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Actually, it's disputed. It all depends on who the historian disliked the most... Plutarch disliked Caesar, Gibbons disliked Christianity (and blamed Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria), and Hebraeus hated the Moslems (and so blamed Omar). I was unaware of the dispute, having only heard the story of Caesar, so I thank you for your attempt at correcting me. From the reading I did writing this reply, I think it's most likely that none of these culprits single-handedly destroyed the Library, and that they all had a hand in the crime.

Check here, here, and here for three different perspectives on who did it.

But my actual point stands... the Christian Church and the Moslems owe us just as great a debt for what they saved of the ancients' wisdom as they are responsible for what they destroyed.

Why?

Are you mad?

Because it's there.

If you can't understand that you have my sympathy for the death of your spirit of adventure. Pushing technology to do completely inappropriate things is part of what makes a hacker a hacker.

Alexandria? Quite an appropriate location for such an important facility...

What ignorant bullshit. Have you ever been to Spain? Have you ever seen the al-Hambra? The fact is that during the 7th through 10th Centuries, while Europe was little more than a stinking barabaric backwater, Islamic civization was very highly developed. They even had soap. During the Crusades, many Christian lords would try to get hold of Saracen physicians, because everyone knew that their medical methods were far superior to the European ones (which tended to consist of bleeding and wrapping the wound in dung).

It was Arab scholars who preserved much of the ancient Greek litterature. Without them we would have none of it. As for your statement about the library of Alexandria, you should read this.

In addition, who do you think invented algebra? (a hint: it should be al-gebra). Most of the stars visble to the naked eye have Arabic names (Aldebaran, Almitak, Algol, Betelgeuse, Achernar etc etc.), meaning that they had highly developed (for the time) mathematics and astronomy.

I understand you're pissed about terrorism; who wouldn't be? But don't make the mistake of letting current events color your view of the past. It's bad enough the other way around.

Creation science is both a cause and an effect of American intellectual decline. There are disturbing parallels between the rise of literalist Christianity in America and in Rome. In Rome, Christianity started as mysticism, mutated into a malignant populist movement suspicious of intelligence and learning, and ended up destroying the very knowledge needed to sustain the empire (the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria was but one of the atrocities committed.) Barbarism took the empire from within.

That's strange, I've always heard it was Caliph Omar and the Muslims in 640 CE. You know, "If they are in accordance with the Koran, then they are unneeded, as the Koran is all we need. If they are not in accordance with the Koran, then they are of no consquence.".

However, in all honesty no one really knows.

The barbarians (i.e. the visigoths, and the huns) were outside the empire, not within. The rise of Christianity in the Roman empire came about when the elite became Christians (not for any divine reason, but rather because it became the hip thing to do) and then enforced it on the population.

That's not to say Christianity is blameless. The unexpected Spanish Inquisition is enough evidence of that. However the problem isn't with Christianity specifically, but rather all fundamentalist/literalist religion. And yes, that is on the rise in America.

This quote really disturbs me ...

"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief.

Knowledge should be used to empower. Knowledge should be passed along from generation to generation. It is our knowledge that makes this (or any country) worthy of defending.

How about finding ways to better secure our national infrastructure instead of "persecuting" researchers. What's next? The Bush administration will outlawing thinking?

Maybe I am just overreacting, but the above quote from this article reminds me of The Burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Although I'd always heard it was Caliph Omar.

They seem to know something about it...

Also, that the reason why the Germans didn't have a nuclear bomb is because the allied forces destroyed (after a first failed mission) the heavy water factory in Switzerland (I think it was in Switzerland, not 100% sure) that was fundamental to the bomb design.

The facility you refer to was in Norway; Switzerland was neutral in WWII.

Please note : this is

not flamebait or trolling!

Well, if Anonymous Coward says so, it must be true.

Well, I'm willing to yield that you're not trolling, but for some reason have ignored the approximately three hundred previous posts on the subject...

I honestly just want to know - why would you want to boot Linux on an XBox?

It will vary from person to person. Here is just a handful of the many, many possible reasons why. You might not agree with all of them, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that the person who believes in them agrees with it.

1. Because you can. Geeks like pushing things to their limits. I'm sure many of the geeks involved love their X-Boxes and just want to mess with them because they can. The same reason people put jumping hydralics on their cars, the same reason people put neon tubes in their computer cases, the same reason people recreate Star Wars in ASCII, the same reason people climb mountains. It's a challenge in an area they know. It's a chance to match wits, indirectly, against Microsoft's presumably smart security people. People often set strange challenges for themselves, let them enjoy themselves.

2. It tweaks Microsoft. Some geeks just love the opportunity to thumb their noses at Microsoft and this is a chance. You get to do something Microsoft really doesn't want you to do. You get a box valued at something like $300 for $200, subsidized by Microsoft. That gives some people a kick. It's not harmful (in the way, say, vandalizing Microsoft's property would), so what's the harm?

3. For some specialized tasks it's a suitable box. Sure, you can build a similarlly powered box for a similar price, but you'd be hard pressed to build a box with a stereo component form factor and as quiet as the X-Box. It would make a good network media player for videos and music. It would make a good station for running things like MAME or other emulators. It's not an awesome deal (and as technology continues to advance, it will be less of a deal), but for now it's a pretty good deal.

4. To play illegally copied games. Sure it's illegal, and I'm sure you would never do something like that. But some people don't care and want to.

For all the hype in the media about running Linux on an XBox, why isn't there similar press about running Linux on, say, a Nintendo Cube (or, does that one already run Linux? or Unix?) I believe that Playstation already runs Linux... right?

Indeed, Sony did release a version of Linux for the Playstation 2. The initial rumors were announced on Slashdot, the initial announcement made it onto Slashdot, and the ship date got announced on Slashdot. We got an in depth review, and an annoucement of a new distribution for PS2 Linux. That seems to have been reasonably well covered. Why no more announcements? Well, given that Sony handed the community a working version, there wasn't as much incentive to spend time hacking on it. Also, it was much harder to port given the lack of a hard drive. Notably, Sony's Linux for PS2 includes a hard drive.

Linux on the Gamecube? People are interested. The lack of a hard dr

No argument there, but evidence suggests that neither a Christian nor a Muslim (as is elsewhere alleged) was responsible for the burning of the library at Alexandria:

http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm
http://www.ehistory.com/world/articles/ArticleView .cfm?AID=9
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandri a

If you want your own enigma to play with, there are simulators in many different languages and for many different platforms.