 kept screwing up and crashing on its users? Or how M$ kept insisting that Internet Explorer was integrated and unremovable from Win98 because it worked better that way?
Wrong and WRONG!
The presence of an integerated IE compromised the stability of the OS, and removing IE is both possible (hilariously so) and *preferrable* -- it improves Windows' reliability and (big fucking surprise!) eliminates problems with installing Netscape. Hell, if you were nervous about the idea of hacking IE out of Win98, you could make backups of explorer.exe, shell32.dll and comdlg32.dll before running a test trial -- if you didn't like the results, just restore the backups. For ultimate convenience, you could download the free IEradicator utility and perform a complete, automated and PERMANENT removal of IE -- in your face, Gates!
What it comes down to is that Windows is, as IBM engineers sarcastically coined the phrase decades ago, "broken as designed." The whole tentacles-throughout-the-system strategy violates one of the fundamental principles of structured programming -- modular design. You know, Divide And Conquer? Isolate software sections, isolate software bugs? As opposed to "spaghetti code"? The "crawling horror" effect? Hell, the whole Vista debacle is now a case study in "critical mass" -- M$ had (has) to keep delaying its release and cutting out initally planned features to keep the damned monstrosity from choking on its own complexity.
> I appreciate that MS rushed production to get it out a year earlier than the other systems, as I was jonesing for a new system. I also appreciate that this rush is what produced the defective hardware.
So, in other words, Micro$oft is at it again: they rush a product through production, get it to market before it's ready, and -- what a surprise! -- it's got nasty bugs in it. Summary: M$ fucks things up some more.
> Although the delay in compensation for repairs denotes a greedy attitude on the part of MS, I am not surprised.
At this point, I'd be amazed if *anyone* was surprised.
> Corporations do not exist to serve the public good, and if you find this objectionable, then please avail yourself of a microeconomics textbook. You can't expect good intentions from corporations (and from people in general). You should be satisfied that they do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.
Translation: what the corporations offer the public is all they deserve, and if they don't like it they can go fuck themselves. Wonder if this 'primeval_badger' character is a Republican or a Libertarian -- what's his view on public oversight or government regulation of business? That should be good for a cheap laugh....
> Having worked for several years, I understand how difficult it is to design products, let alone systems.
Then you understand the importance of "defensive design" and "quality control", right? Because M$ apparently doesn't, seeing that they repeatedly and consistently release products that are Not Ready For Prime Time. Hell, it's no wonder my first software engineering professor got so pissed off at fuckheads like this, for creating sloppy design and shoddy quality, that it made him "want to get a baseball bat and start bashing in heads."
> Put another way, would you rather wait an extra year for a rock-solid 360, or get one a year earlier, which will probably work fine
-- unless the power supply unit undergoes a meltdown, explodes and sets fire to the carpet, which burns down the house and potentially nearby houses as well. Think I'm being over the top? Remember that little fuss a short while ago over laptop batteries? You know...over some of them EXPLODING?
But hey, what's a few exploding laptops, right? I mean, the user escaped with only minor burns and a ruined LCD monitor (other than the laptop screen itself), plus the firefighters came in time, so he should count himself lucky! Hell, he's even got backups of his data, so he should be *satisfied* that things turned out the way they did!!/end sarcasm/
> MS is a decent corporation with decent products.
Ahem... You seem to have contradicted your earlier statement about the nature of corporate business. More importantly, it flies in the face of the public record:
> Don't criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.
You forgot to add, "or unless you can outdo him."
Remember Bill Gates' infamous letter to the Homebrew Computer Club? The one in which he said to the club that "most of you steal your software"? What he neglected to mention in that letter was:
- Altair BASIC was released way behind schedule (dude, talk about foreshadowing!) - Many Altair computer users had paid in advance for pre-ordered copies of Altair BASIC, yet had never received it -
> it seems that when companies get 'so' big, there seems to be warping of reality for them. i would bet there are some people at microsoft that were very unhappy to admit to this.
Good point, though I would rephrase it as "when egos get too big, there seems to be a warping of reality for them." The first Macintosh team at Apple discovered this when dealing with Steve Jobs, and adopted a Star Trek term to describe this confounding phenomenon:
> I just had a clent ask about alternatives to WinME (she did not want to pay for XP just to check here email and browse the internet). Her PC (Dell Demension 8200) had ME preinstalled, she had deleted the restore partition somehow thinking it would give her more HDD space, but could not figure out what happened to the storage space she had started with. (yes, it WAS that infested!)
Windows ME really is a fucking piece of shit. For a few years I worked at an independent PC service and sales outlet that was a licensed Microsoft dealer, and we noticed that the frequency and severity of Windows problems were on the rise as Microsoft introduced Win98 (as if Win95 wasn't bad enough) and later Win2K and WinME. My own sister tried upgrading from Win98 to WinME, and the results were so bad that she gave away her copy of WinME to me. (I even tried installing it on a testbench hard drive, just to see what it was like. Yes, it's that bad!)
One of the things that really stands out in my mind is a phone call I got from a customer who was extremely frustrated with the performance and reliability of his PC. It seemed that, with each Windows upgrade he installed, the system kept getting worse and worse. Though I don't have a record of the phone call, this is the general thread of that conversation:
[customer] "Why is it that every time I upgrade my Windows, my computer keeps slowing down and freezing up more?!"
[me] "Well, I'll try my best to figure it out, though I can't guarantee an accurate diagnosis over the phone. Does your system pass the minimum requirements for your current Windows version?"
[customer] "Yes, goddammit!"
[me] "Now, hold on, sir, I'm trying to figure this out for you. If your system just *meets* the minimum requirements for Windows, that's not enough. Those are the bare minimum requirements just to make Windows run at all. You have to *pass* those minimum requirements to make Windows run well."
[customer] "Well, why don't they come out and TELL you that??"
[me] "Well, part of the problem is that Microsoft doesn't know how much work your computer is expected to do, because that can change what your system specs *should* be. But the other part is that Microsoft isn't being completely honest. It's like the mileage ratings on a car: those are the *best possible mileages* you can get on that vehicle, while in real life you'd almost never get mileage as good. That's why they say, 'your mileage may vary.' It even says as much on the package for Windows -- 'your system requirements may be higher depending on the applications you intend to run on your system.' My rule of thumb is that your system should have *double* what the minimum requirements are, and that more is even better. Unfortunately, every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows, they keep upping the minimum requirements."
[customer] "But why the hell do they DO that?!"
[me] "Well, there's more than one reason. You see, Microsoft likes to keep adding more features to Windows, so each new version can do more than the last one. But when they do that, they make Windows bigger and the workload heavier. It's like a trailer dealer that only offers bigger and heavier trailers when they come out with newer models. You may only need a small and lightweight trailer, but the dealer won't have one to sell you. And if all you have is a small pickup truck, that makes it run slower and more prone to overloading.
"The other reason, however, is more insidious. Microsoft is in cahoots with Intel, and Intel wants people to upgrade their older systems to boost their processor sales. So, when Microsoft jacks up the workload for the new Windows, that gives customers one more reason to upgrade their Intel processors, which makes Intel happy. Of course, AMD and other hardware companies benefit from this, too."
[customer] "..." (I could almost hear him seething.) "Tell me, what's with this new, free operating system I've been hearing about lately?"
Exactly! I remember the uncomfortable feeling I had when I sat in high school economics and heard the teacher lecture the class on the "creation of wealth". It was the exact same feeling I got when I sat in Sunday School while the teacher told us such things as "agape [Godly] love is far greater than carnal [animal] love" -- the feeling that an idea was, as my first software engineering professor would have called it, "highly suspect".
This whole idea of "creating wealth" seems to run counter to one of the most simple yet important folk sayings I've heard: "The money you spend on one thing is money you can't spend on any other thing." (Yes, I know it's possible to returned purchased goods for a refund, but even then there's a limitted return period -- and you may be charged a "restocking fee".) If we generalize the idea, we can say that "the resources you spend one one thing are resources you cannot spend on any other thing."
Now, *that* concept fits nicely with the basic physics principle that energy and matter cannot be created, only converted from one form to the other. Furthermore, if we presume that the universe began in a Big Bang and will eventually collapse in a Big Crunch, then time itself can be seen as a finite resource, one that must be spent carefully. (Heck, don't business people already believe that?)
So, if we view economics from the standpoint of physics / engineering / system theory, then an economy is a distribution system for delivering resources (goods and services) to all the different parts of the system, much as the blood circulation system in our bodies delivers consumable materials and non-consumable benefits (the immune system antibodies and phages are not meant to be consumed, yet provide a vital service to the body).
If we presume that the body is a closed system, then the body's total supply of resources at any given time is finite, and therefore an increase in a subsystem's demand for resources will result in a decrease in available resources for all other subsystems. (Think of what happens to you after eating a large, heavy meal: your digestive system needs so much blood to process the massive influx of food that you feel tired, lethargic, and barely have the energy to get up and plop yourself down in front of the TV / computer / whatever.)
Of course, in real life the body is not perfectly isolated from the outside world. However, in order to acquire the outside resources we need we must spend some of the resources we already have (energy, time, etc.) -- plus there is the chance that we not succeed, or will end up being injured or killed in the attempt (risk vs. gain). There is also the danger of being *too* successful, in which case we can become so bloated, so massively overgrown with resources (morbidly obese) that we will be easily outmaneuvered by smaller, more agile entities.
Then again, I'm no economist, so what the fuck do I know?
> You failed geography, right? Most of California and New York are above sea level, way above the 10 to 15 feet the sea level is expected to rise over the next century.
While it's true that most of the land in Calfornia and New York State is above sea level, don't forget that much of the *population* is concentrated at or very close to the coastline. New York City, in particular, would be FUCKED by a rise in sea level, and other cities like San Francisco would also be in trouble (remember, the sea has tides). Even if most of California and New York remain above water, it would still be a tragic loss -- otherwise one could argue that the devastation of New Orleans was only a "minor" loss compared to the relative safety of Louisiana.
> Now Virginia Beach, Virginia, home of Pat Robertson, GONE. And not a moment too soon.
If I was still a church-goin' Christian, I'd say, "Amen to that, brother.";)
> Or we had military commanders willing to claim basically, "nah, I never shot a civillian. It was my soldiers that shot and raped civillians. I was just standing there and watching them." And again, society decided that it doesn't work that way. If they're your subordinates, you're responsible for them. It's your duty to stop them if they do something evil.
Exactly -- and it's the commander's responsibility to answer for whatever crimes and outrages his underlings succeed in committing. As my Army vet buddy, a retired master drill sergeant, pointed out repeatedly, "You can delegate authority, but you CANNOT delegate responsibility." Or as former president Harry Truman famously indicated with a sign placed on his Oval Office desk, "The Buck Stops Here."
Sadly, any equivalent sign on the current president's desk in the White House would have to read, "Being President Is Hard: On Vacation" -- given that he has failed to own up to *any* of his mistakes and has devoted more of his time to relaxing on personal vacations than any other US president in history.
>> I'm pretty sure IBM actually licensed Win3.1 from Microsoft for that. > > I'm *positive* they had a licence for Win 3.x.
I remember seeing at Radio Shack the first IBM Aptiva systems arrive with both OS/2 Warp *and* Windows 3.1 installed, and both ran concurrently! Mind you, the Windows apps ran a little slower, but the fact that they ran at all was amazing. (Those machines were essentially IBM PS/2s, running on 75MHz Pentiums and heavily upgraded for multimedia.)
Then Microsoft turns around and releases version 3.11 -- which breaks compatibility with 3.1 -- and deliberately fucks things up for OS/2. That, and the following introduction and aggressive marketing of Win95 pretty much nailed the lid on the coffin for IBM's Brave New OS.
(Personally, I think it's a shame, given that IBM had the technically superior OS. While the earlier versions were awful, OS/2 Warp wasn't bad at all, and compared to Windows it's damn near bulletproof. Yet another example of an inferior product beating out the better one in the marketplace.)
> It's easy to look past the 1 or 2 facts you know about a subject and enjoy the fiction, but if you are an expert it's natural for your mind to dissect it.
My big pet peeve is when they show some actor/actress *pretending* to play a musical instrument, only their hand movements don't match the notes being played. It's like the notorious Japanese monster movie imports that came with dubbed English voice-overs that totally did not synch with the people's mouths -- only instead of being hilarious, it's maddening. "You phony! You fake!! YOUR FINGERS AREN'T EVEN HITTING THE RIGHT KEYS!!!"
> He [Reagan] did not know that any money was going to the Contras. He also did not know that US intelligence was being given to Iran to aid it in its war against Iraq. If you read his book, you would know that, rather than disinformation.
"Biographies are usually honest but rarely truthful." -- Robert A. Heinlein
Seriously, are you telling us that, since Reagan confessed to nothing in his book, we should take him at his word? Based on that logic, we should conclude that Richard M. Nixon was the oblivious figurehead of the USA while a renegade, pro-Nixon group within his own administration -- the Plumbers, CREEP, etc. -- committed high crimes and acts of conspiracy *under Nixon's ugly nose* !
Yeah, right.
Here's an interesting fact: During his Hollywood years, Ronald Reagan was renowned among his fellow actors for his amazingly good memory -- he could read a script "cold" and memorize it. While he was diligent in having notecards on hand during his speeches, he rarely needed them. Later on, President Reagan would have the benefit of the dual-display teleprompter, but again he didn't rely on it for speechmaking (odds are his unsteady hands made it awkward for him to continue holding notecards).
Then we all got to see Reagan being questioned by the Tower Commission hearings during the Iran-Contra investigation. Time and time again, Reagan said "I don't recall" and "I don't remember any meetings."
Yeah, right.
But, hey, don't let a little thing like the truth derail your spinning teacup ride. As The Great Communicator said it, "Facts are stupid things."
> Why are our (male's) balls so badly protected? Why aren't they inside our body?
The answer is that the precious payload (the sperm) is heat-sensitive, and will become weakened or damaged by too much warmth. Thus, the testicles are kept separate from the main body to protect the sperm from body heat. On the other hand, when the body becomes cold the scrotum will "shrink up" closer to the body, since too little warmth is also bad.
That said, the male gonads are still ridiculously vulnerable to physical harm, as demonstrated VERY PAINFULLY on America's Funniest Home Video, YouTube, Google Video, et al. "Dude, it hurts just to watch you...." [Bloodsport]
> Why are girls able to get pregnant before their body can succesfully go through pregnancy and have an healthy child?
Not so sure about this one, but you have to keep in mind that the human species was by no means at the top of the food chain for most of its history. Predators, illnesses and just plain mishaps were major threats, and correspondingly the typical human life expectancy was rather low. This is the probable reason for why human females tend to sexually develop earlier and faster than males, and may be related to young girls' ability to be impregnated before their bodies are adequately capable of handling the rigors of pregnancy.
However, I think it's a FUCKING BAD IDEA for girls to give birth really early (death of the mother during childbirth becomes a serious risk) -- although the Catholic Church seems to disagree with that one:
The girl in question was *only nine years old* when she was raped, yet the Vatican condemned the abortion of her resulting pregnancy AND excommunicated her parents for allowing the abortion. How nice.... >:(
>...Prince Charles wishing to be a tampon. No, really I WISH I were making that up.
Saturday Night Live did a sketch based on Prince Charles' infamous "I wish I were your tampon" remark (featuring Dana Carvey in his last offical cast member performance) -- orig. air date: February 6, 1993; episode number: 18.12 (338).
In that sketch, Prince Charles gets his wish when scientists develop a way to transform human beings into inanimate objects....;)
>...Having had a regular job in Las Vegas, having nothing to do with computers, she decided teaching would be an opportunity. So she bought all the books and learned enough to get her MCSE....Yet, if you gave her three computers, three network cards, a hub and a handful of cables, she couldn't possibly have put together a working network. Not a nickel's worth of real-world field knowledge.
O. M. F. G....!!!
My Army-vet buddy once told me that I'd make an ideal instructor. While I greatly respect his opinion -- the guy's a retired master drill sergeant, and he's got a double master's degree (criminal justice / administration) -- when he said that to me, my response was basically, "What, are you shitting me?!"
If there are other teachers out there like THAT reject, though, maybe he's got a point. I mean, how incredibly incompetent, utterly uninterested, and completely clueless does a teacher have to be in order to "phone it in" like that?
BTW, just to let you know, there is another side to the copyright-in-the-classroom issue (shameless plug):
> And if the teacher is distributing content in violation of the law, then that teacher should be fired.
Okay, so.... shall we begin the mass arrest of *all public school music teachers everywhere*??
Back when I was in junior high, it was common practice for music teachers to make photocopies of sheet music for their students in choir, orchestra, marching band, and so on. Later, in high school, I saw the same practice carried on with equal prevalence. The teachers would simply purchase one or a few sets of sheet music for each song from the music stores, then make enough copied sets for the entire group of students. This makes perfect sense when you realize:
- music students are always losing (if not mangling) their sheet music - sooner or later, sheet music "wears out" because it's typically published in booklet form, so the pages are actually the halves of folded paper (the creases eventually disintegrate, and stapled sheet music booklets quickly get worn through where the staples are located) - occasionally, hard-working students take their sheet music home for extra practice, then forget to bring their music back to school the next day (so extra copies come in handy!) - a school music ensemble usually spans all available grades -- freshmen, sophmores, seniors, etc. -- which means the roll count can easily top fifty (more so for marching band, where the rule is strength-in-numbers, as well as very large public schools) - the music department tends to be the least favored in the entire school when it comes to administrative support, particularly when it comes to funding (many music teachers had to purchase sheet music out of their own pockets)
True story: I was the piano player for the school choir (otherwise the teacher would have to lead the students *and* man the piano at the same time) and I learned to memorize each and every song so that I could play any of them on demand, "cold". This was something I could accomplish by practicing a song for about a week (maybe two, if it was tricky) and it freed up a set of sheet music so another student could use it instead. Later I used the same method to memorize the entire music lineup when I joined the high school's jazz band (as the keyboard / electric piano player, of course). That's how tight the sheet music situation was.
So, we have all these school music teachers illegally copying sheet music (and, believe me, it was printed on the paper in black and white: NO PHOTOCOPYING) and distributing those copies to their students, who proceeded to use those copies illegally to perform music that hadn't been properly paid for./begin sarcasm/ Sounds like a great opportunity for the music industry (which owns all the copyrights) to whip up a new, massive wave of lawsuits! BIG Money!! BIG settlements!! I LOVE IT!!!
Hell, you know all those performances by singing schoolchildren during the holiday season? As soon as a performance is concluded, arrest *all* the children *and* their teacher/conductor on suspicion of copyright violation! Then, having heard all the songs they performed, search them *and* their respective school for illegal copies of sheet music. Once you've found the photocopies, BINGO!!/end sarcasm/
Seriously, have you ever seen the movie "Blue Chips"? Well, here's a paraphrase of that line by Nick Nolte:
"It's not about the music! It's about MONEY!! The MOST MONEY LABELS CAN MAKE!!!"
> Are things really so bad for Win users that all this [system diagnosis / disk repair] stuff is regularly required?
HELL, YES!!!
My sister is practically a textbook example of the shit that Win users have to put up with. After she got her first PC (lovingly purchased then set up in her bedroom by Yours Truly) she was happy with it for a brief time, mainly due to the pure novelty of it. Eventually, though, she began to complain about performance and reliability issues (mainly Illegal Operations and BSODs).
When she let some salescritter talk her into buying the M$ upgrade to Windows 98 (first edition) she asked me out of curiosity if it would improve things on her system. My answer: no, No, NO!!! Installing that upgrade will only make things worse, not better! (She hadn't upgraded the system's hardware accordingly, and wasn't willing to spend the necessary money for it.)
Ironically, she would later save up enough money to purchase a new PC on her own, one that came with Win98 pre-installed. That machine turned out to be just as fucked up as the previous one! Later she let yet another (or maybe it was the same) salescritter persuade her to buy the upgrade to the newest version of Windows -- the Millennium edition! (Cue mass groaning.) Needless to say, that fucked up her system even worse. Still later, she shelled out even more dollars to get the lastest upgrade for Windows...2000.
[oblig. "Wayne's World" ref.] Turn it off, man, turn it off!! It's sucking my will to live!!! OHHH, THE HUMANITY!!!
By this time her system was so completely hosed it wouldn't even boot up anymore. Only then did she call me in to have a look at it -- and all I could tell her was bad news. The hard drive was corrupted to the point where it wouldn't function as a bootup unit, and fixing the boot sector might not do any good: Windows itself could have been fucked up as well, and that may have been caused by malware infiltrating the system through her Internet connection.
When I recommended that she erase the hard drive, reformat it then reinstall everything, she said, "You know what? The computer's out of warranty, anyway. You can have it." Her PC had simply become more trouble than it was worth.
No thanks to Micro$oft, of course, whose tentacles-throughout-the-system architecture and integrated web browser creates more security holes than a double-barrel shotgun fired at butcher paper. Last I heard, my sister's live-in boyfriend got her a newer PC with WinXP preloaded. *That* system's fucking up on her, also.
Oh, well, the world is a carousel -- and here we are again....:/
Chief Wiggum: Go ahead, Ralphie. The stranger is offering you a treat. Ralph Wiggum: [takes a bite of a tomacco, but spits it out] Oh, Daddy, this tastes like grandma! Wiggum: [takes a bite, and likewise spits] Holy Moses, it *does* taste like grandma! Ralph: I want more. Wiggum: Yeah, me too. We'll take a bushel or a pack or just -- just give it to me. [takes a bushel basket of tomacco from Homer, and gives him a wad of cash] [Homer giggles evilly]
> What is wrong with forcing you to eat stuff you don't want to eat, *if you can't prove it is harmful?* [emphasis added]
As Carl Sagan pointed out, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Just because you have failed to find a health risk in a new, laboratory-produced substance does *not* mean you have conclusively proven the substance to be completely safe! Instead, it could mean:
- your testing procedure failed to include the proper conditions that would detect a health risk - your testing "pool" of subjects lacks the size and/or variety to ensure a representative set of results for the general population, or - your testing program has not been conducted long enough to detect health risks that do not manifest in the short term.
Then again, positive test results for health risks get downplayed or buried many times. Remember the introduction of Olestra, the fat-substitute food additive that was supposed to be the new diet-aiding wonder substance? Turns out it had an annoying little side effect: it caused vitamin depletion!--
To top it all off, the FDA had prior knowledge that Olestra brought on unhealthy side effects, *yet granted approval for its sale on the food market*. Plus, of course, reports on these "unintended effects" failed to make the news until AFTER Olestra was already in products on the shelves. Don't you just love our ever-vigilant news media and industry watchdog agencies?
> Actually, children are better served by a teacher who cares about his/her work and genuinely challanges them to actually exercise the mass of grey matter that is so devoid of thought in current times.
Believe it or not, that's one of the important points Papert makes in his book! He decried the typical use of the classroom computer as a mere testtaking machine, or as a means to further solidify the status quo of the school lesson plan. Papert argued that, in addition to acquiring more computers and making them more available to students and teachers alike, schools need to find ways of using computers to *change the teaching process itself*.
Sadly, Papert also pointed out that such an educational revolution would be met with resistance by none other than the education system itself. To paraphrase the book, the system must protect its own existence, and it seeks to maintain the state of that existence. It will fight any threat to either one until all avenues have been exhausted.
After all these years, "The Children's Machine" has proven to be uncannily accurate.
For heaven's sake, man, don't say that!!;) It can *always* get worse! Haven't you learned anything from Murphy's Law? Douglas Adams? "Just when you think the universe can't possibly become any worse, it suddenly does." [Marvin the paranoid android]
> Not being a Sony apologist here, but really, the batteries are junk?
Okay, let's give you the benefit of the doubt.
> The Apple recall involved 2 minor injuries in 9 complaints out of 1.8 million batteries. Anyone care to shine a light on any other industry and look for a product this reliable? Toasters, anyone?
You do realize what you've done, don't you? It's a technique that's sometimes known as "minimizing by contrast" -- making someone's misdeeds seem trivial or less serious by putting them in sharp contrast with others who've committed far worse actions.
What disturbs and outrages me (and I'd guess many other Slashdotters here as well) is that Dell, Apple, etc. knew of the exploding battery defect *and chose to disregard it*. I own a laptop myself -- you think I shouldn't worry after hearing of other users getting so many ounces of extremely hot lithium-ion battery material *exploded onto their laps/hands/faces*? If it happens to just one user, that's tragic; if it happens to more users, THAT IS FUCKING INEXCUSABLE.
Of course, one could argue, "But that's still so few people harmed by this! It's only about nine people, mister!" One could argue that. Now tell that to the person who actually had a laptop battery explode on them....
I'm also reminded of the Star Trek movie "Insurrection" in which Captain Picard confronts a Star Fleet admiral who is conspiring to forcibly remove an entire colony in order to exploit their planet's energy field.
Admiral Dougherty: Jean-Luc, it's only 600 people. Captain Picard: How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong, hmmm?
So, then...how many users does it take? How many users have to get fried by exploding laptop batteries before it becomes wrong, hmmm? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? A MILLION??
Slashdot Mirror
> Just out of curiosity, have you ever personally tried to subdue a large angry person who doesn't want you to subdue him? Have you ever held someone down while trying to put handcuffs on them as they put up a fight and grab at your leg, right next to where you keep your metal baton and your sidearm?
... he'd discover just how fast a strangulation hold worked (unlike a choke hold, which cuts off the air, a strangle hold cuts off the blood supply; when properly done, the victim goes unconscious within seconds). All of this my friend would do without breaking a sweat!
...I believe this thread was about the police, not the samurai -- so go and put away your strawman.
As a matter of fact, my Army-vet buddy is a former LAPD cop who frequently had to subdue and apprehend suspects. He learned grappling techniques and submission holds from Bob Koga, and made it a point to *never* use violence when carefully applied force would do the job. As Mr. Koga himself explained, "If you have to beat up the suspect to arrest him, you've already lost control of the situation. Besides, why knock yourself out when you can use these techniques with much less effort?"
The basic problem with police situations is that the emotions and adrenaline run so high that it's easy for the cops to get carried away. However, the cops *can't* afford to get carried away because it interferes with their judgement, which means they can no longer do their job in a professional manner. As my friend often puts it, a cop has to be able to "step outside of himself" and view the situation as though he were someone else, otherwise his mind will be clouded with too much emotion.
Too few of his fellow officers understood and practiced this, however. Typically when they brought a violent, struggling suspect into the station, the cops were all sweaty and out of breath from trying to subdue and handcuff the guy. If my friend was in the station at the time and saw them come in, he'd shake his head and yell, "You dumb sons of bitches, don't you know how to arrest someone without wearing yourselves out?"
Then he'd take over and haul the suspect to holding -- and demonstrate to the other cops how it's done. If the suspect tried anything, my friend would simply apply a finger lock, an arm lock, or a pain grip to keep the suspect under control. And if the suspect was *really* uncooperative
> Which professional manner where you thinking about, exactly? A comic-book style magic net-thrower with immobilizing sneeze powder? Or perhaps you were thinking of just politely asking the career criminal to step into your police cruiser, all professional-like? Or perhaps you were thinking that after you've put your hands on the bad guy who is refusing arrest, that he'd say... "Ah! You got me. My career in repeat crimes is at an end, and I'll just come along with you polite, professional men, now."
Ahem
>> But that doesn't mean anyone in a uniform deserves jack shit from you.
>
> The only way that sentiment makes any sense is if most police officers and soldiers were crazy, sadistic, power-abusing jerks. That isn't the case, and it's really quite the opposite. The uniform can be abused by the rare few, just like the liberties and responsibilities of being a citizen are abused by, well, rather a lot of people.
My Army vet buddy (who served in both Korea and 'Nam) is also an ex-cop from the LAPD, and he holds a double master's degree in criminal justice and administration. Now he's a private investigator who specializes in cases involving "police misconduct" -- and he is downright brutal when it comes to going after the cops.
Why is my friend, a former police officer, so keen on investigating police wrongdoing? Because he knows how they work and how they think -- and when police commit acts of deception and unjustifiable violence *they betray the public trust*. Furthermore, the betrayal isn't limitted to the cops who commit those acts, it's also done by the cops who cover up for and refuse to speak out against those acts. As my friend himself puts it, it's not just the guy who did the dirty deed that's at fault, it's also the other guy who knew of the dirty deed AND DID NOTHING ABOUT IT. (Ever heard of the "Blue Wall of Silence"?)
Moreover, police departments across the country are infamous for "circling the wagons" against any accusation or criticism against its members -- the LAPD merely being an especially notorious example. So, if the law-enforcement system repeatedly "malfunctions" as it were, fails to correct itself and resists all outside attempts to improve the system, how can it be deserving of *anyone's* respect? If you had a computer system that thrashed your data as often as our law-enforcement system thrashes our people, and it stubbornly refused to let anyone fix it, would you trust it? Would you even go near it?
> Grow up.
Wake up.
> Ugh... I just had a bit of a debate on this subject with a female friend who works in a university library in my city.
...they will always be there." I dealt with more than a few "vinyl" bigots back when compact disc was gaining popularity over LPs and cassettes. One such bigot was particularly obnoxious about how CDs could never compare to a vinyl record played on top-notch phonograph equipment (never mind that the sticker shock might kill you first).
...You know, I've sold quite a few CD players here" (this was at the Radio Shack I worked part-time at during my college years) "and I've yet to hear *anyone* complain or ask about having to replace a worn-out laser lens on their CD player."
;-)
>
> She maintained that schools teaching kids to "do research on the Internet" does them little good, and it's a farce that it's even called "research". She had an obvious bias towards printed books as superior media.
Very good post. It sounds like your friend is a "treeware" bigot -- the kind who gets extremely annoyed at software packages that no longer include one or more pounds of slaughtered, pulped, and mashed trees.
There's an old saying: "Bigots are like mountains
I listened to him argue his case, then asked, "So, have you ever needed to replace the needle on your record player?"
"Yes, every now and then."
"How much does the needle on a precision player cost?"
"Whew, enough to buy dinner at a fancy restaurant, maybe two."
"Okay
That kind of pulled the rug out from under him....
....tip of the iceberg?
This is like trying to dig up a small tree or a bush [pun intended] -- you think there isn't much to dig up, but as you excavate you keep finding more and more roots entwined under the ground.
So to recap: we have the telco industry handing over *all* our phone call logs to the NSA, and the FBI is involved in a wireless LAN snooping program. You have to wonder what the hell we're going to find out next about the US government intelligence / law enforcement community.
"Come on, man -- I mean, *look* at this shit! It isn't a question of whether or not you're paranoid; it's a question of whether or not you're paranoid ENOUGH." -- from the movie _Strange_Days_
> So the number of problems increases in line with the number of users ? Who'da thunk it ?
e .idg/
Actually, we (or now "they") typically didn't sell Windows systems to complete newbies, so we weren't significantly increasing the Micro$oft user base. The majority of our clientele were repeat customers, and usually when we sold Windows it was either an upgrade version being installed on the customer's current machine or a fresh OEM install on a new system meant to replace an older (retired) PC.
Basically, the initial user base for a new Windows version had to play catch-up with the previous, well-established user base for previous versions, and even early on we had the technical complaints and irate customers coming in about how the new Windows installations were fucking shit up more frequently and severely. *That* doesn't indicate to me a natural, unavoidable proportion of [no. of Windows problems] vs. [no. of Windows users] -- it points out a worsening of software design and quality control.
The tragically ridiculous part is that Windows has flaws in it that are not merely intolerable, they're easily avoidable -- if only M$ would have pulled their heads out of their asses:
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9903/09/removei
http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html
Remember how Win98 kept screwing up and crashing on its users? Or how M$ kept insisting that Internet Explorer was integrated and unremovable from Win98 because it worked better that way?
Wrong and WRONG!
The presence of an integerated IE compromised the stability of the OS, and removing IE is both possible (hilariously so) and *preferrable* -- it improves Windows' reliability and (big fucking surprise!) eliminates problems with installing Netscape. Hell, if you were nervous about the idea of hacking IE out of Win98, you could make backups of explorer.exe, shell32.dll and comdlg32.dll before running a test trial -- if you didn't like the results, just restore the backups. For ultimate convenience, you could download the free IEradicator utility and perform a complete, automated and PERMANENT removal of IE -- in your face, Gates!
What it comes down to is that Windows is, as IBM engineers sarcastically coined the phrase decades ago, "broken as designed." The whole tentacles-throughout-the-system strategy violates one of the fundamental principles of structured programming -- modular design. You know, Divide And Conquer? Isolate software sections, isolate software bugs? As opposed to "spaghetti code"? The "crawling horror" effect? Hell, the whole Vista debacle is now a case study in "critical mass" -- M$ had (has) to keep delaying its release and cutting out initally planned features to keep the damned monstrosity from choking on its own complexity.
Nice apologist tract. Let's deconstruct this, shall we?
...over some of them EXPLODING?
/end sarcasm/
> I appreciate that MS rushed production to get it out a year earlier than the other systems, as I was jonesing for a new system. I also appreciate that this rush is what produced the defective hardware.
So, in other words, Micro$oft is at it again: they rush a product through production, get it to market before it's ready, and -- what a surprise! -- it's got nasty bugs in it. Summary: M$ fucks things up some more.
> Although the delay in compensation for repairs denotes a greedy attitude on the part of MS, I am not surprised.
At this point, I'd be amazed if *anyone* was surprised.
> Corporations do not exist to serve the public good, and if you find this objectionable, then please avail yourself of a microeconomics textbook. You can't expect good intentions from corporations (and from people in general). You should be satisfied that they do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.
Translation: what the corporations offer the public is all they deserve, and if they don't like it they can go fuck themselves. Wonder if this 'primeval_badger' character is a Republican or a Libertarian -- what's his view on public oversight or government regulation of business? That should be good for a cheap laugh....
> Having worked for several years, I understand how difficult it is to design products, let alone systems.
Then you understand the importance of "defensive design" and "quality control", right? Because M$ apparently doesn't, seeing that they repeatedly and consistently release products that are Not Ready For Prime Time. Hell, it's no wonder my first software engineering professor got so pissed off at fuckheads like this, for creating sloppy design and shoddy quality, that it made him "want to get a baseball bat and start bashing in heads."
> Put another way, would you rather wait an extra year for a rock-solid 360, or get one a year earlier, which will probably work fine
-- unless the power supply unit undergoes a meltdown, explodes and sets fire to the carpet, which burns down the house and potentially nearby houses as well. Think I'm being over the top? Remember that little fuss a short while ago over laptop batteries? You know
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/22/another-thinkpa d-battery-explodes/
But hey, what's a few exploding laptops, right? I mean, the user escaped with only minor burns and a ruined LCD monitor (other than the laptop screen itself), plus the firefighters came in time, so he should count himself lucky! Hell, he's even got backups of his data, so he should be *satisfied* that things turned out the way they did!!
> MS is a decent corporation with decent products.
Ahem... You seem to have contradicted your earlier statement about the nature of corporate business. More importantly, it flies in the face of the public record:
http://www.microsuck.com/content/whatsbad.shtml
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=640
http://www.inlumineconsulting.com:8080/website/msf t.shilling.html
> Don't criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.
You forgot to add, "or unless you can outdo him."
Remember Bill Gates' infamous letter to the Homebrew Computer Club? The one in which he said to the club that "most of you steal your software"? What he neglected to mention in that letter was:
- Altair BASIC was released way behind schedule (dude, talk about foreshadowing!)
- Many Altair computer users had paid in advance for pre-ordered copies of Altair BASIC, yet had never received it
-
> it seems that when companies get 'so' big, there seems to be warping of reality for them. i would bet there are some people at microsoft that were very unhappy to admit to this.
n tosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt&sortOrder= Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium
Good point, though I would rephrase it as "when egos get too big, there seems to be a warping of reality for them." The first Macintosh team at Apple discovered this when dealing with Steve Jobs, and adopted a Star Trek term to describe this confounding phenomenon:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Maci
The Reality Distortion Field. Know It. Fear It.
> I just had a clent ask about alternatives to WinME (she did not want to pay for XP just to check here email and browse the internet). Her PC (Dell Demension 8200) had ME preinstalled, she had deleted the restore partition somehow thinking it would give her more HDD space, but could not figure out what happened to the storage space she had started with. (yes, it WAS that infested!)
Windows ME really is a fucking piece of shit. For a few years I worked at an independent PC service and sales outlet that was a licensed Microsoft dealer, and we noticed that the frequency and severity of Windows problems were on the rise as Microsoft introduced Win98 (as if Win95 wasn't bad enough) and later Win2K and WinME. My own sister tried upgrading from Win98 to WinME, and the results were so bad that she gave away her copy of WinME to me. (I even tried installing it on a testbench hard drive, just to see what it was like. Yes, it's that bad!)
One of the things that really stands out in my mind is a phone call I got from a customer who was extremely frustrated with the performance and reliability of his PC. It seemed that, with each Windows upgrade he installed, the system kept getting worse and worse. Though I don't have a record of the phone call, this is the general thread of that conversation:
[customer] "Why is it that every time I upgrade my Windows, my computer keeps slowing down and freezing up more?!"
[me] "Well, I'll try my best to figure it out, though I can't guarantee an accurate diagnosis over the phone. Does your system pass the minimum requirements for your current Windows version?"
[customer] "Yes, goddammit!"
[me] "Now, hold on, sir, I'm trying to figure this out for you. If your system just *meets* the minimum requirements for Windows, that's not enough. Those are the bare minimum requirements just to make Windows run at all. You have to *pass* those minimum requirements to make Windows run well."
[customer] "Well, why don't they come out and TELL you that??"
[me] "Well, part of the problem is that Microsoft doesn't know how much work your computer is expected to do, because that can change what your system specs *should* be. But the other part is that Microsoft isn't being completely honest. It's like the mileage ratings on a car: those are the *best possible mileages* you can get on that vehicle, while in real life you'd almost never get mileage as good. That's why they say, 'your mileage may vary.' It even says as much on the package for Windows -- 'your system requirements may be higher depending on the applications you intend to run on your system.' My rule of thumb is that your system should have *double* what the minimum requirements are, and that more is even better. Unfortunately, every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows, they keep upping the minimum requirements."
[customer] "But why the hell do they DO that?!"
[me] "Well, there's more than one reason. You see, Microsoft likes to keep adding more features to Windows, so each new version can do more than the last one. But when they do that, they make Windows bigger and the workload heavier. It's like a trailer dealer that only offers bigger and heavier trailers when they come out with newer models. You may only need a small and lightweight trailer, but the dealer won't have one to sell you. And if all you have is a small pickup truck, that makes it run slower and more prone to overloading.
"The other reason, however, is more insidious. Microsoft is in cahoots with Intel, and Intel wants people to upgrade their older systems to boost their processor sales. So, when Microsoft jacks up the workload for the new Windows, that gives customers one more reason to upgrade their Intel processors, which makes Intel happy. Of course, AMD and other hardware companies benefit from this, too."
[customer] "..." (I could almost hear him seething.) "Tell me, what's with this new, free operating system I've been hearing about lately?"
[m
> It's wealth *movement*.
Exactly! I remember the uncomfortable feeling I had when I sat in high school economics and heard the teacher lecture the class on the "creation of wealth". It was the exact same feeling I got when I sat in Sunday School while the teacher told us such things as "agape [Godly] love is far greater than carnal [animal] love" -- the feeling that an idea was, as my first software engineering professor would have called it, "highly suspect".
This whole idea of "creating wealth" seems to run counter to one of the most simple yet important folk sayings I've heard: "The money you spend on one thing is money you can't spend on any other thing." (Yes, I know it's possible to returned purchased goods for a refund, but even then there's a limitted return period -- and you may be charged a "restocking fee".) If we generalize the idea, we can say that "the resources you spend one one thing are resources you cannot spend on any other thing."
Now, *that* concept fits nicely with the basic physics principle that energy and matter cannot be created, only converted from one form to the other. Furthermore, if we presume that the universe began in a Big Bang and will eventually collapse in a Big Crunch, then time itself can be seen as a finite resource, one that must be spent carefully. (Heck, don't business people already believe that?)
So, if we view economics from the standpoint of physics / engineering / system theory, then an economy is a distribution system for delivering resources (goods and services) to all the different parts of the system, much as the blood circulation system in our bodies delivers consumable materials and non-consumable benefits (the immune system antibodies and phages are not meant to be consumed, yet provide a vital service to the body).
If we presume that the body is a closed system, then the body's total supply of resources at any given time is finite, and therefore an increase in a subsystem's demand for resources will result in a decrease in available resources for all other subsystems. (Think of what happens to you after eating a large, heavy meal: your digestive system needs so much blood to process the massive influx of food that you feel tired, lethargic, and barely have the energy to get up and plop yourself down in front of the TV / computer / whatever.)
Of course, in real life the body is not perfectly isolated from the outside world. However, in order to acquire the outside resources we need we must spend some of the resources we already have (energy, time, etc.) -- plus there is the chance that we not succeed, or will end up being injured or killed in the attempt (risk vs. gain). There is also the danger of being *too* successful, in which case we can become so bloated, so massively overgrown with resources (morbidly obese) that we will be easily outmaneuvered by smaller, more agile entities.
Then again, I'm no economist, so what the fuck do I know?
> You failed geography, right? Most of California and New York are above sea level, way above the 10 to 15 feet the sea level is expected to rise over the next century.
;)
While it's true that most of the land in Calfornia and New York State is above sea level, don't forget that much of the *population* is concentrated at or very close to the coastline. New York City, in particular, would be FUCKED by a rise in sea level, and other cities like San Francisco would also be in trouble (remember, the sea has tides). Even if most of California and New York remain above water, it would still be a tragic loss -- otherwise one could argue that the devastation of New Orleans was only a "minor" loss compared to the relative safety of Louisiana.
> Now Virginia Beach, Virginia, home of Pat Robertson, GONE. And not a moment too soon.
If I was still a church-goin' Christian, I'd say, "Amen to that, brother."
> Or we had military commanders willing to claim basically, "nah, I never shot a civillian. It was my soldiers that shot and raped civillians. I was just standing there and watching them." And again, society decided that it doesn't work that way. If they're your subordinates, you're responsible for them. It's your duty to stop them if they do something evil.
Exactly -- and it's the commander's responsibility to answer for whatever crimes and outrages his underlings succeed in committing. As my Army vet buddy, a retired master drill sergeant, pointed out repeatedly, "You can delegate authority, but you CANNOT delegate responsibility." Or as former president Harry Truman famously indicated with a sign placed on his Oval Office desk, "The Buck Stops Here."
Sadly, any equivalent sign on the current president's desk in the White House would have to read, "Being President Is Hard: On Vacation" -- given that he has failed to own up to *any* of his mistakes and has devoted more of his time to relaxing on personal vacations than any other US president in history.
>> I'm pretty sure IBM actually licensed Win3.1 from Microsoft for that.
>
> I'm *positive* they had a licence for Win 3.x.
I remember seeing at Radio Shack the first IBM Aptiva systems arrive with both OS/2 Warp *and* Windows 3.1 installed, and both ran concurrently! Mind you, the Windows apps ran a little slower, but the fact that they ran at all was amazing. (Those machines were essentially IBM PS/2s, running on 75MHz Pentiums and heavily upgraded for multimedia.)
Then Microsoft turns around and releases version 3.11 -- which breaks compatibility with 3.1 -- and deliberately fucks things up for OS/2. That, and the following introduction and aggressive marketing of Win95 pretty much nailed the lid on the coffin for IBM's Brave New OS.
(Personally, I think it's a shame, given that IBM had the technically superior OS. While the earlier versions were awful, OS/2 Warp wasn't bad at all, and compared to Windows it's damn near bulletproof. Yet another example of an inferior product beating out the better one in the marketplace.)
> It's easy to look past the 1 or 2 facts you know about a subject and enjoy the fiction, but if you are an expert it's natural for your mind to dissect it.
My big pet peeve is when they show some actor/actress *pretending* to play a musical instrument, only their hand movements don't match the notes being played. It's like the notorious Japanese monster movie imports that came with dubbed English voice-overs that totally did not synch with the people's mouths -- only instead of being hilarious, it's maddening. "You phony! You fake!! YOUR FINGERS AREN'T EVEN HITTING THE RIGHT KEYS!!!"
> He [Reagan] did not know that any money was going to the Contras. He also did not know that US intelligence was being given to Iran to aid it in its war against Iraq. If you read his book, you would know that, rather than disinformation.
"Biographies are usually honest but rarely truthful." -- Robert A. Heinlein
Seriously, are you telling us that, since Reagan confessed to nothing in his book, we should take him at his word? Based on that logic, we should conclude that Richard M. Nixon was the oblivious figurehead of the USA while a renegade, pro-Nixon group within his own administration -- the Plumbers, CREEP, etc. -- committed high crimes and acts of conspiracy *under Nixon's ugly nose* !
Yeah, right.
Here's an interesting fact: During his Hollywood years, Ronald Reagan was renowned among his fellow actors for his amazingly good memory -- he could read a script "cold" and memorize it. While he was diligent in having notecards on hand during his speeches, he rarely needed them. Later on, President Reagan would have the benefit of the dual-display teleprompter, but again he didn't rely on it for speechmaking (odds are his unsteady hands made it awkward for him to continue holding notecards).
Then we all got to see Reagan being questioned by the Tower Commission hearings during the Iran-Contra investigation. Time and time again, Reagan said "I don't recall" and "I don't remember any meetings."
Yeah, right.
But, hey, don't let a little thing like the truth derail your spinning teacup ride. As The Great Communicator said it, "Facts are stupid things."
Another great post.
n =7
> Why are our (male's) balls so badly protected? Why aren't they inside our body?
The answer is that the precious payload (the sperm) is heat-sensitive, and will become weakened or damaged by too much warmth. Thus, the testicles are kept separate from the main body to protect the sperm from body heat. On the other hand, when the body becomes cold the scrotum will "shrink up" closer to the body, since too little warmth is also bad.
That said, the male gonads are still ridiculously vulnerable to physical harm, as demonstrated VERY PAINFULLY on America's Funniest Home Video, YouTube, Google Video, et al. "Dude, it hurts just to watch you...." [Bloodsport]
> Why are girls able to get pregnant before their body can succesfully go through pregnancy and have an healthy child?
Not so sure about this one, but you have to keep in mind that the human species was by no means at the top of the food chain for most of its history. Predators, illnesses and just plain mishaps were major threats, and correspondingly the typical human life expectancy was rather low. This is the probable reason for why human females tend to sexually develop earlier and faster than males, and may be related to young girls' ability to be impregnated before their bodies are adequately capable of handling the rigors of pregnancy.
However, I think it's a FUCKING BAD IDEA for girls to give birth really early (death of the mother during childbirth becomes a serious risk) -- although the Catholic Church seems to disagree with that one:
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=5339&sec=4&co
The girl in question was *only nine years old* when she was raped, yet the Vatican condemned the abortion of her resulting pregnancy AND excommunicated her parents for allowing the abortion. How nice.... >:(
> ...Prince Charles wishing to be a tampon. No, really I WISH I were making that up.
;)
Saturday Night Live did a sketch based on Prince Charles' infamous "I wish I were your tampon" remark (featuring Dana Carvey in his last offical cast member performance) -- orig. air date: February 6, 1993; episode number: 18.12 (338).
In that sketch, Prince Charles gets his wish when scientists develop a way to transform human beings into inanimate objects....
> We will show that Anonymous Corwardiness is alive and well
:)
Uh, you *were* trying to type "Cowardliness", right? Or "Cowardice" would work, too. Not sure which of those words is the best choice, though.
> ...Having had a regular job in Las Vegas, having nothing to do with computers, she decided teaching would be an opportunity. So she bought all the books and learned enough to get her MCSE. ...Yet, if you gave her three computers, three network cards, a hub and a handful of cables, she couldn't possibly have put together a working network. Not a nickel's worth of real-world field knowledge.
...!!!
9 96862
O. M. F. G.
My Army-vet buddy once told me that I'd make an ideal instructor. While I greatly respect his opinion -- the guy's a retired master drill sergeant, and he's got a double master's degree (criminal justice / administration) -- when he said that to me, my response was basically, "What, are you shitting me?!"
If there are other teachers out there like THAT reject, though, maybe he's got a point. I mean, how incredibly incompetent, utterly uninterested, and completely clueless does a teacher have to be in order to "phone it in" like that?
BTW, just to let you know, there is another side to the copyright-in-the-classroom issue (shameless plug):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195199&cid=15
> And if the teacher is distributing content in violation of the law, then that teacher should be fired.
/begin sarcasm/ Sounds like a great opportunity for the music industry (which owns all the copyrights) to whip up a new, massive wave of lawsuits! BIG Money!! BIG settlements!! I LOVE IT!!!
/end sarcasm/
Okay, so.... shall we begin the mass arrest of *all public school music teachers everywhere*??
Back when I was in junior high, it was common practice for music teachers to make photocopies of sheet music for their students in choir, orchestra, marching band, and so on. Later, in high school, I saw the same practice carried on with equal prevalence. The teachers would simply purchase one or a few sets of sheet music for each song from the music stores, then make enough copied sets for the entire group of students. This makes perfect sense when you realize:
- music students are always losing (if not mangling) their sheet music
- sooner or later, sheet music "wears out" because it's typically published in booklet form, so the pages are actually the halves of folded paper (the creases eventually disintegrate, and stapled sheet music booklets quickly get worn through where the staples are located)
- occasionally, hard-working students take their sheet music home for extra practice, then forget to bring their music back to school the next day (so extra copies come in handy!)
- a school music ensemble usually spans all available grades -- freshmen, sophmores, seniors, etc. -- which means the roll count can easily top fifty (more so for marching band, where the rule is strength-in-numbers, as well as very large public schools)
- the music department tends to be the least favored in the entire school when it comes to administrative support, particularly when it comes to funding (many music teachers had to purchase sheet music out of their own pockets)
True story: I was the piano player for the school choir (otherwise the teacher would have to lead the students *and* man the piano at the same time) and I learned to memorize each and every song so that I could play any of them on demand, "cold". This was something I could accomplish by practicing a song for about a week (maybe two, if it was tricky) and it freed up a set of sheet music so another student could use it instead. Later I used the same method to memorize the entire music lineup when I joined the high school's jazz band (as the keyboard / electric piano player, of course). That's how tight the sheet music situation was.
So, we have all these school music teachers illegally copying sheet music (and, believe me, it was printed on the paper in black and white: NO PHOTOCOPYING) and distributing those copies to their students, who proceeded to use those copies illegally to perform music that hadn't been properly paid for.
Hell, you know all those performances by singing schoolchildren during the holiday season? As soon as a performance is concluded, arrest *all* the children *and* their teacher/conductor on suspicion of copyright violation! Then, having heard all the songs they performed, search them *and* their respective school for illegal copies of sheet music. Once you've found the photocopies, BINGO!!
Seriously, have you ever seen the movie "Blue Chips"? Well, here's a paraphrase of that line by Nick Nolte:
"It's not about the music! It's about MONEY!! The MOST MONEY LABELS CAN MAKE!!!"
> Are things really so bad for Win users that all this [system diagnosis / disk repair] stuff is regularly required?
...2000.
:/
HELL, YES!!!
My sister is practically a textbook example of the shit that Win users have to put up with. After she got her first PC (lovingly purchased then set up in her bedroom by Yours Truly) she was happy with it for a brief time, mainly due to the pure novelty of it. Eventually, though, she began to complain about performance and reliability issues (mainly Illegal Operations and BSODs).
When she let some salescritter talk her into buying the M$ upgrade to Windows 98 (first edition) she asked me out of curiosity if it would improve things on her system. My answer: no, No, NO!!! Installing that upgrade will only make things worse, not better! (She hadn't upgraded the system's hardware accordingly, and wasn't willing to spend the necessary money for it.)
Ironically, she would later save up enough money to purchase a new PC on her own, one that came with Win98 pre-installed. That machine turned out to be just as fucked up as the previous one! Later she let yet another (or maybe it was the same) salescritter persuade her to buy the upgrade to the newest version of Windows -- the Millennium edition! (Cue mass groaning.) Needless to say, that fucked up her system even worse. Still later, she shelled out even more dollars to get the lastest upgrade for Windows
[oblig. "Wayne's World" ref.] Turn it off, man, turn it off!! It's sucking my will to live!!! OHHH, THE HUMANITY!!!
By this time her system was so completely hosed it wouldn't even boot up anymore. Only then did she call me in to have a look at it -- and all I could tell her was bad news. The hard drive was corrupted to the point where it wouldn't function as a bootup unit, and fixing the boot sector might not do any good: Windows itself could have been fucked up as well, and that may have been caused by malware infiltrating the system through her Internet connection.
When I recommended that she erase the hard drive, reformat it then reinstall everything, she said, "You know what? The computer's out of warranty, anyway. You can have it." Her PC had simply become more trouble than it was worth.
No thanks to Micro$oft, of course, whose tentacles-throughout-the-system architecture and integrated web browser creates more security holes than a double-barrel shotgun fired at butcher paper. Last I heard, my sister's live-in boyfriend got her a newer PC with WinXP preloaded. *That* system's fucking up on her, also.
Oh, well, the world is a carousel -- and here we are again....
> I'm surprise the tobaco companies hasnt graft tobaco plnat and hemp together
Or... tobacco and tomatoes!!!
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/AABF19
Chief Wiggum: Go ahead, Ralphie. The stranger is offering you a treat.
Ralph Wiggum: [takes a bite of a tomacco, but spits it out] Oh, Daddy, this tastes like grandma!
Wiggum: [takes a bite, and likewise spits] Holy Moses, it *does* taste like grandma!
Ralph: I want more.
Wiggum: Yeah, me too. We'll take a bushel or a pack or just -- just give it to me. [takes a bushel basket of tomacco from Homer, and gives him a wad of cash]
[Homer giggles evilly]
> What is wrong with forcing you to eat stuff you don't want to eat, *if you can't prove it is harmful?* [emphasis added]
t -effects.htm
x _Olestra_under_fire_again.asp
As Carl Sagan pointed out, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Just because you have failed to find a health risk in a new, laboratory-produced substance does *not* mean you have conclusively proven the substance to be completely safe! Instead, it could mean:
- your testing procedure failed to include the proper conditions that would detect a health risk
- your testing "pool" of subjects lacks the size and/or variety to ensure a representative set of results for the general population, or
- your testing program has not been conducted long enough to detect health risks that do not manifest in the short term.
Then again, positive test results for health risks get downplayed or buried many times. Remember the introduction of Olestra, the fat-substitute food additive that was supposed to be the new diet-aiding wonder substance? Turns out it had an annoying little side effect: it caused vitamin depletion!--
http://www.annecollins.com/dietary-fat/olestra-fa
Later on, people discovered another unpleasant consequence of Olestra: it suppressed the body's absorbtion of anti-carcinogens!--
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1
To top it all off, the FDA had prior knowledge that Olestra brought on unhealthy side effects, *yet granted approval for its sale on the food market*. Plus, of course, reports on these "unintended effects" failed to make the news until AFTER Olestra was already in products on the shelves. Don't you just love our ever-vigilant news media and industry watchdog agencies?
> Actually, children are better served by a teacher who cares about his/her work and genuinely challanges them to actually exercise the mass of grey matter that is so devoid of thought in current times.
Believe it or not, that's one of the important points Papert makes in his book! He decried the typical use of the classroom computer as a mere testtaking machine, or as a means to further solidify the status quo of the school lesson plan. Papert argued that, in addition to acquiring more computers and making them more available to students and teachers alike, schools need to find ways of using computers to *change the teaching process itself*.
Sadly, Papert also pointed out that such an educational revolution would be met with resistance by none other than the education system itself. To paraphrase the book, the system must protect its own existence, and it seeks to maintain the state of that existence. It will fight any threat to either one until all avenues have been exhausted.
After all these years, "The Children's Machine" has proven to be uncannily accurate.
> You can only go up from here right?
;) It can *always* get worse! Haven't you learned anything from Murphy's Law? Douglas Adams? "Just when you think the universe can't possibly become any worse, it suddenly does." [Marvin the paranoid android]
For heaven's sake, man, don't say that!!
> Not being a Sony apologist here, but really, the batteries are junk?
...how many users does it take? How many users have to get fried by exploding laptop batteries before it becomes wrong, hmmm? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? A MILLION??
Okay, let's give you the benefit of the doubt.
> The Apple recall involved 2 minor injuries in 9 complaints out of 1.8 million batteries. Anyone care to shine a light on any other industry and look for a product this reliable? Toasters, anyone?
You do realize what you've done, don't you? It's a technique that's sometimes known as "minimizing by contrast" -- making someone's misdeeds seem trivial or less serious by putting them in sharp contrast with others who've committed far worse actions.
What disturbs and outrages me (and I'd guess many other Slashdotters here as well) is that Dell, Apple, etc. knew of the exploding battery defect *and chose to disregard it*. I own a laptop myself -- you think I shouldn't worry after hearing of other users getting so many ounces of extremely hot lithium-ion battery material *exploded onto their laps/hands/faces*? If it happens to just one user, that's tragic; if it happens to more users, THAT IS FUCKING INEXCUSABLE.
Of course, one could argue, "But that's still so few people harmed by this! It's only about nine people, mister!" One could argue that. Now tell that to the person who actually had a laptop battery explode on them....
I'm also reminded of the Star Trek movie "Insurrection" in which Captain Picard confronts a Star Fleet admiral who is conspiring to forcibly remove an entire colony in order to exploit their planet's energy field.
Admiral Dougherty: Jean-Luc, it's only 600 people.
Captain Picard: How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong, hmmm?
So, then