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OMG! Look at the meltdown DUMBASS is having. He's become Dep. Sheriff Eric Cartman. "RESPECT MY A-THOR-A-TIE! RESPECT MY A-THOR-A-TIE!... ...with every bit as much legitimacy to be an authority as Eric Cartman had, too.

Dare to question the "Filibustering as a tactic" routine ? GET TWICE A MUCH FILIBUSTER!

When are you going to start reading phonebooks from South Carolina like Strom Thurmond did in the 50's when he was filibustering against Civil Rights legislation?

Still nothing but links to vague generalities... nothing remotely compared to the very specific rules of the 2008 DNC that proved my point.

Go re-read rule 13A DUMBASS!

You think that rule is written to compel any type of behavior of individual delegates?

Nope. It's written for committees within Democratic Party with the authority to compel change in delegations.

Individual uncommitted delegate are free to do whatever they wish. Then RULE 13A makes the DNC rules committee, credendials committee, etc. forces changes in the makeup of delegation to the DNC if the freedom of those uncommitted delgates get carried away enough to alter a result noticably.

If a large chunk of uncommitted delegates broke toward Clinton improperly, other nameless minor elected officials supporting Clinton from other parts of the Country would have been removed by the Credentials Committee and replaced by nameless minor elected official supporting Obama. The math ensuring a Obama nomination would have remained exactly the same.

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Google search "mathematics proof 5=4"

Top link on 1st page that comes up...

http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/04/29/funny_math.html

Theorems that prove basic mathematics is wrong!

While trying to clean up some old files/mails, I got these hilarious mathematical proofs. I donâ(TM)t remember who sent these over, but it is definitely worth filing.

Theorem : 3=4
Proof:
Suppose:
a + b = c
This can also be written as:
4a - 3a + 4b - 3b = 4c - 3c
After reorganising:
4a + 4b - 4c = 3a + 3b - 3c
Take the constants out of the brackets:
4 * (a+b-c) = 3 * (a+b-c)
Remove the same term left and right:
4 = 3

Theorem : All numbers are equal to zero.
Proof: Suppose that a=b. Then
a = b
a^2 = ab
a^2 - b^2 = ab - b^2
(a + b)(a - b) = b(a - b)
a + b = b
a = 0

Theorem: 1$(dollar) = 1c(cent).
Proof:
And another that gives you a sense of
money disappearing...
1$ = 100c
= (10c)^2
= (0.1$)^2
= 0.01$
= 1c

Theorem: 1 = -1 .
Proof:
1/-1 = -1/1
sqrt[ 1/-1 ] = sqrt[ -1/1 ]
sqrt[1]*sqrt[1] = sqrt[-1]*sqrt[-1]
ie 1 = -1

Th

"How do you know you can trust open source projects?"

- How do you know you can trust closed source programs? You've never seen their code, no one knows whether the program is legit except the people telling you it's ok, and //they're the ones selling it to you//. So when you buy a closed-source program, you don't have a single clue whether it will do something it's not meant to do.. don't believe me? Check here: http://vsbabu.org/software/fsxls.html - this is microsoft actually putting something into Office which had no business being there, and no one told the customers about it.

In this case it's benign, but all closed programs are more of a security hazard for being closed than the open source programs because closing the source gives the programmer full license to do what he wants with it. I can give you a hypothetical example; A company creates a program which helps you create and maintain offline versions of you profiles on popular blog/profile pages like facebook/myspace/whatever. It goes through its first iterations and looks kinda legit, but in one version it starts gathering data on your email addresses, your personal information, the personal information on other people around you, and starts monitoring your email. In a new version it then starts sending useful information on email addresses, contacts and so on to a huge botnet for spamming purposes. It does it discretely, and in the license agreement you signed, they have a "we need these rights to be able to send to the legit sites, so say yes to this". The difference between a closed source program behaving like this and an open source program is that the open source programs which tries a stunt like this will get shut down a lot faster than a closed source version.

What open source programs do is give everyone on the internet the chance of going through the code, and verifying that what the code is supposed to be doing is what the code actually does, and nothing more. You and I might not have the technical skills do do that, but there's plenty of people there who notice things if they're wrong, know how to grab the open source, compile it, compare it with the downloadable executable and can tell you whether it's dubious or not.

- So essentially, your security IT guy got a bells ringing in his head when he hears open source, it's a shame that he doesn't realize that it's the //Same bloody bell// as should be ringing for any/all closed-source software he doesn't recognise.

"What processes are in place to protect users from malicious code?"

- well, one process is called OPEN-SOURCING. You're clearly confused about what programming is, I'd turn in my geek-license if I were you.

- I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find simple yet effective ways to check whether their software is bad or not.

Here's a flight simulator in Excel! Sort of. ;)

In fact, we should folow their lead. That wasn't the first time MS got it right, and the FOSS have to imitate its features...

--dave

http://vsbabu.org/software/fsxls.html

No problem!

Are there specialized graphical editors for sources.list that would allow a median grandmother to easily add a store-bought CD-ROM as a repository? (No, notepad clones don't count.)

Yes, there are specialized graphical editors for sources.list that would allow a median grandmother to easily add a store-bought CD-ROM as a repository

And would it properly detect repositories on different CDs that are mounted and unmounted as people buy Linux app CDs from a hypothetical Penguin-Mart and then insert and eject them?

Yes it would, considering the repository on the CD is set up correctly by the vendor (nothing grandma has to do) and the path is in the sources (grandma could need to add this with the easy GUI specialized editor shown above. For added easyness, It would be no problem for the vendor to even make the repository look like an official mandrake CD, so grandma would just need to select the software she wants to.)

Do all distributions mount the primary optical drive at the same URI?

This problem is as easy as telling grandma to write in the path given to here on the CD (just like a serial numer, even easier as it is not complete random alphanumerical data.

By "non-free" in the context of Debian-compatible repositories, I assume you mean that same thing Debian means by "non-free", that is, proprietary software. However, Debian's "non-free" repository contains "freeware," that is, software cleared by its copyright owner for free redistribution to the general public but not under a free software license.

A non-free repository, as far as 'the windows way' goes, can be distributed with a CD as described above if a proprietary vendor wants to use the linux packaging system. If not, he can provide a shell script that automatically installs the software, doing the checking-for-specific-distro behind scenes. Just as windows installers check for windows versions. It could also (through checkinstall) create a convenient package that could be integrated in the linux package manager. All this is done by the vendor. The end user would just double-click a install file. Same as windows basically...

However, many specialized programs depend on revenue from sales of copies in order to finance their development. Do online repositories allow for secure payment to the publisher per package, per computer that the package will be installed on?

The way a vendor will go on collecting money is completely irrelevent to the packaging system itself. Access to a proprietary-repository can be granted to a paying customer only. Just as club members on mandriva have access to Media reserved to club members.

So, there are a bunch of ways you can install software on linux. Most are even friendlier than the windows way. If you really want to get envolved with Linux, you'll never turn back...

There's an interesting article describing the local changes to Bangalore on vsbabu.org.

Porsche DID design a laptop, sold at Best Buy in 2002:

Porsche Laptop Review 1

Porsche Laptop Review 2

LS

You, Sir, are a moron