Ever heard the old saying, "when the cat's away the mice will play"? My version of that proverb is, "people will pull whatever crap they think they can get away with" (feel free to substitute your favorite four-letter word for "crap").
In an ideal, healthy government, no one would commit unethical or illegal acts because *they'd be too afraid of getting caught*. Such a government would have:
- transparency (all government activities documented as public record) - self-correction (ethics watchdog agencies armed with punitive powers, as well as the checks-and-balances system that separates branches of government) - accountability (everyone in government must answer to their superiors *and* ultimately to the people)
I know I'm probably oversimplifying things here, but you get the idea.
However, as one Slashdotter wryly noted in his sig, "If your theory differs from practice, your theory is *wrong*." In practice our US government has:
- secrecy (much of our military and intelligence operations are cloaked under the "Classified" umbrella, and the Dubya regime is the most secretive and insular administration ever to occupy the White House) - lack of self-policing (the recent exposures of federal mischief were brought about by parties outside of the US government; Tom DeLay was brought down by a Texas court instead of a federal investigation; Rummy remains Secretary of Defense despite proof that he made grossly inaccurate and possibly dishonest claims about the current Iraq war) - no accountability to the people (all three branches of federal government are controlled by the Republican party, which answers only to wealthy corporate interests and the radical Religious Right)
Since we know that the American fundies are hellbent on ramming their version of morality down everyone else's throats, it's unsurprising that the US government is favoring legislation that enforces a "thought police" state of officially sanctioned censorship. The Religious Right would win their holy war against pr0n, while the feds would gain an enormously powerful tool -- content control of the Internet (a la the Great Firewall of China).
George Orwell would be rolling in his grave more times than a rotisserie chicken....:-(
"Not sure where you are going with the anti-virus, since Microsoft has never released one."
Well, technically they *did* -- it was MSAV.EXE for DOS 6.x/Win3.x before they unleashed the monster that was Win9x....
Problem was, MSAV was such a worthless piece of shit that you would have to be insane to rely on it for protection against viruses. Not a good omen for WinVistaAV (or whatever the hell they're going to call the Brave New Anti-Virus) -- but then again it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Every time M$ jumps into some new category of application they almost invariably manage to fuck it up for everyone.
Damn, but this topic gives me chills up the spine....
I grew up during the 70s and 80s when video games first came out and exploded onto the US. I was a complete addict (like so many other kids at the time) and it's amazing I didn't flunk high school.
What probably saved me was my discovery of computer programming, helped along enormously by my well-off father (a doctor) who got me an Apple//c for Christmas. Well, okay -- at first it was just another method for indulging in my video game habit, but eventually my interest in programming outweighed my desire to waste massive amounts of time on games.
Note that I said "outweighed" and not "eliminated". I'm *still* a game addict, and probably always will be. However, I've seen first hand the damage that addiction can wreak on people's lives; in college I watched computer science students blow away their academic careers on IRC and MUD, and learned to steer clear of both.
Nowadays we have WoW (and EverCrack before that!) to contend with. My ex-girlfriend got hooked on NeoPets, and I saw her ignore *everything* -- her family, her nursing school program, her job -- just so she could stay logged on for "just a little longer" while she nurtured her NeoPets, chased NeoPoints, hustled NeoAuctions, and played NeoGames. She even asked me to log on to her NeoPets account in order to keep racking up NeoPoints when she couldn't be at the computer! In response, I told her that her account was her business, not mine, and I wouldn't be a party to what she was doing to herself.
What I *really* wanted to tell her was to get off the freaking NeoPets site and "Get A Life!!!" -- but I strongly suspect that such words would (and always will) fall on deaf ears. We are what we choose to be, and the problem with many people is that they make choices without thinking about them or even recognizing them. Unless addicts realize this, they'll happily sail along the same course, running on autopilot until their supplies run out, or the ship sinks, or they crash right into hard reality -- and even then they may not wake up and open their eyes.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to playing Pharaoh. Yes, my city treasury is loaded with money! My armies destroy all invaders!! The people of ancient Egypt love me!!! WOO HOO!!!
Well, gee...I guess this means we can kiss goodbye all those third-party game strategy books, mission guides, and walkthroughs *in existence* -- since all of them are apparently now fodder for copyright lawsuits.
Seriously, are the guys at Blizzard now completely fucked in the head? Have they become *that* much of an asshole colony?? What in hell are they thinking?!? If someone writes anything -- a news article, a critical review, or a how-to guide -- about a program, *they're in violation of copyright law* ????
Some of the best game guides I've ever read were written by third parties; many excellent game walkthroughs are available for free off of websites. Some game FAQs were essentially written en masse by fans who pooled their collective playing experience for the benefit of everyone. AND BLIZZARD WANTS TO OUTLAW THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM?!?
Blizzard, I used to think you were OK. Now I say KMA, GTH, and FOAD.
I vaguely remember someone proposing/using the terms "bio-agent" or "proto-organism" to describe a virus, for the simple reason that a virus doesn't have all the necessary characteristics to qualify it as "alive".
BTW, things do not have to be alive to undergo evolution; they only need to go through a process of staged "propagation" (i.e.: reproduction, even if done by outside means) where each successive stage or "generation" is related to the previous ones yet may exhibit new and unique qualities. Computer engineering and software design are obvious examples: each new wave of technology resembles the older ones yet is markedly different, and if you go *way* back to the earlier generations the contrast is shocking. We're simply accustomed to using the word "evolution" primarily in regards to living creatures, when in fact it applies to other things equally as well.
Yes, and you do know *how* Saddam Hussein rose to power as Iraq's dictator, don't you? It's because he was sponsored by the CIA!
>begin excerpt Saddam key in early CIA plot By RICHARD SALE UPI Intelligence Correspondent Posted on 4/10/2003 7:30:00 PM -0400... While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."
According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."
In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."
According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.... One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."
In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."
But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get h
There's just one little problem with that bit of wishful thinking: IT HAS ALREADY FAILED TO STOP 9/11 FROM REPEATING.
In case you're wondering, I'm referring to the 3/11 attacks that struck Spain shortly before its 2004 elections. Terrorist bombs detonated on four separate commuter trains, killing over 200 people and seriously injuring over 1000. The horrific devastation of those attacks was matched only by the brazen dishonesty of the then-current Aznar government, which attempted to scapegoat the Basque separatists as the culprits -- when in fact it was al-Qaeda Muslim extremists who were the most likely suspects:
>begin excerpt Madrid blasts: The Islamic connection Posted on the BBC News website Tuesday, 30 March, 2004, 13:33 GMT 14:33 UK = = = Spain's outgoing government paid heavily at the polls for the speed at which it moved to blame the Basque separatist group Eta for the Madrid train bombings.
In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 attacks, Jose Maria Aznar's government insisted that Eta -- with its history of blasts timed to coincide with elections -- was its prime suspect.
But evidence was simultaneously emerging of an Islamic link, and the evidence has since hardened up that [Islamic] militants -- perhaps with connections to al-Qaeda -- might be behind the attacks.
More than a dozen people have been held on various provisional charges in connection with the attacks, including 10 Moroccans, two Indians and two Spaniards -- one of Syrian origin.
Moroccan co-operation - - - It was the arrests of five men two days after the blasts that gave the first concrete basis to speculation that Islamic militants were behind the attacks.
The five were detained in connection with a mobile phone which was found inside a bag containing explosives that failed to go off.
Investigators believe mobile phones were used to detonate 10 bombs hidden in backpacks on the four trains which were targeted.
One of the men being held Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan, has been monitored by the Spanish authorities for some time.
He is alleged to have links with a man known as Abu Dahdah -- identified in a judicial indictment last Autumn as the suspected leader of an al-Qaeda cell in Spain.
The Moroccan authorities have also been closely involved in the investigation, amid speculation of a connection between the Madrid blasts and those in Casablanca last year.
Forty-five people, including 12 suicide bombers, died in the Casablanca blasts, which the Moroccan authorities blamed on an ultra-conservative Islamist group said to have links with al-Qaeda.
One of the targets was a Spanish cultural centre, where four Spaniards were among the dead. >end excerpt
It is important to note that Spain was at the time a member of the so-called "Coalition of The Willing" -- those few nations that either didn't oppose or outright supported America's current military invasion/occupation of Iraq. Since the whole point of Dubya's "War on Terrorism" was to prevent another terrorist strike on the same order as that of 9/11, news of the 3/11 attacks was potentially damning evidence that the war had failed to do just that. Thus Aznar tried to justify Spain's involvement in the Iraq war -- which had been started in the first place by a pack of lies -- with yet another lie.
Soon after 3/11, the people of Spain went to the election polls and voted Aznar and his cronies out of office.
Okay... so if the current American military occupation in Iraq was *not* socially acceptable, the elected government of the U.S.A. would have opposed it!
"Socially acceptable" is PRECISELY why human progress occurs in spite of powerful opponents -- the elimination of slavery, voting power for women, organized labor, the civil rights movement. The Prohibition failed because people refused to buy the government-enforced idea that drinking alcohol was *not* "socially acceptable".
Well, gee, Bill Gates -- I guess I better throw away all these removable hard drive caddies *and* my redundant backup hard drives as well!
Ever since the first time a hard drive failure left my PC stranded without a prayer, I swore I'd never let something like that render my system unusable. I've invested quite a lot of money in hard drive mobile docks, and have installed them in all the computers (now six!) that I own. I've also changed my hard drive purchasing strategy: whenever I feel the need to get a new drive, I always try to buy two of the same size -- one drive being used purely as a backup copy of the other, and mirroring software making the backup drive *a completely working, bootable copy of the original*.
So how many hard drives do I own? Let's see.... - An old Samsung 2Gb with Win 3.11 installed - Another Samsung, 4Gb with WfW 3.1 (but don't use it much) - An IBM 2Gb with OS/2 Warp (hey, it's stable as hell) - A Maxtor 8Gb with Win95B (my most heavily used drive) - A Maxtor 17Gb with Win98SE (it used to have WinMe, but that OS sucked worse) - A Seagate 2Gb with Win98SE (used as a "crash test dummy" or an "iron box" drive, for installing highly unstable or otherwise suspicious software) - A Seagate 17Gb formatted as a single FAT32 partition, non-bootable (serves as a general archive for documents, program installers, disc images, etc.) - A Maxtor 1Gb formatted as a single FAT16 partition, non-bootable (works as an all-purpose scratch drive)
Now multiply the above by two (because I have backup drives!) and add a few more testbench drives (for trial installations of new PC configurations). Oh, and at least two sets of hard drives were "migrated" from older to newer systems (because the previous machines had bit the dust).
So, since every single one of my OSes is an OEM version, Microsoft's Windows licensing policy makes me A FRIGGIN' SOFTWARE PIRATE?!
Bill Gates, fuck you *and* the jet you flew in on.
Re:You obviously don't have children
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd say this: you obviously don't wrestle with corporate management critters.
Corporations are always looking to get more money while slashing costs every which way. It's the reason that companies change the packaging so you end up buying slightly less product at the same price, replace live customer service reps with "automated phone menu systems", shut down factories and lay off masses of workers when the books still show a healthy profit, and apply for -- and receive -- goverment subsidies for business (read: welfare for the rich).
I remember working part-time at Radio Shack (when it was still somewhat tech-friendly, not the bad joke it is now) and one of our regular customers was an engineer at a local computer manufacturer. His job was to troubleshoot RFI (radio frequency interference) problems in the hardware so that the FCC wouldn't red flag a piece of equipment, so you'd think his bosses would do their best to allow him to get things done, right?
Wrong.
As he described it to me, work was a constant battle with supervisors, project team leaders, department managers, etc. to *let him fix problems*! He'd identify an RFI problem, come up with a solution that involved a cheap (maybe 5-cent) part, submit his proposal...only to have it rejected time and time again! The higher-ups didn't want solutions that involved increasing production costs, no matter how necessary they were. "It's like pulling teeth," he once said. "They'll cut corners everywhere until they turn a square into a circle."
The sad fact is, this is business as usual. At Radio Shack, I saw our rock-solid Tandy machines phased out in favor of Packard-Bell brand PCs, and we quickly found out how flaky those damn things were. I swore that they were the worst designed, misengineered pieces of crap I had ever had the displeasure of dealing with...until (much later) eMachines came along. Those things didn't even deserve to be called computers: they should have been labelled "Crash And Burn Machine -- Use At Your Own Risk". The power supply would burn out in a matter of months, and your expansion options for one of those systems were pathetic. Oh, and did I mention that the CPUs in some of those eMachines *didn't* have a proper cooling unit? Instead, they'd have just a heatsink with one of those plastic "ducts" that led to the power supply -- hope the internal fan doesn't choke on you!
What really takes the cake is that, some years after that, I was asked by a coworker to troubleshoot her Compaq. It seemed that her system was plagued with problems, and she heard that I was reasonably familiar with "those computer things." When I came over to her house to check it out, I was in for a shock: here was a Compaq machine, sporting a brand name I respected, which looked inside and out like another wretched eMachine! Puny, claustrophobic case, brain-damaged motherboard with a scarcity of expansion slots, a way-underrated power supply (180W, as I recall) and -- you guessed it -- no cooling fan on the processor! It was horrifying, and when I explained to my coworker all the design flaws and cost-cutting measures in her PC she was not very pleased, either.
I can't stress this enough: corporations do not care about anything -- product quality, popular concern, public safety -- if it interferes with the bottom line! Even ethics and law don't matter, if a company thinks it can get away with lying and stealing...or is that advertising and acquisition? So what's the point of "letting the market decide" an important social and economic issue if the corporations habitually manipulate and deceive everyone?
If you still want to play the apologist for corporations, fine. You've got your opinion, and you can have it...all to yourself. As a wise man once said to me, however, "Opinions are like butts. Everyone's got one."
Yes, email and IM can be enormously useful for a small department or organization. We had an official electronic mailing list at the college radio station I used to work at, and it did wonders to be able to contact virtually *everyone and anyone* involved with the station, even if you had no idea what their phone numbers were or what their physical location was (on campus, in town, in the county, in the state, etc.) -- I still remember how cool it was when I emailed my transcribed minutes of one of the staff meetings, knowing everyone would have access to it. No need for running printouts or messing with copy machines: just select the file and click it on its way. Definitely a win.
That said, I have my reservations about IM, as I once had a very annoying experience with a fellow student who was already at a machine when I arrived at the computer lab:
Me (recognizing classmate): "Hey, dude, I need to ask you--"
Classmate (tapping on keyboard, eyes glued to monitor): "Get on the chat."
Me: "But I just need to--"
Classmate: "Get on the chat."
Me: "It'll only take a min--"
Classmate: "Get on the chat."
Me: "But *I'm right here*."
Classmate: "Get on the chat."
Me: "I'M STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU!!"
Needless to say, I'm not exactly sympathetic with this CPA phenomenon....
To put it bluntly, Microsoft has absolutely no regard for open, broadly supported standards because they hinder its program of total, absolute domination of the computer markets. Lest you think I'm just a ranting anti-Gates nutjob, here's a quote from a pro-Microsoft puff piece that ran as a cover story in Time magazine: "Microsoft's goal is to have some version of Windows...running on every computer, everywhere." THAT, by definition, is a monopoly. (Wonder why that little bit of info wasn't introduced in the federal anti-trust case?...)
In fact, Microsoft can't even stick to its *own* standards! Look at how they deliberately break support for filetypes of older versions of their apps, coercing Microsoft customers into purchasing newer, costlier, fatter, and *buggier* versions -- otherwise their valuable documents would become unreadable to everyone else who climbed the perpetual upgrade ladder! Gee, thanks Bill Gates, now I have both Steve Jobs *and* you on my Hope-They-Die-A-Nasty-Death list.
Btw, this is a long-disgruntled Apple II user talking here. Steve Jobs can take his iPod *and* his iMac and shove 'em!
I agree, people will always differing opinions on form vs. function, though I suspect that debates on the subject are about as useful as arguing over the question, "Which internal organ is more important -- the heart or the brain?" My view is that technology is at its best when it looks nice *and* kicks ass.
Interestingly, the ancient Greeks had the same idea when they used the word "techne" -- the root for "technology" -- to mean "making of". The word applied to both art and craft; there was no distinction in their worldview. So, if you were going to make a vase, you would be sure to give it a nice shape and decorate it; if you were sculpting a statue, you might turn it into a support column for a building, etc. Thus, form and function belonged together in everything they made.
Uh...*right*. Ayn Rand was a genius. Check out her fan sites. Read her books. Adopt her philosophy.
Didn't one of her books, The Fountainhead, have a main character named Rourke? Wasn't he the architect who designed a building, had it built, then went and *blew it up* -- because someone had tampered with his design?? Object lesson: it's okay to destroy a building with high explosives AS LONG AS YOU'RE REALLY PISSED OFF???
Ayn Rand was a political refugee from Russia's communist revolution; she took her natural anger against what happened to her and went *way* beyond all reason. Her school of "Objectivism" is nothing but Social Darwinism under a different label -- the rich and powerful have what they have because of their natural superiority, and they are completely justified in what they do, if you buy her ideas. That's not a philosophy, that's a surrender to the worst in humanity -- unthinking, self-serving opportunistic exploitation of your fellow human beings, all for the sake of worshipping at the golden monied altar in the Church of The Dollar Sign. And the hymn they sing is a rewrite of the theme from "Billy Jack":
Go ahead and rob your neighbor Go ahead and scam a friend Do it in the name of profit You're justified in the end
It's people like you who pull stunts like the S&L crisis, Enron, and *the Sony DRM rootkit* -- all under the pretense that it's business as usual. What's amazing is that any intelligent person actually believes in this crap and will go through any amount of rhetorical contortionism to rationalize it. Just last year I saw a major newspaper (an infamously neo-con/libertarian publication) print a tribute to the life of Ayn Rand on the anniversary of her birthday, trying to paint her as some groundbreaking figure in American philosophy -- never mind the blowing up of buildings. On the other hand, I was amused at a small dig printed by one of the columnists:
"Happy birthday, Ayn Rand. I would have gotten you something, but I'm too selfish."
Reclassifying documents may not be the same as destroying them, but remember that it is illegal to possess, read or distribute classified information without the appropriate security clearance. That means anyone with a legitimately obtained copy of a now-reclassified document could be in violation of the law!
This kind of sneaky activity hardly comes as a surprise, given that the Dubya camp is among the most secretive and insular bunch ever to occupy the White House. As an American author (Robert A. Heinlein, a libertarian) once wrote, secrecy is the first weapon of tyranny.
Oh sure, you and Dubya can go ahead and justify it by saying it's in the interest of national security. Benjamin Franklin had something rather pointed to say about that -- as I recall:
"Those who would willingly give up their precious freedom for a little security deserve neither freedom nor security!"
It's a "dangerous precedent" only if you view RMS or his ideas as a threat. History is full of examples where certain ideas were considered dangerous. Just for laughs, here's a short list:
- Women should be allowed to learn to read, have the right to vote, and choose not to have sex with their husbands if they so desire. (If a man wanted sex, but his wife wasn't in the mood, too bad for her.) - Human beings have *not* always existed since the beginning of time -- rather, they must have arose from older, more primitive yet tougher ancestors, who in turn must have descended from mere animals. (No, it wasn't Darwin who first came up with this idea!) - The moon is not a perfectly smooth sphere, but has mountain ranges and "seas" like the earth. (Galileo was nearly executed by the Catholic Church for this one.) - People should question everything and choose to live their lives in their own way, instead of unthinkingly following what everyone else does. (Socrates wasn't so lucky -- he was put to death for "corrupting the youth" with this idea.)
Furthermore, if you haven't already I recommend you read "Hackers" by Steven Levy, which describes the early years of the mini/micro computer era: back then *software was not considered a commodity to be bought and sold*. It was made freely available to whoever needed it...until a young geek named Bill Gates came onto the scene and got royally pissed off at what he called "software thieves" -- and now he presides over the Microsoft empire! So if anything, RMS isn't really setting a precedent, but trying to undo the damage that commercial interest wreaked on the software community. (BTW, the book ends with RMS himself at the beginning of his "free software" crusade!)
This is a hard issue to take sides on, as there is equally valid arguments for both.
One of my first professors in college (teaching an introductory course to software engineering) talked about how people get carried away with technology until it goes too far. He illustrated this point by describing from memory a movie about college life (he couldn't remember the title) which showed a lecture hall full of students. One of the students, however, was absent -- in his/her place was a running tape recorder. The professor teaching the course keeps glancing at the tape recorder, somewhat distracted, as he gives the lecture.
As the movie progresses, we keep coming back to the same lecture course, only each time there are more and more absent students -- each leaving a tape machine to record the lectures. It's like a mundane version of "Invasion of The Body Snatchers."
Finally, in the closing scene, we return to the lecture hall for the last day of the course. We are treated to the ludicrous sight of tape recorders replacing *all* the students in the course! Meanwhile, the professor's voice delivers the final lecture, seemingly unfazed by the fact that there is no one in the hall to listen to him...and when the camera pans around to the front of the hall we discover that the professor isn't there either! He's left a tape player to deliver his lecture!
Just thought I'd throw that in, for what it's worth. (And, no -- I don't know which movie it is).
This is precisely why the recently proposed "Mission to Mars" space program is such a stupid idea. It seems that Dubya Bush (I refuse to refer to him as President, because he isn't worthy of it) was looking for a quick pick-me-up in the polls, and thought that doing something similar to what JFK did in the 1960s (launching the Space Race against the former Soviet Union) would do the trick.
Ironically, his father, Bush Sr., pulled exactly the same stunt while in the White House, announcing his intention to send a manned expedition to Mars. However, the project was quietly (and wisely) scrapped when scientists pointed out that cosmic radiation would effectively doom everyone on the Mars ship to a premature and horrible death.
Somehow, Dubya hadn't been informed of that nasty little detail -- maybe he simply neglected to read the report, sitting on his Oval Office desk with a post-it on the front labelled "Re: Mars Mission -- Read This First" ? Oh well, being President is hard....
Absolutely. The usefulness of clock speed alone as a gauge of processor performance has long been outmoded, as the nature of processors has evolved: instead of being limitted to executing one (or a fraction of one) instruction of program code per clock cycle, processors for the past 10+ years are capable of carrying out multiple instructions at once! There's also the question of bus speed, which plays an important supporting role in the system (it's possible for the processor to have a respectable clock rate, yet be hampered by a low bus speed).
It's exactly for these reasons and more that AMD gave up on using the clock rate as a descriptive label for their various CPU models, opting instead for an "equivalency" rating to give people an idea of how much processor performance they're getting -- e.g.: Athlon 3500+ (would be the same as a 3.5GHz processor *executing one instruction per cycle*).
The software that benefits the most, of course, is the kind that allows for multiple threads of execution, so it only makes sense for AMD and Intel to aggressively promote this kind of program design among developers.
Yes, Microsoft insisted that IE could not be removed from Windows (98) without breaking the whole damn thing. Of course, this not only fails the laugh test among programmers, it also has been proven to be complete B.S. by Shane Brooks:
Basically, all he did was replace a few key files in Windows 98 for the previous versions in Windows 95 (which did not have the same idiotic Windows-and-Internet-in-one Explorer design). Lo and behold, Windows 98 suddenly ran faster, worked (more) reliably, and did not screw up the installation of Netscape! What a coincidence!!
Hell, during the install process Windows 95 gave you the option of leaving IE *completely out of the picture* -- so why should it be any different now? Can you say "broken as designed"?
When I was a kid, I felt proud of the fact that I wrote my own computer programs. Learning to program didn't just teach me skills, it taught me values: Keep It Simple, Stupid!...Garbage In, Garbage Out... Never Say "That Can't Happen!"...Design Defensively -- The Butt You Save May Be Your Own... Form Must Follow Function... There Is Always Another Approach... Do More with Less... Always Have A Backup System... If The Program Crashes, IT'S NOT FINISHED. It's lying incompetents like the ones at Microsoft that make me ashamed I ever studied programming.
What's spectacularly ironic is that the music industry regularly and *massively* gives away free copies of its music...to radio stations!
I used to work at a college radio station -- first as a trainee, then worked my way up from intern to disc jockey -- and I can tell you from firsthand experience that music companies send tons of "promotional" discs and other materials to radio stations everywhere (even to small, non-commercial college broadcasters)! When I became a "sub-coordinator" for the music dept. I got to see just how much stuff was literally thrown at us:
- At least one free CD, complete with the jewel case and standard inserts - Usually one or more *additional* CDs as "promotional copies" (the first CD is meant for the station's music library, while the extras are for the program director, music director, DJs, etc. to keep as personal copies) - A "press kit" describing the artist or group's musical style, influences, biography, and usually a glossy photo or a full-size poster of the musician(s) - Many times we got random gimmick items as well, such as postcards, bumper stickers, etc. (one CD came in a mock Chinese take-out box, complete with real fortune cookies!) - And if the artist or group was coming to town...FREE CONCERT TICKETS!
Now, taking the above as a typical case for *one* music album submission to a radio station, multiply that by - all the different albums that a musical act produces - all the different acts that fall under a music company's umbrella - all the music publishing corporations in existence - and all the radio stations that operate *all over the globe* (commercial and public service)
The math is left as an exercise for the student. Suffice to say that enormous expense was (and still is) undertaken by the music industry as a necessary cost -- because they can afford it! People don't come to like musical acts they never hear of, and they won't buy music they never listen to, so what better way to expose the public to your product than by blaring it all over the airwaves? It's exposure, and it works!
That said, there is a (hilariously) dark side to all this: most of the stuff the music companies sent to us was utter crap. I'll never forget the tragically ridiculous dilemma of receiving an entire box of copies (there must have been several *dozen*) of an album titled "Everything You Love Tries to Kill You" by some random loser named Peter. Nobody liked it, the program director hated it, and no one would play it on their show. So the box of music just sat in a hallway, collecting dust. Meanwhile the issuing music company kept calling the station, asking if the albums had arrived and if we were "airing" (broadcasting) the music yet? Eventually someone threw the whole box away. Multiply *that* by all the lousy music acts out there -- it's Sturgeon's Law in action.
On the bright side, however, a couple of the DJs came up with an idea for a new radio show: they would take all the really bad CDs that were being dumped on the station and play them on a special music program, where they told the listeners that this was the junk we had to wade through in order to find the good stuff. The name of their new show?
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard the old saying, "when the cat's away the mice will play"? My version of that proverb is, "people will pull whatever crap they think they can get away with" (feel free to substitute your favorite four-letter word for "crap").
:-(
In an ideal, healthy government, no one would commit unethical or illegal acts because *they'd be too afraid of getting caught*. Such a government would have:
- transparency (all government activities documented as public record)
- self-correction (ethics watchdog agencies armed with punitive powers, as well as the checks-and-balances system that separates branches of government)
- accountability (everyone in government must answer to their superiors *and* ultimately to the people)
I know I'm probably oversimplifying things here, but you get the idea.
However, as one Slashdotter wryly noted in his sig, "If your theory differs from practice, your theory is *wrong*." In practice our US government has:
- secrecy (much of our military and intelligence operations are cloaked under the "Classified" umbrella, and the Dubya regime is the most secretive and insular administration ever to occupy the White House)
- lack of self-policing (the recent exposures of federal mischief were brought about by parties outside of the US government; Tom DeLay was brought down by a Texas court instead of a federal investigation; Rummy remains Secretary of Defense despite proof that he made grossly inaccurate and possibly dishonest claims about the current Iraq war)
- no accountability to the people (all three branches of federal government are controlled by the Republican party, which answers only to wealthy corporate interests and the radical Religious Right)
Since we know that the American fundies are hellbent on ramming their version of morality down everyone else's throats, it's unsurprising that the US government is favoring legislation that enforces a "thought police" state of officially sanctioned censorship. The Religious Right would win their holy war against pr0n, while the feds would gain an enormously powerful tool -- content control of the Internet (a la the Great Firewall of China).
George Orwell would be rolling in his grave more times than a rotisserie chicken....
"Not sure where you are going with the anti-virus, since Microsoft has never released one."
Well, technically they *did* -- it was MSAV.EXE for DOS 6.x/Win3.x before they unleashed the monster that was Win9x....
Problem was, MSAV was such a worthless piece of shit that you would have to be insane to rely on it for protection against viruses. Not a good omen for WinVistaAV (or whatever the hell they're going to call the Brave New Anti-Virus) -- but then again it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Every time M$ jumps into some new category of application they almost invariably manage to fuck it up for everyone.
Damn, but this topic gives me chills up the spine....
//c for Christmas. Well, okay -- at first it was just another method for indulging in my video game habit, but eventually my interest in programming outweighed my desire to waste massive amounts of time on games.
....barely.
I grew up during the 70s and 80s when video games first came out and exploded onto the US. I was a complete addict (like so many other kids at the time) and it's amazing I didn't flunk high school.
What probably saved me was my discovery of computer programming, helped along enormously by my well-off father (a doctor) who got me an Apple
Note that I said "outweighed" and not "eliminated". I'm *still* a game addict, and probably always will be. However, I've seen first hand the damage that addiction can wreak on people's lives; in college I watched computer science students blow away their academic careers on IRC and MUD, and learned to steer clear of both.
Nowadays we have WoW (and EverCrack before that!) to contend with. My ex-girlfriend got hooked on NeoPets, and I saw her ignore *everything* -- her family, her nursing school program, her job -- just so she could stay logged on for "just a little longer" while she nurtured her NeoPets, chased NeoPoints, hustled NeoAuctions, and played NeoGames. She even asked me to log on to her NeoPets account in order to keep racking up NeoPoints when she couldn't be at the computer! In response, I told her that her account was her business, not mine, and I wouldn't be a party to what she was doing to herself.
What I *really* wanted to tell her was to get off the freaking NeoPets site and "Get A Life!!!" -- but I strongly suspect that such words would (and always will) fall on deaf ears. We are what we choose to be, and the problem with many people is that they make choices without thinking about them or even recognizing them. Unless addicts realize this, they'll happily sail along the same course, running on autopilot until their supplies run out, or the ship sinks, or they crash right into hard reality -- and even then they may not wake up and open their eyes.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to playing Pharaoh. Yes, my city treasury is loaded with money! My armies destroy all invaders!! The people of ancient Egypt love me!!! WOO HOO!!!
Btw, she did graduate nursing school
Well, gee ...I guess this means we can kiss goodbye all those third-party game strategy books, mission guides, and walkthroughs *in existence* -- since all of them are apparently now fodder for copyright lawsuits.
Seriously, are the guys at Blizzard now completely fucked in the head? Have they become *that* much of an asshole colony?? What in hell are they thinking?!? If someone writes anything -- a news article, a critical review, or a how-to guide -- about a program, *they're in violation of copyright law* ????
Some of the best game guides I've ever read were written by third parties; many excellent game walkthroughs are available for free off of websites. Some game FAQs were essentially written en masse by fans who pooled their collective playing experience for the benefit of everyone. AND BLIZZARD WANTS TO OUTLAW THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM?!?
Blizzard, I used to think you were OK. Now I say KMA, GTH, and FOAD.
I vaguely remember someone proposing/using the terms "bio-agent" or "proto-organism" to describe a virus, for the simple reason that a virus doesn't have all the necessary characteristics to qualify it as "alive".
BTW, things do not have to be alive to undergo evolution; they only need to go through a process of staged "propagation" (i.e.: reproduction, even if done by outside means) where each successive stage or "generation" is related to the previous ones yet may exhibit new and unique qualities. Computer engineering and software design are obvious examples: each new wave of technology resembles the older ones yet is markedly different, and if you go *way* back to the earlier generations the contrast is shocking. We're simply accustomed to using the word "evolution" primarily in regards to living creatures, when in fact it applies to other things equally as well.
Yes, and you do know *how* Saddam Hussein rose to power as Iraq's dictator, don't you? It's because he was sponsored by the CIA!
...
...
>begin excerpt
Saddam key in early CIA plot
By RICHARD SALE
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
Posted on 4/10/2003 7:30:00 PM -0400
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."
According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."
In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."
According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."
In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."
But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get h
There's just one little problem with that bit of wishful thinking: IT HAS ALREADY FAILED TO STOP 9/11 FROM REPEATING.
In case you're wondering, I'm referring to the 3/11 attacks that struck Spain shortly before its 2004 elections. Terrorist bombs detonated on four separate commuter trains, killing over 200 people and seriously injuring over 1000. The horrific devastation of those attacks was matched only by the brazen dishonesty of the then-current Aznar government, which attempted to scapegoat the Basque separatists as the culprits -- when in fact it was al-Qaeda Muslim extremists who were the most likely suspects:
>begin excerpt
Madrid blasts: The Islamic connection
Posted on the BBC News website
Tuesday, 30 March, 2004, 13:33 GMT 14:33 UK
= = =
Spain's outgoing government paid heavily at the polls for the speed at which it moved to blame the Basque separatist group Eta for the Madrid train bombings.
In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 attacks, Jose Maria Aznar's government insisted that Eta -- with its history of blasts timed to coincide with elections -- was its prime suspect.
But evidence was simultaneously emerging of an Islamic link, and the evidence has since hardened up that [Islamic] militants -- perhaps with connections to al-Qaeda -- might be behind the attacks.
More than a dozen people have been held on various provisional charges in connection with the attacks, including 10 Moroccans, two Indians and two Spaniards -- one of Syrian origin.
Moroccan co-operation
- - -
It was the arrests of five men two days after the blasts that gave the first concrete basis to speculation that Islamic militants were behind the attacks.
The five were detained in connection with a mobile phone which was found inside a bag containing explosives that failed to go off.
Investigators believe mobile phones were used to detonate 10 bombs hidden in backpacks on the four trains which were targeted.
One of the men being held Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan, has been monitored by the Spanish authorities for some time.
He is alleged to have links with a man known as Abu Dahdah -- identified in a judicial indictment last Autumn as the suspected leader of an al-Qaeda cell in Spain.
The Moroccan authorities have also been closely involved in the investigation, amid speculation of a connection between the Madrid blasts and those in Casablanca last year.
Forty-five people, including 12 suicide bombers, died in the Casablanca blasts, which the Moroccan authorities blamed on an ultra-conservative Islamist group said to have links with al-Qaeda.
One of the targets was a Spanish cultural centre, where four Spaniards were among the dead.
>end excerpt
It is important to note that Spain was at the time a member of the so-called "Coalition of The Willing" -- those few nations that either didn't oppose or outright supported America's current military invasion/occupation of Iraq. Since the whole point of Dubya's "War on Terrorism" was to prevent another terrorist strike on the same order as that of 9/11, news of the 3/11 attacks was potentially damning evidence that the war had failed to do just that. Thus Aznar tried to justify Spain's involvement in the Iraq war -- which had been started in the first place by a pack of lies -- with yet another lie.
Soon after 3/11, the people of Spain went to the election polls and voted Aznar and his cronies out of office.
Okay... so if the current American military occupation in Iraq was *not* socially acceptable, the elected government of the U.S.A. would have opposed it!
"Socially acceptable" is PRECISELY why human progress occurs in spite of powerful opponents -- the elimination of slavery, voting power for women, organized labor, the civil rights movement. The Prohibition failed because people refused to buy the government-enforced idea that drinking alcohol was *not* "socially acceptable".
Get a clue, fascist.
Well, gee, Bill Gates -- I guess I better throw away all these removable hard drive caddies *and* my redundant backup hard drives as well!
Ever since the first time a hard drive failure left my PC stranded without a prayer, I swore I'd never let something like that render my system unusable. I've invested quite a lot of money in hard drive mobile docks, and have installed them in all the computers (now six!) that I own. I've also changed my hard drive purchasing strategy: whenever I feel the need to get a new drive, I always try to buy two of the same size -- one drive being used purely as a backup copy of the other, and mirroring software making the backup drive *a completely working, bootable copy of the original*.
So how many hard drives do I own? Let's see....
- An old Samsung 2Gb with Win 3.11 installed
- Another Samsung, 4Gb with WfW 3.1 (but don't use it much)
- An IBM 2Gb with OS/2 Warp (hey, it's stable as hell)
- A Maxtor 8Gb with Win95B (my most heavily used drive)
- A Maxtor 17Gb with Win98SE (it used to have WinMe, but that OS sucked worse)
- A Seagate 2Gb with Win98SE (used as a "crash test dummy" or an "iron box" drive, for installing highly unstable or otherwise suspicious software)
- A Seagate 17Gb formatted as a single FAT32 partition, non-bootable (serves as a general archive for documents, program installers, disc images, etc.)
- A Maxtor 1Gb formatted as a single FAT16 partition, non-bootable (works as an all-purpose scratch drive)
Now multiply the above by two (because I have backup drives!) and add a few more testbench drives (for trial installations of new PC configurations). Oh, and at least two sets of hard drives were "migrated" from older to newer systems (because the previous machines had bit the dust).
So, since every single one of my OSes is an OEM version, Microsoft's Windows licensing policy makes me A FRIGGIN' SOFTWARE PIRATE?!
Bill Gates, fuck you *and* the jet you flew in on.
I'd say this: you obviously don't wrestle with corporate management critters.
...only to have it rejected time and time again! The higher-ups didn't want solutions that involved increasing production costs, no matter how necessary they were. "It's like pulling teeth," he once said. "They'll cut corners everywhere until they turn a square into a circle."
...until (much later) eMachines came along. Those things didn't even deserve to be called computers: they should have been labelled "Crash And Burn Machine -- Use At Your Own Risk". The power supply would burn out in a matter of months, and your expansion options for one of those systems were pathetic. Oh, and did I mention that the CPUs in some of those eMachines *didn't* have a proper cooling unit? Instead, they'd have just a heatsink with one of those plastic "ducts" that led to the power supply -- hope the internal fan doesn't choke on you!
...or is that advertising and acquisition? So what's the point of "letting the market decide" an important social and economic issue if the corporations habitually manipulate and deceive everyone?
...all to yourself. As a wise man once said to me, however, "Opinions are like butts. Everyone's got one."
Corporations are always looking to get more money while slashing costs every which way. It's the reason that companies change the packaging so you end up buying slightly less product at the same price, replace live customer service reps with "automated phone menu systems", shut down factories and lay off masses of workers when the books still show a healthy profit, and apply for -- and receive -- goverment subsidies for business (read: welfare for the rich).
I remember working part-time at Radio Shack (when it was still somewhat tech-friendly, not the bad joke it is now) and one of our regular customers was an engineer at a local computer manufacturer. His job was to troubleshoot RFI (radio frequency interference) problems in the hardware so that the FCC wouldn't red flag a piece of equipment, so you'd think his bosses would do their best to allow him to get things done, right?
Wrong.
As he described it to me, work was a constant battle with supervisors, project team leaders, department managers, etc. to *let him fix problems*! He'd identify an RFI problem, come up with a solution that involved a cheap (maybe 5-cent) part, submit his proposal
The sad fact is, this is business as usual. At Radio Shack, I saw our rock-solid Tandy machines phased out in favor of Packard-Bell brand PCs, and we quickly found out how flaky those damn things were. I swore that they were the worst designed, misengineered pieces of crap I had ever had the displeasure of dealing with
What really takes the cake is that, some years after that, I was asked by a coworker to troubleshoot her Compaq. It seemed that her system was plagued with problems, and she heard that I was reasonably familiar with "those computer things." When I came over to her house to check it out, I was in for a shock: here was a Compaq machine, sporting a brand name I respected, which looked inside and out like another wretched eMachine! Puny, claustrophobic case, brain-damaged motherboard with a scarcity of expansion slots, a way-underrated power supply (180W, as I recall) and -- you guessed it -- no cooling fan on the processor! It was horrifying, and when I explained to my coworker all the design flaws and cost-cutting measures in her PC she was not very pleased, either.
I can't stress this enough: corporations do not care about anything -- product quality, popular concern, public safety -- if it interferes with the bottom line! Even ethics and law don't matter, if a company thinks it can get away with lying and stealing
If you still want to play the apologist for corporations, fine. You've got your opinion, and you can have it
Yes, email and IM can be enormously useful for a small department or organization. We had an official electronic mailing list at the college radio station I used to work at, and it did wonders to be able to contact virtually *everyone and anyone* involved with the station, even if you had no idea what their phone numbers were or what their physical location was (on campus, in town, in the county, in the state, etc.) -- I still remember how cool it was when I emailed my transcribed minutes of one of the staff meetings, knowing everyone would have access to it. No need for running printouts or messing with copy machines: just select the file and click it on its way. Definitely a win.
That said, I have my reservations about IM, as I once had a very annoying experience with a fellow student who was already at a machine when I arrived at the computer lab:
Me (recognizing classmate): "Hey, dude, I need to ask you--"
Classmate (tapping on keyboard, eyes glued to monitor): "Get on the chat."
Me: "But I just need to--"
Classmate: "Get on the chat."
Me: "It'll only take a min--"
Classmate: "Get on the chat."
Me: "But *I'm right here*."
Classmate: "Get on the chat."
Me: "I'M STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU!!"
Needless to say, I'm not exactly sympathetic with this CPA phenomenon....
Perhaps this article will clarify Microsoft's view of Java for you:
...running on every computer, everywhere." THAT, by definition, is a monopoly. (Wonder why that little bit of info wasn't introduced in the federal anti-trust case?...)
http://news.com.com/2009-1001-215854.html
Also, this document describes Microsoft's apparent (lack of) regard for HTML, of all things:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/
Oh, hell -- just go to this website, read 'em and weep:
http://www.microsuck.com/
To put it bluntly, Microsoft has absolutely no regard for open, broadly supported standards because they hinder its program of total, absolute domination of the computer markets. Lest you think I'm just a ranting anti-Gates nutjob, here's a quote from a pro-Microsoft puff piece that ran as a cover story in Time magazine: "Microsoft's goal is to have some version of Windows
In fact, Microsoft can't even stick to its *own* standards! Look at how they deliberately break support for filetypes of older versions of their apps, coercing Microsoft customers into purchasing newer, costlier, fatter, and *buggier* versions -- otherwise their valuable documents would become unreadable to everyone else who climbed the perpetual upgrade ladder! Gee, thanks Bill Gates, now I have both Steve Jobs *and* you on my Hope-They-Die-A-Nasty-Death list.
Btw, this is a long-disgruntled Apple II user talking here. Steve Jobs can take his iPod *and* his iMac and shove 'em!
I agree, people will always differing opinions on form vs. function, though I suspect that debates on the subject are about as useful as arguing over the question, "Which internal organ is more important -- the heart or the brain?" My view is that technology is at its best when it looks nice *and* kicks ass.
Interestingly, the ancient Greeks had the same idea when they used the word "techne" -- the root for "technology" -- to mean "making of". The word applied to both art and craft; there was no distinction in their worldview. So, if you were going to make a vase, you would be sure to give it a nice shape and decorate it; if you were sculpting a statue, you might turn it into a support column for a building, etc. Thus, form and function belonged together in everything they made.
Uh ...*right*. Ayn Rand was a genius. Check out her fan sites. Read her books. Adopt her philosophy.
Didn't one of her books, The Fountainhead, have a main character named Rourke? Wasn't he the architect who designed a building, had it built, then went and *blew it up* -- because someone had tampered with his design?? Object lesson: it's okay to destroy a building with high explosives AS LONG AS YOU'RE REALLY PISSED OFF???
Ayn Rand was a political refugee from Russia's communist revolution; she took her natural anger against what happened to her and went *way* beyond all reason. Her school of "Objectivism" is nothing but Social Darwinism under a different label -- the rich and powerful have what they have because of their natural superiority, and they are completely justified in what they do, if you buy her ideas. That's not a philosophy, that's a surrender to the worst in humanity -- unthinking, self-serving opportunistic exploitation of your fellow human beings, all for the sake of worshipping at the golden monied altar in the Church of The Dollar Sign. And the hymn they sing is a rewrite of the theme from "Billy Jack":
Go ahead and rob your neighbor
Go ahead and scam a friend
Do it in the name of profit
You're justified in the end
It's people like you who pull stunts like the S&L crisis, Enron, and *the Sony DRM rootkit* -- all under the pretense that it's business as usual. What's amazing is that any intelligent person actually believes in this crap and will go through any amount of rhetorical contortionism to rationalize it. Just last year I saw a major newspaper (an infamously neo-con/libertarian publication) print a tribute to the life of Ayn Rand on the anniversary of her birthday, trying to paint her as some groundbreaking figure in American philosophy -- never mind the blowing up of buildings. On the other hand, I was amused at a small dig printed by one of the columnists:
"Happy birthday, Ayn Rand. I would have gotten you something, but I'm too selfish."
Dubya and Rove, et al, aren't burning books simply beacuse they have other tools at their disposal:
http://www.afplwatch.com/OldLL2006February.html
Reclassifying documents may not be the same as destroying them, but remember that it is illegal to possess, read or distribute classified information without the appropriate security clearance. That means anyone with a legitimately obtained copy of a now-reclassified document could be in violation of the law!
This kind of sneaky activity hardly comes as a surprise, given that the Dubya camp is among the most secretive and insular bunch ever to occupy the White House. As an American author (Robert A. Heinlein, a libertarian) once wrote, secrecy is the first weapon of tyranny.
Oh sure, you and Dubya can go ahead and justify it by saying it's in the interest of national security. Benjamin Franklin had something rather pointed to say about that -- as I recall:
"Those who would willingly give up their precious freedom for a little security deserve neither freedom nor security!"
It's a "dangerous precedent" only if you view RMS or his ideas as a threat. History is full of examples where certain ideas were considered dangerous. Just for laughs, here's a short list:
...until a young geek named Bill Gates came onto the scene and got royally pissed off at what he called "software thieves" -- and now he presides over the Microsoft empire! So if anything, RMS isn't really setting a precedent, but trying to undo the damage that commercial interest wreaked on the software community. (BTW, the book ends with RMS himself at the beginning of his "free software" crusade!)
- Women should be allowed to learn to read, have the right to vote, and choose not to have sex with their husbands if they so desire. (If a man wanted sex, but his wife wasn't in the mood, too bad for her.)
- Human beings have *not* always existed since the beginning of time -- rather, they must have arose from older, more primitive yet tougher ancestors, who in turn must have descended from mere animals. (No, it wasn't Darwin who first came up with this idea!)
- The moon is not a perfectly smooth sphere, but has mountain ranges and "seas" like the earth. (Galileo was nearly executed by the Catholic Church for this one.)
- People should question everything and choose to live their lives in their own way, instead of unthinkingly following what everyone else does. (Socrates wasn't so lucky -- he was put to death for "corrupting the youth" with this idea.)
Furthermore, if you haven't already I recommend you read "Hackers" by Steven Levy, which describes the early years of the mini/micro computer era: back then *software was not considered a commodity to be bought and sold*. It was made freely available to whoever needed it
This is a hard issue to take sides on, as there is equally valid arguments for both.
...and when the camera pans around to the front of the hall we discover that the professor isn't there either! He's left a tape player to deliver his lecture!
One of my first professors in college (teaching an introductory course to software engineering) talked about how people get carried away with technology until it goes too far. He illustrated this point by describing from memory a movie about college life (he couldn't remember the title) which showed a lecture hall full of students. One of the students, however, was absent -- in his/her place was a running tape recorder. The professor teaching the course keeps glancing at the tape recorder, somewhat distracted, as he gives the lecture.
As the movie progresses, we keep coming back to the same lecture course, only each time there are more and more absent students -- each leaving a tape machine to record the lectures. It's like a mundane version of "Invasion of The Body Snatchers."
Finally, in the closing scene, we return to the lecture hall for the last day of the course. We are treated to the ludicrous sight of tape recorders replacing *all* the students in the course! Meanwhile, the professor's voice delivers the final lecture, seemingly unfazed by the fact that there is no one in the hall to listen to him
Just thought I'd throw that in, for what it's worth. (And, no -- I don't know which movie it is).
This is precisely why the recently proposed "Mission to Mars" space program is such a stupid idea. It seems that Dubya Bush (I refuse to refer to him as President, because he isn't worthy of it) was looking for a quick pick-me-up in the polls, and thought that doing something similar to what JFK did in the 1960s (launching the Space Race against the former Soviet Union) would do the trick.
Ironically, his father, Bush Sr., pulled exactly the same stunt while in the White House, announcing his intention to send a manned expedition to Mars. However, the project was quietly (and wisely) scrapped when scientists pointed out that cosmic radiation would effectively doom everyone on the Mars ship to a premature and horrible death.
Somehow, Dubya hadn't been informed of that nasty little detail -- maybe he simply neglected to read the report, sitting on his Oval Office desk with a post-it on the front labelled "Re: Mars Mission -- Read This First" ? Oh well, being President is hard....
I'd be laughing if I wasn't so disgusted.
Absolutely. The usefulness of clock speed alone as a gauge of processor performance has long been outmoded, as the nature of processors has evolved: instead of being limitted to executing one (or a fraction of one) instruction of program code per clock cycle, processors for the past 10+ years are capable of carrying out multiple instructions at once! There's also the question of bus speed, which plays an important supporting role in the system (it's possible for the processor to have a respectable clock rate, yet be hampered by a low bus speed).
It's exactly for these reasons and more that AMD gave up on using the clock rate as a descriptive label for their various CPU models, opting instead for an "equivalency" rating to give people an idea of how much processor performance they're getting -- e.g.: Athlon 3500+ (would be the same as a 3.5GHz processor *executing one instruction per cycle*).
The software that benefits the most, of course, is the kind that allows for multiple threads of execution, so it only makes sense for AMD and Intel to aggressively promote this kind of program design among developers.
Yes, Microsoft insisted that IE could not be removed from Windows (98) without breaking the whole damn thing. Of course, this not only fails the laugh test among programmers, it also has been proven to be complete B.S. by Shane Brooks:
e .idg/
...Garbage In, Garbage Out... Never Say "That Can't Happen!" ...Design Defensively -- The Butt You Save May Be Your Own... Form Must Follow Function... There Is Always Another Approach... Do More with Less... Always Have A Backup System... If The Program Crashes, IT'S NOT FINISHED. It's lying incompetents like the ones at Microsoft that make me ashamed I ever studied programming.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9903/09/removei
Basically, all he did was replace a few key files in Windows 98 for the previous versions in Windows 95 (which did not have the same idiotic Windows-and-Internet-in-one Explorer design). Lo and behold, Windows 98 suddenly ran faster, worked (more) reliably, and did not screw up the installation of Netscape! What a coincidence!!
Hell, during the install process Windows 95 gave you the option of leaving IE *completely out of the picture* -- so why should it be any different now? Can you say "broken as designed"?
When I was a kid, I felt proud of the fact that I wrote my own computer programs. Learning to program didn't just teach me skills, it taught me values: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
What's spectacularly ironic is that the music industry regularly and *massively* gives away free copies of its music ...to radio stations!
...FREE CONCERT TICKETS!
I used to work at a college radio station -- first as a trainee, then worked my way up from intern to disc jockey -- and I can tell you from firsthand experience that music companies send tons of "promotional" discs and other materials to radio stations everywhere (even to small, non-commercial college broadcasters)! When I became a "sub-coordinator" for the music dept. I got to see just how much stuff was literally thrown at us:
- At least one free CD, complete with the jewel case and standard inserts
- Usually one or more *additional* CDs as "promotional copies" (the first CD is meant for the station's music library, while the extras are for the program director, music director, DJs, etc. to keep as personal copies)
- A "press kit" describing the artist or group's musical style, influences, biography, and usually a glossy photo or a full-size poster of the musician(s)
- Many times we got random gimmick items as well, such as postcards, bumper stickers, etc. (one CD came in a mock Chinese take-out box, complete with real fortune cookies!)
- And if the artist or group was coming to town
Now, taking the above as a typical case for *one* music album submission to a radio station, multiply that by
- all the different albums that a musical act produces
- all the different acts that fall under a music company's umbrella
- all the music publishing corporations in existence
- and all the radio stations that operate *all over the globe* (commercial and public service)
The math is left as an exercise for the student. Suffice to say that enormous expense was (and still is) undertaken by the music industry as a necessary cost -- because they can afford it! People don't come to like musical acts they never hear of, and they won't buy music they never listen to, so what better way to expose the public to your product than by blaring it all over the airwaves? It's exposure, and it works!
That said, there is a (hilariously) dark side to all this: most of the stuff the music companies sent to us was utter crap. I'll never forget the tragically ridiculous dilemma of receiving an entire box of copies (there must have been several *dozen*) of an album titled "Everything You Love Tries to Kill You" by some random loser named Peter. Nobody liked it, the program director hated it, and no one would play it on their show. So the box of music just sat in a hallway, collecting dust. Meanwhile the issuing music company kept calling the station, asking if the albums had arrived and if we were "airing" (broadcasting) the music yet? Eventually someone threw the whole box away. Multiply *that* by all the lousy music acts out there -- it's Sturgeon's Law in action.
On the bright side, however, a couple of the DJs came up with an idea for a new radio show: they would take all the really bad CDs that were being dumped on the station and play them on a special music program, where they told the listeners that this was the junk we had to wade through in order to find the good stuff. The name of their new show?
"Your Band SUCKS!!!"