Oddly enough, that was one of the original ideas behind the UN. Until it became wracked with sectarian conflict between different tribes, er, nations.
As for helping poor countries establish stable democracies, the Cato Institute had a study several years ago positing that property rights, more than any other single variable, were the key to long term stability and prosperity. Interesting reading, if you can find it.
--
I want to die in my sleep peacefully, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
==================
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
The utility of having this much space on your phone isn't just storing MP3s, videos, and whatnot. The real potential is in what this means you can create.
I'd like to have my phone be a constant or voice activated recorder. I have my phone on me at all times, it has a microphone, why not have it provide me a 'cockpit voice recorder' of sorts for life? No more guessing exactly what my wife told me to do, or having to write down phone numbers.
Generation 1, your phone just records MP3s of life as it happens to you. If anything interesting happens during the day, you save the file on your computer.Generation 2, it meta overlays GPS data and is automatically stored as part of your 'diary'. You store it in an encrypted location so it can't be used against you unless you choose to release it, and you have a perfect alibi showing what you said and where you were.Generation 3, combine voice processing to index everything spoken around you into a searchable form, recognize phone numbers, voices, etc, and create a full digital assistant. At some point around here, it can also store a digital video feed from any cameras you or your personal equipment might have that's synchronized with everything.Generation 4, it hunts down Sarah Conner.
Everytime someone puts a bunch of storage into something, someone else says "what's the use?" And human nature being what it is, some other asshole decides to invent something cool to use that storage/capabillity for just so they can give the finger to the first person.
=======================
][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][
The operators of this eDonkey site chose not to exercise control over files being traded by users which including those containing child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos.In other news, phone directories choose not to exercise control over people they list, which include paedophiles, bomb-making experts and terrorist
==================
> > How come when the property of regular citizens is siezed for investigation of a piracy or drug-related crime, you always hear the term "raid."
>
>That's because regular citizens "loot" these materials, while Microsoft "find" tax loopholes ;) I am erotic. You are kinky. They are perverts.
We protect. Our allies enforce. Our enemies oppress.
Congress appropriates. Microsoft lobbies. Citizens steal.
With apologies to Calvin and Hobbes - if you think verbing weirds language, wait'll you try conjugation!
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/02/22/1542236
================================
python quip: here==> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178181&threshold=5&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14776497
==============
You know, I had (honestly) forgotten all about "region free" DVD players, etc. But all the MPAA's fuss, and this associated Slashdot article about it, has reminded me that I do want a more capable DVD player. A while back, I had wanted a player that did DivX, so I could fit two or three of my movies onto a DVD for the little ones to destroy (instead of damaging the original $$ DVDs). At that time, the DivX playback on the units pretty much sucked, so I let it go and forgot about it.
Anyway, this article reminded me that
there are [videohelp.com] really good DVD players out there that support region-free, HDCP-free, high-resolution playback at a reasonable price.... and they play back DivX as well. I think I will order one right now, in fact.
How's that for blowing up in your face, MPAA? I'm sure I'm not the only one that is now thinking, "yes, actually, thats exactly what I want. Thanks for the reminder."
=============
The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy.
More accurately, the MPAA estimates that the retail value of pirated films, etc, was $5.4bn. Now I'm not advocating piracy, but when I was a student a couple of years ago I would download albums and films, and I can personally guarantee that it did not cost the industry any money - simply because as a poor student I couldn't afford to buy them. If I hadn't downloaded them, I just wouldn't have seen them, and that's that.The MPAA seems to think there's a dichotomy of pirating films or purchasing them, and by extension that if we make pirating impossible, then every pirate will go out and purchase everything that they would otherwise have pirated. And that, my friends, is a rather baseless claim (even if you're completely unaware of the animosity towards studios in general)
======================
What I have done for all the DVDs in my OWN collection is bypass the DRM using DVD decrypter (w00t!) because I am sick of these goddamn preveiews, menus, copyright notices, birth control notices, and other shit. DVD Shrink is a nice utility that allows you to reformat a DVD so that you can put the disc in the drive and JUST WATCH THE MOVIE. Some of these more recent DVDs that have come out require ten minutes of mandatory (e.g. you can't fast forward) viewing of SHITE before you can see WHAT YOU PAID TO WATCH. For rental DVD's, don't even bother... it's worse than the old VHS tapes, even though the retailers are PAYING LESS now to maintain their inventory!!
===========
One of the best features of mplayer is it's no-nonsense approach to DVD playback. It just launches the movie. No menus, no FBI warnings, no ads, no crap.
====================
People can't spend 3 minutes with their children these days with their hectic lives, in order not to have to watch the previews etc.? I think this is getting pretty sick.
If you think watching an unskippable FBI warning or other crap is quality time with your children then I think
you need to re-evaluate...
For me, the point isn't about 60seconds, or 120 seconds. It's my media. I bought it. I should be able to use it as I see fit, not as they see fit.
How about from now on, whenever you start your car, it won't move for 3 minutes. You must be buckled in your seat ('cause after the ~3-minutes are up, it starts to move w/o further warning) and on the windshield a video message is displayed about how you need to change your oil to keep the warranty. ...tell me you'd tolerate that from a car manufacturer.
--
IT is unreliable as a
sole-source conviction.
Culture does
not belong to any corporation.
=========================
Engadget [engadget.com] has a slightly more information.
And ultimately, Google News will provide
all the stories you could want [google.com]
To summarize the facts:
1. Samsung stopped producing this drive a year and a half ago
2. The 'features' were unlockable through remote control key combos
3.
"The DVD-HD841 DVD-player can allow region encoding and high-bandwidth digital-content protection (HDCP) bypassing, provided a code is entered by remote control. Although pulled off shelves, its genes appear to have been transmitted to the DVD-HD747 and DVD-HD941."
reference here [indiantelevision.com]
HDCP Bypassing!!
Weren't we just complaining about HDCP a day or two ago?
Run, don't walk, to eBay and get one of these players before Samsung pulls 'em.
================
Why sue over a player that hasn't been comercially available for over a year? If they're going to sue over an unlockable player,
why not sue Philips over the DVP642 which is still on the market and is region and macrovision unlockable through hidden menus. Or sue a company like Apex which has consistantly released an unlockable model, quickly followed by a "corrected" player, over and over again?
===========================
So they basically put this number out of their *ss, and whip it out every time things get rough for them
:) This is so amazing!
Samsung: That's it, we're releasing the DVD-s as is.
.../...
MPAA: And you'll all be sued!!! You know why!? "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost friggin $5.4 billion last year due to friggin piracy."!!! Estimate=Fact! Estimate=fact!! Don't question us or you be sued!!! Arghh..=
====================================
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php?dvdplayer=Sa msung+HD841&hits=50&Search=Search [videohelp.com]
===================
Region
1. Turn on player with no disc in the tray. "No disk" appears on screen.
2. Press the "Repeat" key on the remote.
3. Press "57538" on the remote. A number should appear on screen, indicating your player's current region (e.g. "2").
4. Press the number for your required region (e.g. "1") or "9" for region-free/all-regions. The number will appear on screen, replacing the previous number (from step 3).
5. Press "Open/Close Tray" and leave the tray open for a few seconds.
6. Press "Power On/Off". The tray closes automatically and the player turns off. Next time you turn it on, it is region free (or whatever Region you selected in step 4).
HDCP
1. Turn your television ON
2. Turn the DVD Player ON
(You should see the Samsung screen saver appear on the TV)
3. Ensure the DVD tray is EMPTY and CLOSED
4. Wait for the message 'NO DISC' to appear
5. Press the ANGLE button
6. Press the numbers 4, 3, 2, 7
(You should see the message 'HDCP Free' appear in the upper
left hand corner of your television screen)
7. Press the OPEN/CLOSE button to open the disc tray Your DVD player is now region-free and HDCP-free.
=======================
There's a problem: Macrovision. They deliberately put high-voltage pulses in the vertical retrace interval of some frames to confuse the automatic gain control in the recorder. The AGC sees the spike, winds the gain down and you get a dim picture for several frames. Then it goes bright again. Then they put in another spike and it goes dim. As far as protection schemes go, this one is totally christian. You will just need a DVD player with the option to disable Macrovision; a VCR with RGB inputs; an RGB to composite encoder {NB; must be the appropriate video standard, PAL, SECAM or NTSC, for your region}; a timebase corrector; or an image stabiliser.
One very simplistic way to defeat Macrovision is to build a simple level-limiter circuit, so the extraordinarily high voltage pulses sent in the vertical retrace interval will be clamped to peak white level {1V} before they reach the VCR. This is really nothing more than a DC-coupled, non-inverting, high-bandwidth version of a guitar distortion pedal.
To build a more sophisticated timebase corrector, use a
1881 sync separator [national.com] to get the timing signals, and some sort of bilateral switch {a 4016/4066 will sort of just about do, but look at the
Maxim web site [maxim-ic.com] for some higher-bandwidth, lower-on-resistance ones} to switch between the existing video signal, and a locally-generated "black" signal {about 0.3 volts}. The 1881 has a composite sync output which should be used to add "clean" timing to the artificial black {just force it down to 0V when the timing signal goes low}. Be sure to use op-amps with a decent slew rate,
not 358's! You will also need either a bunch of TTL ICs {if you're hard} or a microcontroller. At the beginning of each frame, switch to "artificial black" for about the first 20 lines of picture, then switch to the real picture for all but the last 20 or so lines, which should be replaced by more artificial black. You may need to experiment with the number of lines you strip out. If you are 500p3r l33t, you might even care to insert your own locally-generated Teletext information in the newly-created vertical retrace interval; but don't expect this to come out right on a VHS recorder.
--
Some people
really are That Stupid.
====================
Yahoo Reverses Allah Ban I think I've finally snapped from all the loonie news lately. My first thought was: "What!? Now you are required to have 'Allah' in your name? That's even worse!"
--MarkusQ
And before you give me grief, in just the last few weeks:
- Hundreds of people have killed each other over a bunch of cartoons.
- The vice president of the US shot someone
- Bell South wants to charge Google for using its bandwidth when Bell South's customers use Google's services for free and already pay Bell South for the privilege.
- We are engaged in a huge debate, not over the fact that the control of our nation's ports has been turned over to foreign governments in the first place, but rather over the fact that it may be racist to suggest that a nation that funded Bin Ladin, passed sensitive information to him, had top level meetings with him, recognized the Taliban, and was home to two of the 9/11 hijackers might not be trustworthy
- People have been caught distributing free software in accordance with the license, and had their CDs seized to protect the rights of the Authors who gave them permission in the first place
--
Impeachment: It's not just for blow jobs [thenation.com]
======================================
-- Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
=====================
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Apple's switch to Intel didn't kill Apple's open source efforts...
People using Apple's open-source efforts to pirate Mac OS X killed Apple's open-source efforts
====================
Calling OS X "Linux with a better UI" illustrates a profound ignorance of the OS X operating system, from the frameworks (Cocoa and its related APIs, the best application development framework bar none) to the core technologies like Mach and BSD. Ignoring its top features by dismissing it as a "proprietary system with candy coating" strikes me as counterproductively idealistic. If you feel pressure to switch, then switch! Whatever gets your job done better, and believe me, OS X gets the job done.
Not to mention that it's likely Apple just hasn't put the sources up yet in this situation. It took them a while to post the new Darwin sources, but they got them out. The only proprietary things in OS X are Aqua and related technologies.
==================
Mod parent UP! I was there and it was awful.
I had signed up for one of those new geeko-tourism packages. We had spent the last several days attached to a port, so we were excited to be nearing the CVS surrounding the galapagos, where we hoped to catch a glimpse of Darwin, or maybe a GNU.
Unfortunately our ship was soon compromised by these pirates who swooped in via the Cat5 cable. Their Captain, known as Bluetooth, just seemed to float right across to our ship, through the air; it was scary.
Anyway, they must not have known we were a civilian ship, because they kept asking to see the Colonal. I noticed that one of them had a USB key for a hand. They also tore every page out of the ship's log before they left....
--
Everything You Know Is Wrong! -Weird Al Yankovic
================
Who cares whether Apple gives you back their changes or not? Could they actually make a significant improvement to Linux-NTFS?
Yeah, why not? Its not like Apple hasn't been able to make significant improvements in many areas of computing. Better error codes, better integration with languages other than C, better cross CPU support. Apple has done some unique stuff with filesystems that are virtualized on top of another very different filesystem, which is where you want to go with NTFS/LInux integration. I can think of lots of things it might offer them.
Are the Linux-NTFS developers admitting that Apple can do things that they themselves are too dumb to figure out?
I can't see why they wouldn't admit this. Apple has access to some of the best developers in the world. They can hire the very people who wrote NTFS.
I'm not saying this as an Apple fan-boy, this is a free software issue. How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it? Make whatever philosophical and ethical arguments you wish -- it's just wankery. Ultimately it boils down to pure selfishness. You don't want anybody to play your game unless they play by your rules
Damn straight. Its called building an open source community. One of the main goals is to make it hard for people to write non open source software. The pain that apple is experiencing is deliberate. This is exactly why Microsoft is worried about academia using the GPL, because lots of commercial software starts as government / academic software. 15-20 years from now many apps might cost 3x as much to develop if they want to avoid being GPL licensed.
How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it?
The GPL creates freedom for users of software by putting restrictions on developers. The BSD license destroys freedoms for users because it wants to empower second generation developers. Very different purpose.
======================
If you want to eliminate ELUA's, you need to get your local taxing authority educated on them.
If I paid for Microsoft Office and all I got was the right to use it, it's pretty worthless to the taxing authority in terms of property tax. But whoever owns the license is leasing property in their taxing jurisdiction. They own property tax based on the ELUA. So if Office sells for $500, a certain amount of personal property tax needs to be paid by Microsoft each year.
================
I'm mostly in agreement with what you say, but I'd just like to clarify that there is a huge difference between licenses like BSD, GPL, etc. (free and open source software licenses) and the typical commercial EULA: the GPL need not be agreed to in order to use the software. At worst, you don't abide by the GPL and are bound by the copyright law of your land. If you do abide by the terms of the GPL, then you are granted permission to do things (probably) forbidden by copyright law such as copying and redistribution. The EULA on the other hand, attempts to force you (legally dubiously) to agree to it as a precondition to using the software. It attempts to impose restrictions over and above those imposed by copyright law. Like you, I find this practice heinous. A pack of lawyers vs. the average Joe who has already bought and paid for the software does not seem a fair negotiation.
Two questions: When copyright expires on a piece of software, am I still bound by the EULA (assume for a moment that the EULA is a valid contract)? I suppose I could read the EULA to search for an expiration... And second, is there any commercially available proprietary software that does not include a EULA (other than the default copyright restrictions)? I think I would buy it just on principle.
--
...
the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. -- George Orwell
=====================================================================
Digg had yesterday. Folks, you really need to sharpen up a bit. Slashdot is not about, and as long as I've been here never has been about, having the news first. Every story is a link to somewhere else - frequently the NYT, the Guardian, the BBC, Groklaw, the New Scientist or some guy's blog. Usually we've heard the news somewhere else before it hits Slashdot. Hell, most of us don't even bother reading the article; we read the summary and go 'Oh yeah, that - I heard that on [Site X]'.
What keeps us coming here is the discussion. Plagued though it is with trolls, and clueless though the typical moderators are, /.'s system nevertheless manages to disappear the most egregious flamers and pick out the worthwhile posts. And in any long /. discussion there are going to be a dozen or so clueful posters, and one or two experts in the field, giving much more in-depth analysis of the issue than you'll get from mainstream journalism.
If I read a story about something interesting on, say, the BBC's technology pages, I know it'll probably hit /. in a few hours, or at worst a couple of days, and once it does there'll be Interesting Discussion.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/02/23/1330220
==================================
Running in quantum computers is doing "
unitary transformations [wikipedia.org]" and doing measurements on them. So as the article claimed, it is not that you are not doing anything. The only way not to run "it" is by putting it in eigenstate of the system (as well completely isolate it from any external perturbations). If you put it in a mixed state - yes it will evolve with time and then when you do the measurement it will give you "a" eigen state with certain probability. So yes in the end you are still doing measurement which is equally important and consitutes "running" the computer.
Does anyone know what is new here ?
---------------------------------------============================
I may appear lazy, but on a quantum level, I'm really quite busy.
=======================
I am not a physicist, but I did spend a couple years in college studying it with an intent to become one, and I still maintain a layman's interest in the subject. Unfortunately, the math is beyond me. In any case, a lot of people are confused how this "works", and so I thought I'd try to help.
Someone else already posted an useful background URL with is a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur-Vaidman_bomb- testing_problem [wikipedia.org]
Basically, what you have here is something called "interaction-free measurement". Because of the quantum mechanics work, a particle's wavefunction evolves in a certain way over time, which then "collapses" when you measure it to something specific. How it evolves is not deterministic, but probabillistic. Because of this, you can set up a quantum system whereby when you place a certain object in it at a certain place, you can change the whole system given the nature of what you add to it.
In this case, you have a quantum computer composed of mirrors that runs on photons. The mirrors are pre-set in a certain configuration to run a certain "program". No electricity is needed to "run" the program; you just inject photons into it and it spits out results when you measure it.
What they've done here is then place that computer in a certain location in an existing quantum mechanical system,
Read the rest of this comment...
=========================
1969. Back when we were building things. Inventing things. Making things better. We were actually investing in the future then.
Now it would require a "business case" before anyone would be allowed a moment to think about CCD image sensors, much less build them. Some rat fuck middle management asscrack would probably write the group up for "unauthorized use of business resources" and start drawing up requests for department-wide layoffs.
That's of course assuming brilliant people like these men who could "after maybe an hour's work, we went over to the blackboard and we had some sketching there. We went down to our models lab and made one" would get hired in the first place. They'd be declared "overqualified" or lacking "marketable skills" before they were even interviewed.
We were on the doorstep of the solar system almost 40 years ago. Now we're all parked in front of plasma televisions bought on 28% credit watching "reality shows." Talk about toilet-ramming the future. This is what happens when entire generations of education are wasted on purpose. What a fucking waste.
--
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
========================
"We were on the doorstep of the solar system almost 40 years ago. Now we're all parked in front of plasma televisions bought on 28% credit watching "reality shows." Talk about toilet-ramming the future. This is what happens when entire generations of education are wasted on purpose. What a fucking waste."
You're too kind. 'Wasted' implies a mere passive neglect, rather than 'subverted' which is more the truth.
You assume an educated population is desirable - bzzzt wrong, they want you as dumb as can be and easy to control. You're right, we passed that golden age up, smart and independent thinkers are not desirable in
a the new regime. Its just too - 'unpredictable'.
Nobody wants rogue minds working on their own, people who might not be 'on side'. They're scared. They're frightened shitless of progress, of technology, of people like us who might turn their little world on its head with a single daydream. Their way is to subvert technology, Einstein gives us e=mc2 and they figure out how to make bombs. These guys invent CCDs and they stick them on every street corner to spy on people.
Little exposes the malignant pathology of a person so much as the uses they seek in technology.
But don't cry for the plasma TV generation. They are actually happy, They relish their ignorance, it protects them and they will defend the right to be a dumbass to the hilt. That shiny box made in China means more to them than any idea, any morality, any person. We are in the minority, depressed and traumatised watching the silence of the lambs, powerless to help or inform. Sometimes I'd like to unlearn everything I know, take a job in the car wash and sit in front of a 56" expensive toy I don't own while I drink cheap beer, but it doesn't work that way, no turning back the hands of time.
please may I have a +5 funny mod too, you weak spineless cowards.
================= http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178268&threshold=5&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14782386
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Sadly, the Slashdot eds decided not to run my story about the Gowers Review [hm-treasury.gov.uk] calling for evidence as of yesterday, so since it's directly relevant I'll mention it here.
For those who don't know, this is a government-ordered review into the current state of intellectual property, and whether it needs amending in light of new technologies, easy distribution over the Internet, etc.
The review is concerned with several quite general questions, quite a few specific issues, and any other comments interested parties care to make. Among the specific issues explicitly mentioned in the call for evidence (available on the web site linked above) are:
- the period for which copyright lasts;
- what sorts of fair use rights might be appropriate in the UK (bearing in mind that we don't have anything directly equivalent to US fair use provisions at present, and a lot of the things mentioned in this discussion -- such as format-shifting for personal use -- are clearly illegal here at present);
- the use of DRM (including several very relevant questions about balancing the right of a copyright holder to protect their work and the right of a consumer to use it reasonably);
- access to orphaned works, for which the legitimate copyright holder can no longer be reached.
So, if you're from the UK and you've ever bitched on Slashdot about the unfairness of DRM
Read the rest of this comment...
=== http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/02/24/1629223 ===========
And this one here was also priceless... "More broadly, the company suggested the Commission could look at the process used in the United States, where a court also found that Microsoft had violated antitrust law."
RIGHT. Excuse me for being an European and LAUGHING my ass off each and EVERY time I hear about ANOTHER idiotic legal experience from the USA. Next time I hear somebody start saying "US Legal system is better in/because/...", I'll just hit him over the head with a large brick and let him TRY to sue me.
=========================
And this one here was also priceless... "More broadly, the company suggested the Commission could look at the process used in the United States, where a court also found that Microsoft had violated antitrust law."
RIGHT. Excuse me for being an European and LAUGHING my ass off each and EVERY time I hear about ANOTHER idiotic legal experience from the USA. Next time I hear somebody start saying "US Legal system is better in/because/...", I'll just hit him over the head with a large brick and let him TRY to sue me. http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/02/24/1627215
===================
A new factor has come up in to addition to Stalin's old maxim "He who votes decides nothing; he who counts the votes decides everything."
Something like "Who finds out about corruption is irrelevant; who gets to decide what kinds of corruption are "Serious Stories" versus "Tinfoil Hat" material decides the rest."
Or something like that. Since the media refuses to acknowledge that there are serious questions about legitimacy under electronic voting, pointing out the problems probably doesn't matter any more - any evidence of problems is perforce "nutty conspiracy theory material" and so is a non-starter.
===============
The fact that using a printed balot as a paper trail is such an obvious solution and the fact that printed receips are so easy to implement is what makes the chosen convoluted, hackable, no-recount alternative so suspicious. What honest and experienced company would chose anything but the easy and elegant solution of a printout considering that it is already implemented on every ATM and all cash registers if not because they want to open the possibility to election fraud? No amount of electronic tweaking will make the system secure. There is always a weak link. Even if the company had the best intentions in the world, how can they be certain that a lone partisan coder wouldn't sneak a line of code within what I'm sure are millions of lines? This could be done at any point in the chain of programs that handle the votes; from the user interface, to the final tally, through the individual machine databases, the talying computer, the flash memory files etc. etc. etc. I have plenty programming experience and I can tell you that it would be very easy to implement this "bug" so that it happened ONLY on the day of the election so that previous and following tests would show no bias. Consider, If you were a company and you were designing a voting machine you would have two options: 1)Hire an expensive team of developers responsible for surveying all the code components of your system to make sure each and everyone one of them are 100% secure and bug free. A feat that no leading software company (say MS) has succeeded in doing for their own software even after decades and millions of man-hours of debugging and re-engineering. Or, 2) add a small printer similar or identical to the ones used for printing lotto tickets or even those good old receipt printers that are part of *every* cash register. These receips would then be hand veryfied by each voter and then put in a ballot box for future verification and recounts. Which option do you think is less expensive? What rationale is there for a company to chose option
one? = http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178407&threshold=5&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14792917
==============================================
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed? I mean, really. Of course it'll never be proven, but it's so freakin' obvious. Incompetence can only explain so many problems - I think we've passed that point a long time ago. Its an appealing thought. I mean, the alternative is to believe that more than half the country was dumb enough to believe that the same jackasses who failed to stop 9/11 and royally screwed up in Iraq were the best guys to protect us from further terrorist attacks and the best guys to fix Iraq.
There's something very comforting about conspiracy theories in general. I mean, if it's a conspiracy you at least have a chance to fight that; it's just the actions of a few people. But if the problems of the world emerge from the apathy, stupidity, ignorance, greed, and hate of billions of people, including ourselves... well, that's a little more difficult to tackle and a little more depressing to think about.
It must all be the CIA's fault.
===============================
Most Republicans would rather have a hopefully salvageable Republican administration in charge than a neo-socialist Democratic one. ...the Democrats have become a new socialist party...The current Democratic party is Socialist, to the extent that they favor using public money to provide services to people that private companies could have provided - like health care, education, construction, retirement benefits, etc.
The current Republican party is Facist, to the extent that they favor using public money to benefit large corporations and their leaders, and they collude with the media to keep the public in a misinformed frenzy.
I'll take Democratic Socialism over Republican Facism ANY day.
==================
And that's why George W. Bush is a symptom of what's wrong with the US today, not the cause. People like you, however, are.
While I applaud you for trying to maintain a sane and rational outlook and avoid falling into these conspiracy theories, this issue has far too many coincidences for you to dismiss like that. What would it take for you to change your stance from "no biggie, just a little smoke, no fire" to "fuck me, that's an awful lot of coincidence, maybe I should entertain the possibility that something is wrong here."
Hell, even assuming there's zero conspiracy, just a lot of blunders, should still make you nervous as it still means there's been a perversion of democracy.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178407&threshold=5&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14793523
=========================
many Americans truly, honestly believed that Bush was the better candidateWhat does that have to do with anything? Many Americans believed Ross Perot was the better candidate, but nobody argues that he deserved the job or - if he managed to force his way into office - that we should shut up about it.
I voted for Bush for various reasonsAhh... now I see where you're coming from.
The fact is, about a half-million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush. As for who was more partisan, consider the relentless smear campaigns carried out against Bush opponents Anne Richards ("she's a lesbian!"), Al Gore (everything you can think of from "he claims to have invented the Internet" to "he grew up in a fancy Washington hotel"), and John Kerry (the Swift Boat liars).
Consider the shenanigans carried out in Florida in 2000 that exposed the weaknesses in American democracy and showed just how open to abuse the system is. The Republicans were simply more partisan, beating on the system without regard for the spirit and principle of the rules to get the result they wanted.
Consider the (more subtle) shenanigans in the 2004 election, particularly in Ohio, where voters in Democratic districts had to wait as much as 8 hours to vote and had their right to vote challenged in massive numbers by Republican partisans at the polling stations. This was made possible by Republicans in the Governor's office and Republicans in control of the election. Voters in Republican-leaning districts did not face these modern-day Jim Crow measures.
Now, consider all the shady stuff that's so difficult to prove - it took years just to get logs from these electronic voting machines, and they're FULL of suspicious data. Consider the 11th-hour "correction" in the voting data on election night 2004 - we're asked to accept that the exit polls were way off for the first time in history, and somehow the numbers jumped just enough in just the right places (all at the same time!) to put Bush over the top. Yet anyone who talks about this is smeared as a "nutjob"...
Who is more partisan? Republicans. One of the great failures of the Democratic party in the last 5 years has been to underestimate the ruthlessness and lack of principle on the part of the Republicans. Anybody who claims "well, both sides do it, everybody is partisan these days, a pox on both their houses" has either not been paying attention, or has drunk the Republican kool-aid.
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Every day almost we hear about another computer exploit, some drive by malware download, another botnet, etc, all so some scumbags can make a few thousand dollars. That's it, a few thou. It's easy enough to understand the motivation, and easy enough to see that they use unsecured computers and peoples naievete to accomplish this task.
Now, just imagine,if the scumware guys OWN the computer that you and everyone else uses. Now imagine the scumware guys are looking at CONTROLLING THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT by OWNING that computer.
How much is that worth? Really, how much motivation is there to control TRILLIONS of dollars, not thousands, TRILLIONS and the largest war machine on the planet? Do you see any incentive there, or is all this just another series of "coincidences"? Coups don't happen around the world all the time? Where's the magic document from the truth fairies that says the US can never fall to coup plotters?
Now look at the track record so far of what we have found out these folks, how many lies have been drug out of them? How many people have perished based on the lies, how may large corporate insiders connected to the government have profitted immensely?
You can't do the math on this? What's it going to take, them coming on TV and just announcing it? You fail to be able to take into account all the other information out there? This latest is just another large chunk of evidence, look at ALL of it together, what do you see? I see some serious crimes right up into treason,and the probable perps with the clear motive and the clear opportunity.
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The tech part is entirely neutral in the equation.
The real issue here is management. Because information
is available, management often believe they
do need it.
Often, that's pretty far from the truth. People spend so much time now gathering useless figures, processing those, and presenting them that they often don't bother to take care of the issues that don't readily fit into numeric analysis, or worry about whether they're introducing noise into the signal (which only needs to be filtered out again later).
What people need to do is take a step back and determine what they really need to do their job, and get a process in place that'll automate delivery of the figures they actually
need to them when they're needed.
That way, they'll likely find that the job does increase in efficiency.
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Hmm.... I think you should read this first, in case you didn't.
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel .3.219431.12 [joelonsoftware.co
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1) Established - Needs to be stable and in heavy use. New stuff is fun to play with, but not an option for paying customers.
2) Philosophy - I need to agree with the way they do things. Major reason why I ignored EJBs, but jumped on Spring
3) Cost - I hate having to spend unnecessary $$ when team members cycle, or we have to do an install. Free is best
4) Standards Based - Vendorlock is teh suck. I like the options of being able to swap a component if I'm unhappy with it, even if I know I'll never swap it.
5) Familiarity/Ease of Use - Will it ease into what we're doing? Can the team become proficient in it in a reasonable amount of time? Is there decent documentation available?
6) Licensing - I don't like unecessary limitations, or surprising my customers, so I avoid things like the GPL.
--
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
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There are so many criteria you have to consider that are so situational specific that it would be near impossible to write down the complete guideline. But I think there are a few solid guidelines to start with or consider.
1. Know what goals you have to meet. The eventual success or failure of a software project has more to do with having a strong vision of what it is you need to accomplish at the beginning regardless of platform or tool choices made before and during its development.
2. Be wary of selecting anything because it's cool. Many engineers, I think, fall into the trap of buying into cool toys rather than selecting mission critical tools.
3. Pick frameworks with a maturity directly proportional to the criticalness of the application you need to develop. If you are building something that is to be the the cornerstone of a company, you should pick well established frameworks that have a proven history and proven credibility to provide effective features. Conversely, feel free to experiment with less proven frameworks for applications that can afford to be less robust. A balance between sticking with tradition and building for the future does have to be taken into consideration.
4. Identify the top 3 features your application has to deliver and ensure your chosen framework excels at those features. Bells and whistles and future expansion are nice but make sure you take care of what's critical first before comparing extra features. This will help focus your evaluation and not get side-tracked by all the cool stuff a given framework might provide.
5. Experiment with possible options. There is no reason to select a framework based on paper analysis. Try as much to get your own hands-on experience.
6. If possible, interview other people who have used the framework in real applications. Get the opinions of people who have actually used your options in the real world. Don't let tech demos be your only guide.
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1984 comes to you live in 2024...
Geez, the government just can't get anything completed on schedule...
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President Eisenhower warned us the industrial military complex back in the 60's when technology started to take off. It is staggering how much of our annual budget that we spend on the military, even in so called peace time. It is even scarier how much of this budget is used for spying and profiling American citizens. To this day, we aren't even sure how people get on the "No Fly List". There must be a saner solution to this problem, other than report everything to the government and wait for some algorithm to report you match a specific profile and then send the black helicopters to come get you.
I leave you with the wisdom of Mr. Eisenhower from 1961.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defens
Read the rest of this comment...
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The only way to limit (not prevent) abuses is to severely curtail the amount of power out there to be abused.
--
Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, "What is this, some kind of a joke?"
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With all
the other stories that've been breaking in the past few months of the NSA wholesale spying on American civilians, the real news here isn't just that the TIA is around. It's that the Senate ordered it shut down, and it wasn't. Lets look at the past couple of years. The Executive branch has claimed the powers to: declare people including American citizens "enemy combatants" and hold them incommunicado overseas for however long they wish with no access to the US court system, wiretap American citizens within the United States without a court order or indeed any judicial review. Recently the Vice President has also claimed to power to unilaterally declassify anything that he wants. The CIA has been caught running torture flights through allied countries without their apparent knowledge, running secret prisons in EU member states without EU knowledge, and to top it off, they were caught kidnapping people on the streets of Milan without the knowledge of the Italian government. The Pentagon, the FBI and the California National Guard have all been caught spying on peaceful protesters on American soil, in spite of a law that specifically forbids this. A few months ago... Congress passed a law banning torture. The President grudgingly signed this into law, but reiterated his belief that he wasn't personally bound by the ban. Now we find out that while the Senate ordered a domestic surveillance operation shut down years ago because it was a
threat to the privacy of the average American... the Executive branch has decided to keep it going anyhow, without anyone's knowledge.
What's the point of even having a Legislative or Judicial branch anymore? They have no real powers at this point.
The Executive branch can just arbitrarily declare people outside the judicial branch's jurisdiction to keep them out of the courts, and the whole notion of getting a court order for federal law enforcement action is now considered "obsolete".
The Legislature still theoretically gets to pass laws, but the executive branch can basically break them at will... and since the power of enforcing those laws falls within the executive branch's domain, is it any wonder that all these overt violations of the laws of Congress never amount to any meaningful charges?
In fact, we don't even know how far the executive branch's power goes at this point... nobody new the President had the power to wiretap without warrants. The Constitution never mentions it... in fact, federal law specifically prohibits it. Indeed, when the press first found out about this power, they were pressured to keep it a secret (which they did for over a year), and when the existance of this power was revealed to thew general public, members of the executive branch denounced the revelation of the power itself as unlawful.
=================== http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Hard work is meaningless in a bureaucracy. Imagination and innovation are simply incompatible with bureaucracy and office politics. Only business practices matter. That is why the modern workplace is an adversarial, backwards, anti-innovation toilet.--
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
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I spent the time and money to get a MSCS. After going through 2 other majors I found I simply love computer science. I love learning. I love solving problems. And, I really get a charge out of seeing products I worked on selling in stores or being used in offices.
Troule is, the older I got, the more grey there was in my beard, the harder it got to find jobs. No matter what kind of training you have, in the US there is a serious bias against old people. Many people, (most people?) assume that if you are over 40 you can't possibly know anything about technology.
So, after getting the graduate degree, spending thousands of dollars every years for books and training, and shipping I don't know how many commercial products, not to mention writing and publishing many articles; I can't *buy* a job in technology. I was laid off on my 49 birthday in 2001 and I have not been able to find anything since then.
Once in a while I get an interview... It ends as soon as they see that I am "old"...
So, I am training to be a high school teacher. I teach part time at the local CC, but I can't get on there full time. There are so many people like me out there that I am actually under qualified to teach at a community college. In my neighborhood there are a half a dozen of us. We live on savings, part time jobs, and our wives incomes. It seems you can't get away with treating old women the way you can get away with treating old men.
So, if you want to go into science and technology, please do. The world needs you. But, plan on "retiring" by age 50 because no company needs you after that age.==
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Re:Oh Great: Ultimate in quantum malware
(Score:5, Funny)"You imbecile! You let that virus infect our systems!"
"But I didn't open the file!"
"Yes, but there was a 2 percent chance that you would have, so two percent of our data was affected... and included in that two percent was your entry in the payroll database. So I'm not firing you, but you won't be paid anymore."
"This sucks! I'm going to commit Schroedinger's Seppuku! You'll regret this when I walk in that door with my guts both spilling out and in my body!"
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Re:Deep Thought...
(Score:5, Funny)(http://www.slack-fr.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07, @03:58AM)
All we need to do now is program the question...
Duh. The question was: "An African, or a European Swallow?".
Think about THAT for a second.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)