And god help you if you don't have optical mice. I love the work orders saying "We need more trackballs." And ditto about crappy edu software. Who knew it was a bad idea to overwrite all the system's fonts?
I was surprised to learn that satellites are not refueled more often. After a bit of googling, this pdf came up. From page 15:
Although the use of shuttle manned EVA evolutions to conduct on-orbit servicing has proven sucessful in LEO, shuttle operational limits preclude operations above 400nm. Satellites which operate in MEO or GEO with typical altitudes of as high as 22,000 nm are not accessible to shuttle flights at this time.
This was from 1996, but as I understand, basic shuttle capabilities haven't changed much (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I think nm is nautical mile (1.852km).
I agree that the damages allowed are excessive no matter how you look at it. I just thought it was a bit over the top pulling this other thing into it. It just appeared to me to be a grasping-at-straws attempt to pull in irrelevant information, which put a dent in an otherwise good story. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I should have worded my post a little more carefully though.
I'm speaking to the fact that specifically punitive damages are distinct from the tabulation of how many infringements occurred, and then trying to tie them together. Although $150,000 (plus some other arbitrary amount the judge/jury deems ok) is insane, it's still arguable that it makes sense to have one count of infringement for every copyrighted work (unrealistic damages notwithstanding).
In the current story, compilation vs individual wouldn't really matter because it's one item (correct me if I'm wrong). And the lack of negative press releases from RIAA concerning the change in the PRO-IP Act could mean anything. Maybe they're pleased. Maybe they just know when they've lost a battle and are trying to save face. It all sounds inconclusive at best.
Nothing personal though, just tired of/. summaries lately. And it's supposed to be the editor's responsibility, not the submitter's.
First, in thinking about it, I probably could have put a little more care into my OP. It was more directed at editorial quality than anything else.
That said, you raise a legitimate point. That the law is what defines property and the legal consequences of property. You're probably right that the "imaginary property" bit isn't the best argumentative language.
You said you haven't seen an argument that IP is any more/less "real". Well, that's kind of vague, but there are some valid arguments as to why IP shouldn't really be considered "property". (You may or may not have heard these, I'm just pointing them out if you haven't.)
Real property is subject to taxes, whereas IP is subject to only minimal fees.
Real property is tangible and thus prone to scarcity, whereas IP isn't. This point is related to (Jefferson's?) point about "lighting another candle".
Real property is exclusive. Only one person can own it at a time. Besides the "candles" point, there's the fact that, wrt patents, patented things could have been independently invented.
Somewhat of a corollary to the above, real property has a clearly defined chain of ownership. IP, although it may have clear inventor/author, is always building on the sum product of human knowledge (except TM, which I have absolutely no problem with). For example, I have songs in my library from two different bands (I think it was Cake and Rage) which have exactly the same bass line playing in certain sections.
Most of the opposition here to IP is that it's treated like property in certain ways, but with double standards in order to shift the balance of power from where many people think it should rightly be.
Now, as far as whether this makes it any more "real". I can't speak for anyone else, but I think what I actually wanted to say with that is that IP isn't "real property", which is probably more clear. A "real government-granted temporary privelege", perhaps, but not real property. I rambled, but in reading the surrounding posts, I thought that might help give a little more perspective.
Correct, although it's hyperbole in jest. And in the context of this readership that should be understood. The real difference is that I'd never put something like that in an article submission.
Then again, maybe that's why they didn't complain back when the increased statutory damages section was cut from the PRO-IP Act? Now if they could just cut the rest of the act.
Wildly speculate much? From reading the material, the case they were complaining about was about explicitly punitive damages. The section cut out from the PROIP act was about treating individual copyright infringements rather than as compilation infringement (which, in itself, makes total sense). Two completely different things.
Seriously, we all know imaginary property doesn't exist and the laws are seriously corrupt and fubar. But sensationlism and hyperbole doesn't really help our case. But don't let that stand in the way of headlines.
Author of the article has posted an update. Details are still sketchy. Some highlights:
Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, described COFEE in an interview.
"It's basically a thumb drive that is like a Swiss army knife for law enforcement officials that are investigating computer crimes. If you're a law enforcement official and let's say you have access to a computer that might be used, for example, by a child predator, a lot of times they have information on their hard disk that's encrypted, and you've got that information off in order to have a successful investigation and prosecution.
"In the past, people would have to literally unplug the computer, they would lose whatever was in RAM. They'd have to transport it somewhere else, and it would take at least four hours, often more to get at the heart of the information."
The device can get that job done in as little as 20 minutes, Smith said.
"With this tool, they can just plug it into the computer, wherever it's located. They don't have to turn off the power. It has over 150 different technology tools that law enforcement officers can use to analyze data, to get access to passwords, to obtain the information typically that people need to successfully prosecute a crime."
Update: Via email, a Microsoft spokeswoman said COFEE is a compilation of publicly available forensics tools, such as "password security auditing technologies" used to access information "on a live Windows system." She cited rainbow tables as an example of other such tools, and "was NOT confirming that COFEE includes Rainbow Tables."
It "does not circumvent Windows Vista BitLocker encryption or undermine any protections in Windows through secret 'backdoors' or other undocumented means."
Further, she reiterated that the tool is intended for use "by law enforcement only with proper legal authority."
Another update: This from Tim Cranton, associate general counsel at Microsoft: "The key to COFEE is not new forensic tools, but rather the creation of an easy to use, automated forensic tool at the scene. It's the ease of use, speed, and consistency of evidence extraction that is key."
Firstly, we must concede up front that miscommunication within MS is certainly possible, and that none of this info is reliable. After all, we have two esteemed counselors and a spokeswomen. IOW, technical competence not guaranteed.
In the first quote, he is obviously talking about a live system investigation. That implies subversion or cooperation, which is already weird enough. He says "it would take at least four hours" in reference to encryption, which alludes to brute force key cracking/guessing. And then "The device can get that job done in as little as 20 minutes, Smith said." What job? Key crack? If so, it must be either with owner cooperation or with a back door (possibly referring to an MS proprietary encryption as parent alluded to). This can be accomplished by a backdoor for the encryption itself, or by an escalation to god mode (access to all RAM contents). But I was under the impression (contrary to how nix works) that in Windows, even the almighty Administrator is not privy to goings on in the SYSTEM level. I'm not familiar with the NT kernel though.
But then the next two quotes directly contradict what he says. The spokeswoman says no backdoors are involved. But to get at encryption keys, you either need weak encryption (then why the need for online?), cooperation (we can still plead the 5th for now, so this won't go very far), or a backdoor.
One of the following must be true:
They're all wrong and don't know wtf they're talking about.
MS caught with its pants down and backtracking to not give away their secrets (again they real
My biggest worry is that things like this will be seen as a panacea and used irresponsibly. Sure, this type of setup is great for people who actually know what they're doing. But unfortunately, many could be lead into a false sense of security.
Dept. Health/Human Services: Look, we can let Tom carry around the database now, no problems.
Sure, until it gets stolen and the password sticky is found in the side pocket of the laptop bag. Of course, this is in no way the hardware's fault. But from the page above, Fujitsu is at least somewhat marketing this to larger organizations. Organizations which would do well to keep their organizational data on their own servers, only being remotely accessible through secure, non-persistent means.
Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T:
"The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today," he said. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."
Jim Cicconi loses any semblance of credibility right there. As if "president of legislative affairs for AT&T" wasn't enough.
What is important is the school's tier. Only get CS from Tier 1 or Tier 2, no less. Trust me, don't go with Tier 3. The name recognition is more important than anything else. Tier 2 and above schools also have better internship opportunities, which should be a serious consideration.
Something else I learned. If you love to code, then you don't want to do it for money. The money will inevitably corrupt the thing you love. If it's just something you like, well okay. But love? Better just pick something you like to do from 8-5. Do what you love in your spare time.
Can't read the dailywtf article, but from the summary, I'm thinking one of the biggest problems is that SSNs are on a public facing server when they don't need to be. Working in gov based IT myself, I know that Least Access is many times not followed.
Thanks for that post and laying things out in detail. I'm probably somewhat like you in the memory department. One of the first things I do on a fresh XP install is change the start menu back to classic style.
I remember feelings that I would describe as similar to yours when I first used OSX. Here I am as a professional IT worker, and it takes me 15 minutes to find out how to poweroff a machine (I dared not use the power button, it was first time using OSX, and wasn't sure if it would be a graceful shutdown).
My point about OSX is this (although I'm fairly ignorant right now of both the state of OSX and KDE): From a casual reading of the article, the devs seem to be influenced by OSX. I really hope this isn't the case. KDE 3.x, Plastik, xmms, and especially K3B were the sweet spots for me. It doesn't really matter that xmms doesn't really flow with the others. Because it's simple and does its job.
Lets see: female author, female researcher, talking about studying men's reactions to images of females. And if the men get the "wrong" interpretation (IOW, not the woman's interpretation) well then they must be wrong by definition, right? Yeah, that sounds like very scientific research, no bias there at all. The whole article just screams feminine bias. The study is set up to show what it concludes in the first place. TFA doesn't say who decided the "correct" responses. Would it happen to have been a woman? ORLY?? How convenient.
WT fuck is with the article headline?
Clueless Guys Can't Read Women
Allow me to spin that around the other way:
Bitchy women show traits of dishonesty and all-around deception, and lack the ability to say what they mean and mean what they say
Why is my headline any more or less valid? Why is it that if there's a communication problem, then it must be men failing to pick up on women's bullshit cues. Couldn't it be that women don't understand us either, or that neither of us understand each other, and we both have things to learn?
Nope, inconceivable. If there's a communication disconnect, it must be that men are inherently defective and need to be reprogammed.
Check this out, it solidified so many of my opinions on the attitudes of female superiority in American culture:
Rantings of a Single Male
Yes, of course men are sexual beasts, but that's how it's supposed to be. If you ladies would just let us be what we're evolved to be,... who knows? You might actually think it's pretty hot. If not, that's cool too, but then don't dress like sluts or go to bars and then be appalled by guys hitting on you. If you're wearing low rider jeans or high cut tshirts, you're sending an implicit signal that you want it, whether that's the right the signal or not. If that's not what you want, then maybe you're the one who needs to learn more about non-verbal communication.
And guys, ffs, stop being pussies, man up, and flat out refuse to apologize for having testicles.
You're misguided, your post sincerely deserves a Godwin. I don't want to be too harsh, because I've had similar thoughts myself in the past. But you have to consider "who watches the watchers?" This is the problem when you give government the ability to control breeding.
The dumbing down problem you're talking about is a very serious one, but it won't be solved by government licensed breeding. It can only be solved by a society having a proper understanding and a healthy respect for individual liberty and individual responsibility to go along with it. When that happens, the invisible hand acting in society (if allowed to work properly) will adjust people to make better decisions.
Please don't misunderstand my post to mean government assistance/care should not be available to anyone, as that is a separate argument. Or that there should be no rules of social interaction except survival of the fittest. That is not what I'm arguing. But imho, it's undeniable that government hand-holding is one of the prime factors for the current situation of mass stupidity.
To make better choices, you have to learn.
To learn, you have to suffer from mistakes.
To suffer from mistakes, you have to bear some sort of responsibility for your actions.
But if government makes our choices for us, then we can't rightly hold anyone individually responsible, and the system begins to break down as we're seeing now.
However, that's not to say that any means of population control is unacceptable. For example, giving one adult (say 18 - ~45) a monthly stipend for their child's education. Everyone in the age range, no matter what ethnicity, gender, etc. Totally objective. The amount doesn't matter, as long as it's voted on and agreed upon. Then two parents will have money for two children.
You want three kids? Fine, use your money wisely. Want one? Good, you'll have more money for just the one. Want to spend it on booze? Great, do that and don't breed.
When I bring this up with people, they always have hangups about people who have no kids getting a check and "wasting" the money. Who's to decide what waste is? That's not the point. The point is that it's probably the closest we can come to a totally fair, unbiased system that noone can bitch about with a straight face.
But many people today have problems accepting that when individual liberty and individual responsibility are properly in sync, it will inevitably lead to people making better choices, and a better world for themselves and for the entire society. Although it may take some time, it is, I believe, the only way humanity has found to reliably produce this outcome. That is, without ignoring economic externalities.
And just to be clear and ward off the impending "libertarians don't understand economics" posts, I'm not referring to the card-carrying libertarian ideal.
I think they don't use the fact you clicked on the hyperlink to incriminate you, but it's a probable cause for a warrant because you're likely to possess other child porn.
Article says otherwise. FTA:
Vosburgh faced four charges: clicking on an illegal hyperlink; knowingly destroying a hard drive and a thumb drive by physically damaging them when the FBI agents were outside his home; obstructing an FBI investigation by destroying the devices; and possessing a hard drive with two grainy thumbnail images of naked female minors (the youths weren't having sex, but their genitalia were visible).
The judge threw out the third count and the jury found him not guilty of the second. But Vosburgh was convicted of the first and last counts, which included clicking on the FBI's illicit hyperlink.
And then just for fun:
In a legal brief filed on March 6, his attorney argued that the two thumbnails were in a hidden "thumbs.db" file automatically created by the Windows operating system. The brief said that there was no evidence that Vosburgh ever viewed the full-size images--which were not found on his hard drive--and the thumbnails could have been created by receiving an e-mail message, copying files, or innocently visiting a Web page.
Now, I'm the first one to rail against thumbs.db, since I'm one of the weirdos who has hidden files turned on, but I'm suspicious that Windows creates it from only receiving an email. But it might be valid that images received in email, opened, and then deleted by the user are still hanging around in thumbs.db. Anyone have any information?
Dash our hopes of banding together to have our own Congress-critter to represent the national nerd constituency. Surely we (not just Slashdot) make up more than 1/435 of the populace.
You just hit the nail on the head. Although it may not always seem like it, there really are a lot of very intelligent people here in the US. And by that, I don't mean tech/engr intelligence. I'd almost call it wisdom, but that may be too strong of a word.
But more or less, they're distributed geographically evenly. And because we have congressional districts for the House, the votes of the "wise" for their rep get diluted with all the other dipshits who live around them. These people can't pool their votes because the system isn't designed that way.
Would be nice if the House just had 400 members, chosen by the highest number of votes nationwide. I understand bicameralism and also the need to have some form of local representation. But that's what the Senate is for. We've always had federal level districts. They're called states.
I have a CS degree. I'm comfortable with C++ and would be with embedded architectures if I just had the training. For my Assembly class, we didn't do MIPS. We did sort of an abstract assembly learning language (think Pascal for assembly). In said language, I implemented int mul and div, as the language didn't provide that. So yes I'm very comfortable having all my data right there interspersed with my instructions. Just give me 3 months, and I'll bust my ass and get up to speed on your platform. Oh yeah, silly me, the industry doesn't do that any more. At one point, I even really wanted to go somewhere like Intel or Nvidia. I thought that would rock the shit, working on low level graphics stuff. When I mentioned that in an interview process for a job not related at all to embedded, the guy thought I was crazy.
Which is why I'm in IT right now and going back for engineering. With engineering, you have state exams to certify you know what you're doing. Now, this is just a generalization, but overall, management argues with actual engineers much less than they do with software people. Because engineering is much older and its effects can sometimes cause lives. Oh, but the talking down to programmers and software designers never ends.
Although I love code, I'm going back because engineering is so much more professional. You know, you might actually get an iota of respect. Talented candidates for embedded apps are all around. But some of the best people get turned off by the (actual or perceived) attitudes of those entrenched in the industry. Where are they? Maybe you're turning them away.
And probably the better question is, where's the market? Besides military apps, isn't it inevitable that this will move to places where people can afford to work for less?
I've been thinking about different voting systems a lot lately, and done some very light laymen's number crunching. IOW, IANA expert.
The problem with limiting the number of votes is that it reintroduces strategy voting. Fictitious example: the Green candidate I want to vote for can't win, so do I really want to spend one of my 5 on him?
This is really just another form of the spoiler effect. The only way to eliminate it is to allow people to vote on every candidate for a position. The obvious problem then is really long ballots. I wouldn't have problem with a rule saying that you can't run for President unless you get, say, 5,000 signatures.
Now that would be interesting. Libs, Greens, Constitution, even NAACP and KKK, and everything in between. No favoritism, you get 5,000 sigs, you're on the ballot. Oh yeah, and the Reps and Dems too.
Booms and busts come from malinvestment. But it only becomes a systemic problem in the economy because of poor business, banking, and bailout policies. The current housing crisis, or high profile bailouts are examples of this. Of course, we shouldn't let people starve, but they have to suffer serious consequences for acting like money comes out of thin air.
Inflation comes only from artificially manipulating the money supply, unless the entire economy itself collapses due to something external such as war, famine, etc. Although the gold standard is not completely the solution to this, it is much better than what we have now. Paul has said this (I believe it was at the Candidates@Google Q&A, although I can't remember).
The reason we have been able to go so far into national debt is because we are the reserve currency, especially for oil. We enforce this through our military when large exports of oil are in danger of being denominated in anything other than USD. Effectively, our military is propping up our economy.
So here's the real question. Do you want and end to imperialism at the cost of returning manufacturing of everyday goods to our country? At the cost of having to either produce goods here or making valuable exports to trade? I believe most Americans (if they actually understood this) would say no.
If you think about it, hawkishness toward oil exporting nations is actually in the average American's interest, from their perspective. I disagree with imperialism on economic and strategic grounds. But even though most people in this country don't agree with me, I do wish we could drop the hypocrisy and openly admit we have empire (maybe not in the traditional sense) in order to steal resources from the rest of the world. You can't be against the Iraq war, and be in favor of having a society with such a disproportionate number of lawyers, accountants, insurance salesmen, managers, and other such professions which are populated by mostly useless positions. I'm not saying we don't need those at all, but we have way too many people in those professions to justify in a sane economy. By sane, I just mean a system that pays as close as possible to fair value for goods and services (fair in the sense that price truly is related to supply and demand).
Unfortunately, the only way I see for the US to get out of this cycle is the Roman way. And that scares me.
Slashdot Mirror
And god help you if you don't have optical mice. I love the work orders saying "We need more trackballs." And ditto about crappy edu software. Who knew it was a bad idea to overwrite all the system's fonts?
I was surprised to learn that satellites are not refueled more often. After a bit of googling, this pdf came up. From page 15:
This was from 1996, but as I understand, basic shuttle capabilities haven't changed much (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I think nm is nautical mile (1.852km).
If you haven't heard of it:
rockbox
Has somewhat limited compatibility though.
I agree that the damages allowed are excessive no matter how you look at it. I just thought it was a bit over the top pulling this other thing into it. It just appeared to me to be a grasping-at-straws attempt to pull in irrelevant information, which put a dent in an otherwise good story. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I should have worded my post a little more carefully though.
/. summaries lately. And it's supposed to be the editor's responsibility, not the submitter's.
I'm speaking to the fact that specifically punitive damages are distinct from the tabulation of how many infringements occurred, and then trying to tie them together. Although $150,000 (plus some other arbitrary amount the judge/jury deems ok) is insane, it's still arguable that it makes sense to have one count of infringement for every copyrighted work (unrealistic damages notwithstanding).
In the current story, compilation vs individual wouldn't really matter because it's one item (correct me if I'm wrong). And the lack of negative press releases from RIAA concerning the change in the PRO-IP Act could mean anything. Maybe they're pleased. Maybe they just know when they've lost a battle and are trying to save face. It all sounds inconclusive at best.
Nothing personal though, just tired of
First, in thinking about it, I probably could have put a little more care into my OP. It was more directed at editorial quality than anything else.
That said, you raise a legitimate point. That the law is what defines property and the legal consequences of property. You're probably right that the "imaginary property" bit isn't the best argumentative language.
You said you haven't seen an argument that IP is any more/less "real". Well, that's kind of vague, but there are some valid arguments as to why IP shouldn't really be considered "property". (You may or may not have heard these, I'm just pointing them out if you haven't.)
Real property is subject to taxes, whereas IP is subject to only minimal fees.
Real property is tangible and thus prone to scarcity, whereas IP isn't. This point is related to (Jefferson's?) point about "lighting another candle".
Real property is exclusive. Only one person can own it at a time. Besides the "candles" point, there's the fact that, wrt patents, patented things could have been independently invented.
Somewhat of a corollary to the above, real property has a clearly defined chain of ownership. IP, although it may have clear inventor/author, is always building on the sum product of human knowledge (except TM, which I have absolutely no problem with). For example, I have songs in my library from two different bands (I think it was Cake and Rage) which have exactly the same bass line playing in certain sections.
Most of the opposition here to IP is that it's treated like property in certain ways, but with double standards in order to shift the balance of power from where many people think it should rightly be.
Now, as far as whether this makes it any more "real". I can't speak for anyone else, but I think what I actually wanted to say with that is that IP isn't "real property", which is probably more clear. A "real government-granted temporary privelege", perhaps, but not real property. I rambled, but in reading the surrounding posts, I thought that might help give a little more perspective.
Correct, although it's hyperbole in jest. And in the context of this readership that should be understood. The real difference is that I'd never put something like that in an article submission.
Wildly speculate much? From reading the material, the case they were complaining about was about explicitly punitive damages. The section cut out from the PROIP act was about treating individual copyright infringements rather than as compilation infringement (which, in itself, makes total sense). Two completely different things.
Seriously, we all know imaginary property doesn't exist and the laws are seriously corrupt and fubar. But sensationlism and hyperbole doesn't really help our case. But don't let that stand in the way of headlines.
Sorry that came off as angry. Not directed at you in any way.
In the daytime.
Fuck cops.
Author of the article has posted an update. Details are still sketchy. Some highlights:
Firstly, we must concede up front that miscommunication within MS is certainly possible, and that none of this info is reliable. After all, we have two esteemed counselors and a spokeswomen. IOW, technical competence not guaranteed.
In the first quote, he is obviously talking about a live system investigation. That implies subversion or cooperation, which is already weird enough. He says "it would take at least four hours" in reference to encryption, which alludes to brute force key cracking/guessing. And then "The device can get that job done in as little as 20 minutes, Smith said." What job? Key crack? If so, it must be either with owner cooperation or with a back door (possibly referring to an MS proprietary encryption as parent alluded to). This can be accomplished by a backdoor for the encryption itself, or by an escalation to god mode (access to all RAM contents). But I was under the impression (contrary to how nix works) that in Windows, even the almighty Administrator is not privy to goings on in the SYSTEM level. I'm not familiar with the NT kernel though.
But then the next two quotes directly contradict what he says. The spokeswoman says no backdoors are involved. But to get at encryption keys, you either need weak encryption (then why the need for online?), cooperation (we can still plead the 5th for now, so this won't go very far), or a backdoor.
One of the following must be true:
Looks it's fully in hardware.
My biggest worry is that things like this will be seen as a panacea and used irresponsibly. Sure, this type of setup is great for people who actually know what they're doing. But unfortunately, many could be lead into a false sense of security.
Dept. Health/Human Services: Look, we can let Tom carry around the database now, no problems.
Sure, until it gets stolen and the password sticky is found in the side pocket of the laptop bag. Of course, this is in no way the hardware's fault. But from the page above, Fujitsu is at least somewhat marketing this to larger organizations. Organizations which would do well to keep their organizational data on their own servers, only being remotely accessible through secure, non-persistent means.
Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T:
Jim Cicconi loses any semblance of credibility right there. As if "president of legislative affairs for AT&T" wasn't enough.
What is important is the school's tier. Only get CS from Tier 1 or Tier 2, no less. Trust me, don't go with Tier 3. The name recognition is more important than anything else. Tier 2 and above schools also have better internship opportunities, which should be a serious consideration.
Something else I learned. If you love to code, then you don't want to do it for money. The money will inevitably corrupt the thing you love. If it's just something you like, well okay. But love? Better just pick something you like to do from 8-5. Do what you love in your spare time.
Can't read the dailywtf article, but from the summary, I'm thinking one of the biggest problems is that SSNs are on a public facing server when they don't need to be. Working in gov based IT myself, I know that Least Access is many times not followed.
Remember the "positive comments" teachers use to give us on papers?
1988: Excellent paper, Billy! Nice conclusion! A+
2008: wckd sck bily u p0wned conclud para
Thanks for that post and laying things out in detail. I'm probably somewhat like you in the memory department. One of the first things I do on a fresh XP install is change the start menu back to classic style.
I remember feelings that I would describe as similar to yours when I first used OSX. Here I am as a professional IT worker, and it takes me 15 minutes to find out how to poweroff a machine (I dared not use the power button, it was first time using OSX, and wasn't sure if it would be a graceful shutdown).
My point about OSX is this (although I'm fairly ignorant right now of both the state of OSX and KDE): From a casual reading of the article, the devs seem to be influenced by OSX. I really hope this isn't the case. KDE 3.x, Plastik, xmms, and especially K3B were the sweet spots for me. It doesn't really matter that xmms doesn't really flow with the others. Because it's simple and does its job.
Why is everything always men's fault, huh?
... who knows? You might actually think it's pretty hot. If not, that's cool too, but then don't dress like sluts or go to bars and then be appalled by guys hitting on you. If you're wearing low rider jeans or high cut tshirts, you're sending an implicit signal that you want it, whether that's the right the signal or not. If that's not what you want, then maybe you're the one who needs to learn more about non-verbal communication.
Lets see: female author, female researcher, talking about studying men's reactions to images of females. And if the men get the "wrong" interpretation (IOW, not the woman's interpretation) well then they must be wrong by definition, right? Yeah, that sounds like very scientific research, no bias there at all. The whole article just screams feminine bias. The study is set up to show what it concludes in the first place. TFA doesn't say who decided the "correct" responses. Would it happen to have been a woman? ORLY?? How convenient.
WT fuck is with the article headline? Clueless Guys Can't Read Women
Allow me to spin that around the other way: Bitchy women show traits of dishonesty and all-around deception, and lack the ability to say what they mean and mean what they say
Why is my headline any more or less valid? Why is it that if there's a communication problem, then it must be men failing to pick up on women's bullshit cues. Couldn't it be that women don't understand us either, or that neither of us understand each other, and we both have things to learn?
Nope, inconceivable. If there's a communication disconnect, it must be that men are inherently defective and need to be reprogammed.
Check this out, it solidified so many of my opinions on the attitudes of female superiority in American culture: Rantings of a Single Male
Yes, of course men are sexual beasts, but that's how it's supposed to be. If you ladies would just let us be what we're evolved to be,
And guys, ffs, stop being pussies, man up, and flat out refuse to apologize for having testicles.
You're misguided, your post sincerely deserves a Godwin. I don't want to be too harsh, because I've had similar thoughts myself in the past. But you have to consider "who watches the watchers?" This is the problem when you give government the ability to control breeding.
The dumbing down problem you're talking about is a very serious one, but it won't be solved by government licensed breeding. It can only be solved by a society having a proper understanding and a healthy respect for individual liberty and individual responsibility to go along with it. When that happens, the invisible hand acting in society (if allowed to work properly) will adjust people to make better decisions.
Please don't misunderstand my post to mean government assistance/care should not be available to anyone, as that is a separate argument. Or that there should be no rules of social interaction except survival of the fittest. That is not what I'm arguing. But imho, it's undeniable that government hand-holding is one of the prime factors for the current situation of mass stupidity.
To make better choices, you have to learn.
To learn, you have to suffer from mistakes.
To suffer from mistakes, you have to bear some sort of responsibility for your actions.
But if government makes our choices for us, then we can't rightly hold anyone individually responsible, and the system begins to break down as we're seeing now.
However, that's not to say that any means of population control is unacceptable. For example, giving one adult (say 18 - ~45) a monthly stipend for their child's education. Everyone in the age range, no matter what ethnicity, gender, etc. Totally objective. The amount doesn't matter, as long as it's voted on and agreed upon. Then two parents will have money for two children.
You want three kids? Fine, use your money wisely. Want one? Good, you'll have more money for just the one. Want to spend it on booze? Great, do that and don't breed.
When I bring this up with people, they always have hangups about people who have no kids getting a check and "wasting" the money. Who's to decide what waste is? That's not the point. The point is that it's probably the closest we can come to a totally fair, unbiased system that noone can bitch about with a straight face.
But many people today have problems accepting that when individual liberty and individual responsibility are properly in sync, it will inevitably lead to people making better choices, and a better world for themselves and for the entire society. Although it may take some time, it is, I believe, the only way humanity has found to reliably produce this outcome. That is, without ignoring economic externalities.
And just to be clear and ward off the impending "libertarians don't understand economics" posts, I'm not referring to the card-carrying libertarian ideal.
Article says otherwise. FTA:
And then just for fun:
Now, I'm the first one to rail against thumbs.db, since I'm one of the weirdos who has hidden files turned on, but I'm suspicious that Windows creates it from only receiving an email. But it might be valid that images received in email, opened, and then deleted by the user are still hanging around in thumbs.db. Anyone have any information?
You just hit the nail on the head. Although it may not always seem like it, there really are a lot of very intelligent people here in the US. And by that, I don't mean tech/engr intelligence. I'd almost call it wisdom, but that may be too strong of a word.
But more or less, they're distributed geographically evenly. And because we have congressional districts for the House, the votes of the "wise" for their rep get diluted with all the other dipshits who live around them. These people can't pool their votes because the system isn't designed that way.
Would be nice if the House just had 400 members, chosen by the highest number of votes nationwide. I understand bicameralism and also the need to have some form of local representation. But that's what the Senate is for. We've always had federal level districts. They're called states.
Rubber bands ftw
easier to get off
I have a CS degree. I'm comfortable with C++ and would be with embedded architectures if I just had the training. For my Assembly class, we didn't do MIPS. We did sort of an abstract assembly learning language (think Pascal for assembly). In said language, I implemented int mul and div, as the language didn't provide that. So yes I'm very comfortable having all my data right there interspersed with my instructions. Just give me 3 months, and I'll bust my ass and get up to speed on your platform. Oh yeah, silly me, the industry doesn't do that any more. At one point, I even really wanted to go somewhere like Intel or Nvidia. I thought that would rock the shit, working on low level graphics stuff. When I mentioned that in an interview process for a job not related at all to embedded, the guy thought I was crazy.
Which is why I'm in IT right now and going back for engineering. With engineering, you have state exams to certify you know what you're doing. Now, this is just a generalization, but overall, management argues with actual engineers much less than they do with software people. Because engineering is much older and its effects can sometimes cause lives. Oh, but the talking down to programmers and software designers never ends.
Although I love code, I'm going back because engineering is so much more professional. You know, you might actually get an iota of respect. Talented candidates for embedded apps are all around. But some of the best people get turned off by the (actual or perceived) attitudes of those entrenched in the industry. Where are they? Maybe you're turning them away.
And probably the better question is, where's the market? Besides military apps, isn't it inevitable that this will move to places where people can afford to work for less?
I've been thinking about different voting systems a lot lately, and done some very light laymen's number crunching. IOW, IANA expert.
The problem with limiting the number of votes is that it reintroduces strategy voting. Fictitious example: the Green candidate I want to vote for can't win, so do I really want to spend one of my 5 on him?
This is really just another form of the spoiler effect. The only way to eliminate it is to allow people to vote on every candidate for a position. The obvious problem then is really long ballots. I wouldn't have problem with a rule saying that you can't run for President unless you get, say, 5,000 signatures.
Now that would be interesting. Libs, Greens, Constitution, even NAACP and KKK, and everything in between. No favoritism, you get 5,000 sigs, you're on the ballot. Oh yeah, and the Reps and Dems too.
Booms and busts come from malinvestment. But it only becomes a systemic problem in the economy because of poor business, banking, and bailout policies. The current housing crisis, or high profile bailouts are examples of this. Of course, we shouldn't let people starve, but they have to suffer serious consequences for acting like money comes out of thin air.
Inflation comes only from artificially manipulating the money supply, unless the entire economy itself collapses due to something external such as war, famine, etc. Although the gold standard is not completely the solution to this, it is much better than what we have now. Paul has said this (I believe it was at the Candidates@Google Q&A, although I can't remember).
The reason we have been able to go so far into national debt is because we are the reserve currency, especially for oil. We enforce this through our military when large exports of oil are in danger of being denominated in anything other than USD. Effectively, our military is propping up our economy.
So here's the real question. Do you want and end to imperialism at the cost of returning manufacturing of everyday goods to our country? At the cost of having to either produce goods here or making valuable exports to trade? I believe most Americans (if they actually understood this) would say no.
If you think about it, hawkishness toward oil exporting nations is actually in the average American's interest, from their perspective. I disagree with imperialism on economic and strategic grounds. But even though most people in this country don't agree with me, I do wish we could drop the hypocrisy and openly admit we have empire (maybe not in the traditional sense) in order to steal resources from the rest of the world. You can't be against the Iraq war, and be in favor of having a society with such a disproportionate number of lawyers, accountants, insurance salesmen, managers, and other such professions which are populated by mostly useless positions. I'm not saying we don't need those at all, but we have way too many people in those professions to justify in a sane economy. By sane, I just mean a system that pays as close as possible to fair value for goods and services (fair in the sense that price truly is related to supply and demand).
Unfortunately, the only way I see for the US to get out of this cycle is the Roman way. And that scares me.