Op 6/18/2012 3:34 PM, Ted Byers schreef:
-----Original Message----- From: Oddball [mailto:monkey9@iae.nl] Sent: June-18-12 4:54 AM To: opensuse@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse] How to import passwords from FF into SM? [off-topic]
Op 6/16/2012 10:02 PM, Ted Byers schreef:
-----Original Message----- From: Oddball [mailto:monkey9@iae.nl] Sent: June-16-12 12:25 PM To: Anton Aylward Cc: opensuse@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse] How to import passwords from FF into SM?
But I am really disappointed at the probable loss of my tomatoes and pepper (a sweet hot variety). Too bad...
I think this greatly over-simplifies the problem, and may focus on what I suspect is a symptom of a deeper problem. One problem, that has been allowed to fester for decades is that those in the EU broke their own rules in admitting some of the current members by not insisting that the new members get their own economic houses in order. The idea of the Euro isn't wrong in principle, as the USA is larger geographically, and has a huge population, but it would have been stronger had they implemented it correctly from the start and maintained its integrity as the EU grew. But politicks got in the way. That is a major component in the case of Greece, and perhaps Spain too. Another problem involves stupid politicians making unsustainable promises to an equally stupid populace; with the net result that too many people end up working too few hours. One need look only at the average hours worked during the week, length of annual holidays, and age at retirement, and the huge discrepancy in those stats between northern Europe and southern Europe to see why southern European countries typically don't have a tax base adequate to support the insanely generous social programs they promised to idiots that voted these politicians into office. I haven't done it, but it would be interesting to do a detailed comparative study of how social welfare programs in places like Sweden and Germany, arguably quite rich, and equally arguably countries that have very strong economies, have been implemented without such devastating impacts on the economies that their southern neighbors suffer. A third problem involves the extent of tax evasion. Some of the sources I have read have described extensive problems with tax evasion, especially in Greece. Of course, those guilty of that crime don't care that in doing so they have become a major contributor to the sovereign debt crisis in Greece especially. In Italy, a major problem is organised crime. The Mafia has a huge impact on the economic viability of especially southern Italy. What many don't notice, though, that there is an even more severe problem with corruption throughout the Muslim world and in India: places in which almost nothing happens without bribes being paid. But few notice the macro-economic impact as these are mostly developing countries so most people expect them to be basket cases. I'll bet, though, that India will be among the first affected countries that takes measures to deal with it as they grow to become a major economic powerhouse over the next few decades.
One last cause worth mentioning is the insane risk management practices in the Eurozone banking sector. There, a contrast with Canada's banking sector serves well. Canada's banking sector is better capitalized than any other country on the planet, and it survived the latest economic crisis unscathed. Europe's banks are, by comparison, poorly capitalized and that led to the crises in Iceland and Ireland especially (and remarkably once crisis hit, those two countries took appropriate remedial action, and so ought to be OK going forward). Others in Europe don't appear to have learned from that experience. Worse, some of the risk models they use are seriously broken and can be guaranteed to give the wrong answer; and when (not if) these go wrong, the bank involved, and the businesses that deal with it, are certain to suffer. (I presently work developing risk management software in the electronic transaction processing sector, so this is an area of applied statistics I know well - and I have seen the consequences when certain processes got bit by using a bad risk assessment model).
While I sympathize with the attractiveness of simple solutions, I don't believe such simple solutions are going to be effective without first addressing the underlying causes, and that is hard because it can be very hard to properly identify the underlying causes well enough to know how to best address them, and then it is even harder to deal with the politics of applying the fix. How do you fix the problems cause by corruption, the Mafia in the case of Italy, without risking a blood bath? As much as most people don't like paying taxes, how do you get enough of the populace to recognize that it is essential for everyone to pay his taxes if there is to be a decent social welfare program provided by the state?
Sure, these factors are getting magnified by the wrongly valued coin. Don't forget that 10 years of wrong value have led to this point, so i am certain that when they would implement these devaluations in 3 3monthly stages, within a year, nobody would talk about the crisis anymore. It is a psycho logic barrier, that has been crossed too far. When a value of a coin is much too high, like in this case 4 times!, which is much too much, everything involved with money changes wrongly, and out of balance. What they did here, is halve the ppl's income, and doubled the prices: No doubt all money will flow away. And it has, for 10 years now. All the savings are gone now, and day by day more ppl become dependent from food distribution programs. The North of Europe always was richer, because of the climate, which allowed ppl to work more, and longer. That is why every northerner spent their holidays in the south, spending their black money there. If the value would be average, the northern countries would have twice as much money compared to their southern counterparts, and would have strength enough to deal with the problems that would arise. Now all countries got caught in the trick, and all money flows to china against the stream of products, as it always does. We only import, not export, so money flows from us, instead of towards us: China has 900 Billion Euro's from European countries who bought their trashy products.
We know why that experiment failed. Some in the community were lazy, and enough of them failed to work their fields as they ought to have during their first summer that many crops failed, and most of the settlers died.
same reason...
All men's 3 enemies: Ignorance, Slowness of the mind, Preference for evil.
We must not forget the ubiquity of greed and laziness.
These are the same: There are only 3 main enemies of men, which become allies when overcome...
Same happened after the French revolution: Farmers took over the rule, after they decapitated all original 'leaders', and nobody worked the land.... And then when Church (keep'em dumb) and (state) King (keep'em poor) were murdered, and everybody died of hunger, capitalism started to take over the'free' world... Industrialization had made an entry to stay....
I don't think there was even that much distinction between the church and state. From as early as the sixth century, (Gregory of Tours in the south of France and the venerable Bede about the same time in England) there were monks writing vigorous criticisms of the church leadership complaining that wealthy aristocrats and monarchs were buying positions as bishops and cardinals in the church for the purpose of gaining control over church lands and enslaving the serfs that were employed in working the land. The church policy, of keep them ignorant, is as much a policy of the state as the idea of keeping them poor. The church just let itself become a tool of the state.
There were times, the opposite was true also...
And one can see a more subtle approach to 'keep them ignorant' in public education systems in north America and south Asia even now. These school systems are more focussed on indoctrinating kids in the political ideology of the elite rather than in rigorous, objective study of history, natural science, and economics. I couldn't tell you how many alleged honour students I have encountered that I would dismiss as functionally illiterate. But they say all the right things to please the local and regional politicians.
Is not all about indoctrination? The Real Truth (as if such exists) The Only Right Path/Way etc etc.. All points of view, in the same picture..
It is important to make a distinction, though, between official church practices of the mega-institution and the 'church' as represented by people of faith, lest the latter be slandered unjustly by the crimes of the former.
When Galileo Galilei proved that the world was round, and turned around the sun, with the spyglass made by a Dutch creator of lenses: Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, instead of the opposite, the church claimed, he got excommunicated, and his possessions confiscated. Start of the biggest crime ever committed by the Roman Church: The Inquisition.
Like the catholic church has done for ages...
Yes, but remembering that that was the institution as controlled by politicians, not those actually trying to practice that faith. All too often, I have seen folk (especially western atheists) attack the latter, and the faith itself, because of the deeds of the politicians who manipulated the institution.
Please don't protect the RCC....
That is why, across north Africa, through the middle east and into south western Asia, you have constant warfare instigated by these leaders against anyone who believes differently: in the Sudan, and across north Africa, Arab Muslims slaughtering black animist and Christian neighbors for many generations now, and throughout the middle east, Shia and Sunni clerics ranting, instigating violence, against each other as well as the West and Israel. You have Turkey and Iran waging a proxy war in Syria as a result. All that warfare is guaranteed to keep the entire Muslim world in poverty; and the rest of the world is at risk if they let themselves be drawn into it. War is bad for most businesses, and poverty is an inevitable result. There are no winners in a war, only loosers. Gain is money, for arms dealers.
It is important to note, though, that so-called religious wars have almost nothing to do with religion (except possibly Islam - in which the Quran has no redeeming content - trust me, I have read it cover to cover) and everything to do with political leaders exploiting general levels of ignorance among the masses and manipulating the ignorant into doing what they would otherwise not do. All about power, and staying in power. I am sure the software developers at Microsoft and Intel and IBM and Oracle, and all the other commercial software houses are much like me; we're just people who happen to develop software for a living. Some of us do it well, and some not so well, but that is beside the point. We're just people trying to earn a living. And you have the temerity to accuse us of contributing to global poverty because we want to be paid for our work? *Absolutely not, that would be ridiculous.*
OK. I am glad we got that clarified.
I don't know which is more obscene: the idea that I ought to work for free because I happen to develop software, so you can have it without paying for it, or that I am guilty of impoverishing the world because I want to be paid for my work; and this in spite of the ample evidence visible to anyone with eyes to see the world as it is that there are many causes of poverty.
I am glad this unguarded 'slip of the keyboard' brought you back into your conviction. Might I suggest, to you, and any other open source fanatic, I hope you will not see me as any other open source fanatic, this is absolutely not the case...
OK.
The middle is best, in which sharing is regarded as a virtue, widely practiced, but not imposed.
Agreed.
Similarly, capital, viewed as merely a device of instrumental value in the support of trade, can result in great wealth, as most western countries show, even in these 'interesting times', but that other human attribute, greed, or the love of money, has caused all kinds of evil when left unchecked. The resulting position, with regard to software, is that there is a place for both open source software and closed source software, and neither has an ethical advantage over the other. Your welformed opinion, based on reading the right stuff, 'clean' thinking and experience, for which i am glad you shared it with me/us (shared freely, without charging.. ;-), must have cost you quite some time, as it took me to read and reply to it. As you might have noticed, i have put remarks while reading your utmost interesting post, to which you are free to respond, if you feel the need for it... As yourself, i am quite aware of all of this.
Yes, I did.
The experience involved took eons to accumulate. ;-) I am so old I can remember fighting off T.Rex so I could enjoy my Bronto-burgers, which tasted remarkably like chicken. ;-) or so it seems (a feeling confirmed by my feet and knees, BTW). I can write this in safety as it is certain my sisters won't see it. if they did, they'd retort that there isn't that much difference between my age and theirs, and they don't remember this. And then they'd smack me when I reply that they needn't worry as that just means their sometimers has progressed to alltimers (Alzheimer's), and that I'd make sure they got appropriate care in a residential facility whenever they're ready. And attempt at humour that would just result in sibling abuse. ;-)
roflmao...!!!
I buy apps directly from swdevs, when i think they are useful to me, like ghislers total commander, because he did a very good job. The license gives me a lot of advantages: i can talk to the guy, and it lets me feel a lot better.
A feeling i total lack with windows, which i use also.
M$ has a mixed track record. Windows 3.0 was interesting, and I had it, but rarely used it, preferring the command line to run the programs I wrote (and I admit doing things with the graphics hardware at the time that would be disastrous now with any modern OS - but which were necessary to make usable educational software, which I was doing at the time to put myself through graduate school). Windows 95 98 and ME were basically viruses that took over your machine and prevented you from either getting much done or preserving the little you did get done.
Very funny way of telling the truth...lol...
NT was usable, but rather poor relative to OS/2. The problem with the latter was the marketing. If IBM got that right, we'd all be using it rather than Linux or Windows. Windows 2000, XP and now Windows 7 were/are quite good, with Windows 7 being the best of the lot. I do not see Windows 7 being better or worse than the current Linux distributions; only a little different.
Yes, windows 7 i like very much, it is there, repairs itself, and doesn't take very (too) much attention to herself, like a good housewife... ;-) (which are very rare, and hard to come by btw..;-)
The one edge I see it having is that I always know exactly where it is putting stuff, but in Linux, once I figure out where Ubuntu has put software I just installed, and I look on Suse Linux having just installed the same software on it, and I look in the same place, it isn't there. The local Linux folk here that I talk to tell me that even they have problems finding the software and their working directories some times as they see little consistency between distributions as to where things ought to go. It gets quite confusing sometimes.
Absolutely, i totaly agree with that, not to forget renaming the packages, and not telling that they are renamed, so package managers cannot solve the dependencies while all the necessary are there, and you have to move heaven and hell to get the SW you want, installed.
Thanks for clarifying this. It is good that there is so much upon which we're agreed. :-)
But for now, I have to get something to eat and start my real work for the day.
Cheers
Ted
Sure, i very much enjoy your vision upon 'our' world.... Take care.. Let us communicate more often... Rob. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org