Posts by Treacle 25 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2006
With THOSE crazy-eyes? You've got to be joking. She's inane.
In keeping with the grand American tradition of dyadic political polarization, the "researchers" neglected to analyze faces from any of the other political parties in the land. Only Republicans & Democrats make the cut. Lame.
"mandatory quarantines for computers with malware infections"
Sounds great (if impossible). But how to start? Since no one anti-malware software can detect everything, and new viruses appear regularly that evade even a collection of scanners, by what possible mechanism could we determine if a machine has the latest botnet beastie swimming around in it's boot sector, infecting it's neighbors?
Besides, even if we were able to "rubber room" all currently infected PCs, by jove, we'd likely have half the Windows PCs off the Net tomorrow! If not more!
Yes, please give us a way to effectively combat the insane tide of Windows-infective virus material out there -- we sysadmins are getting the piss taken out of us currently.
How many doubt that they are actually based in Lackland, Texas, and have outposts in Georgia and Oklahoma?
Probably all the officers will simply be uploaded to the net, work from encrypted military satellites, and will perform their duties by downloading themselves direct into the enemy's head via tightly focused pink laser beams and swarms of nano-bots.
To paraphrase Lao Tzu: When the leader is NOT seated in the Tao... then the whole company is not in the Tao. Given how autistic Chairman (Rockin' Mr.) Bill is, and how devious their early competative efforts were, it's no surprise to me the depth of awkwardness they design into every single product they produce. They continue to trip over themselves for a shrinking iota of market share. Bye bye M$, it's been a pain in the ass knowin' ya! I don't know Linux very well now, but the future has penguins written all over it.
<b>Still</b> can't swap the battery for a fresh one? Absolutely lame.
What of security? What easy avoidance of lasting water damage? What of reducing the people costs when the battery goes dead? <b>Just think of the Environment, kids!!</b>
This should be feature No. 1.
In reply to P. Lee, up in post #8
(--an aside: could you Regster people put big fat numbers next to comments so that we can easily find who people are responding to? It's super annoying to not have reference numbers. thanks--):
Let's go back 10,000 years, to the beginning of agriculture--- when people lived until about age 40, and "children" of 13 were having sex and having babies in prodigious numbers so that the culture could continue.
Let's skip up to Shakespeare's time, the late 1500s, when still "children" of 13 and 14 were having sex and having babies so that the culture could continue. To the point where unmarried 15 year old girls were at risk of becoming unmarriable "old maids".
Now zip forward to 2008 where suddenly (in evolutionary terms) "children" of 13, 14, 15, 16, and even 17 are now not expected to have sex, or even be sexually aware, for fear of prosecution.
Pedophilia, as the author of the article rightly asserts, is a monstrous crime. Heinous in numerable ways. But experimention with sexuality AS a legally-defined "CHILD" of 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 has an incredible evolutionary inertia that is not going to disappear merely because a bunch of Methuselah-aged societal elders write a law about it.
As a contemporary society we have to punish the bastards who conspire to take advantage of youth. But when youth are freely engaging in sexual play with each other, (ie. no coercion -- shouldn't that be the principle demarcator of crime anyway? ), where is the injury? There is none, and no crime should be prosecuted (save for prosecutors victimizing young girls and boys with this new scarlet letter, as previously pointed out).
Initiation of action is another key factor here. Mere possession of an image of a nude youth should not be enough--- this is in regards to a malicious youth sending a photo to a hated teacher in the example above. The teacher initiated no action, ergo no culpability. The pedo group initiated the procurement of coerced images, culpable. Youths flirting with each other via 'sexting' and cam-phone quick snaps: culpability in terms of action, but youth-to-youth sexual expression? No crime in my mind.
Why, I recall as a youth, as a 14 year old boy, engaging in mutually desired kissing, fondling, and yes, even oral sex (both ways!) with a girl of similar age. There is no crime there. In fact thank the Lord that youth can still experiment with sex, because how else will they become delightful lovers and partners in the future if they have no experiences while young?
harrumph. "prosecutors" indeed!
...you can research an effective composting toilet, and solve your problem yourself.
As to all you saying "let's throw the $600m at more (GMO?) rice and corn" ... maybe, just maybe giving people in a tough patch access to high-quality information will actually help more than mere handouts. The bright light of media access might quell the wars that are causing many of the problems that food handouts are not solving.
Local intelligent actions, --mutual aid and voluntary cooperation among those facing the same situations--, may well enable people to take advantage of permaculture innovations, build multi-machines for manufacture (look it up), and eventually leapfrog the so-called "developed" world in terms of self-organization and democracy. Far far more than throwing rice and plumpy-nut after guns.
Yes, let's keep shipping the plumpy-nut and UN peacekeepers ... but Google is known for it's technology skills, not it's food-logistics capabilities. Seems a no-brainer to allow those with the skills to help in the way that they can. Address all fronts at once, n'est-ce pas?
I actually thought the ad was about "Conquistador" shoes, or something else, until my pal pointed out the MS logo at the end.
What are they trying to sell again? Cake? Bill Gates' new line of shoes? A new method to get tight shoes to fit? Churros? A new "comedy" program by Mr. Seinfield?
Somebody should fire the entire MS ad department and hire me.
Wait, that's a bad idea too...
Would a cloud of dust sufficiently diffuse this IR laser beam?
If so, in Persia it would seem the worst place to use a laser weapon.
Although, it would probably be pretty difficult to have some sort of dust-cloud generator device to protect critical infrastructure and object that could be used on-demand... since the "A"C-130 would still be kilometers away with no announcement of what they were going to target (let alone the fact that it looks like a normal AC-130, and not a futuristic space weapon thingy).
/Mine's the one with the entrenching tool in the pocket, so's I can dig my underground hidey hole bunker.
@ Daniel B. above---
I largely agree with your point, and also find vile that "funds" representing anonymous "shareholders" can sue because their favored little engine of growth decided not to throw itself on it's own sword for their personal pleasure.
However, this concept of constant capitalist growth is dictated by the rules governing positive-interest money. The very design of this one exchange medium essentially requires a culture response interested in greed and the liquidation of anything into money, at the expense of non-monetary value (good companies, trees, modest homes, etc).
It's a pretty serious failing, and one that must be addressed -- perhaps, as some have suggested, by creating additional non- or negative-interest currencies along side current money -- if humanity wants to avoid ridiculous boom-crash cycles that leave people (and companies) dead while the food sits just outside their border.
Personally speaking, I'd rather Microslosh not own and ruin Flickr (a Yahoo! subsidiary), and so I support Yang's yin decision.
Being a citizen of these so-called "United" States, such "security" developments are worrying at best. Rationally we can poke numerous holes in these blatantly ineffectual practices of the TSA/Customs/Feds/etc.
But functionally it would appear that they are in place to entrench grudging familiarity and helplessness in the face of official intrusions into one's private affairs. The more ridiculous affronts to privacy that can be conjured --enforced by humorless condescending gorillas with badges and guns-- the better for weakening the average person's position and resolve vis-a-vis any particular law or law enforcement officer.
Personally I think it's a bit of a backlash against the popular cultural movements of the 60's, and more importantly, the current ground swell of social justice activism in the US and the world (anti-G8, anti-WTO, WSF). Capital is threatened, time to put as many obstacles in place as possible to slow the people down.
1. --- Mowing down little girlses!? With ICE CREAMSES!?!?! Oh noes!!1! We must STOP them! FOR THE CHILDREN!!11!!!
2. --- "It would be great if all the military were robots and they could fight each other"
Wait, "all the military"? You mean, not just the president of the USA?
Hang on: Didn't Philip K. Dick envision massive robot vs. robot wars?
Why yes, he did: The Penultimate Truth
http://www.philipkdick.com/works_novels_penultimate.html
4. --- "Imagine the miners' strike with robots armed with water cannon"
Oh christ, there go our last human rights....
Or wait, did he mean robot miners, striking? Interesting.
5. --- "robots fed by media, goverments and scientists alike."
Well they should stop feeding them at once! Silly bastards.
6. --- There is no 3.
Yes Sam, the executed never re-offend. But then innocents who are executed never live free again either. Is it worth the revenge feeling to keep the 'death penalty' if we know (and we do in fact know) that some innocents will be executed accidentally?
What if it was you? Falsely accused of "Murder One", unable to successfully defend yourself, and sentenced to death. You would fight with every inch of your life, through the web of appeals processes, to live. If you failed, then you would be erroneously put to death. How sad. An innocent man put to death, by accident.
Is the entire death penalty system -- which is provable more expensive the life imprisonment -- worth accidentally killing innocent people?
Oh, and death penalty vs. murder rates? The studies I've seen show that when there is a public execution, murder rates drop. But only for a short time (like 30+ days) and then return to their original levels. So no, death penalty is not effective deterrant. That plus expensive, plus the fact we kill innocents. Nah, not worth retaining it.
And Ian & Spleen: "the Gov't should not have the right to kill people." Totally agree, but wouldn't that prohibit war too? I would hope so... :)
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