As I remember on good days and favorable conditions a HAM can go around the world.
"Favorable Conditions," AFAIK in this case do not mean a nice sunny day. If you have low Cirrus(?) clouds, the HAM radio signal can bounce off the clouds and come back down far away (and the reverse works as well). I'm trying to become a HAM technician at the moment -- it's pretty easy, but I might not remember the specifics of this one exactly.
> If you walk down the street, and your local newspaper (or TV station) takes your picture, they can publish it.
But don't they have to blur out your face if you did not give them consent? And I'm not talking about some random person in the background, the person in question is the subject of the photo.
> I'm shocked that someone on slashdot is still perpetuating that old myth.
There are people who still believe in God, so why does an extremely common misconception "shock" you?
Anyway, show me a place that "debunks" that, as I live in an area infested by raccoons, and while I can't prove they are washing food, they certainly hang out by the stream a lot. I looked on snopes (searched for "raccoon") and couldn't find anything. So where did you get your info?
> I don't think you've ever actually ran the gimp.
Thank you for telling me my own past. I'm guessing that you are the troll, since I HAVE run the GIMP and have never seen that tool panel. Maybe it's RedHat, since that's the only OS I've used it on.
Not particularly, but I see that it may have been, had I understood it at first. I guess it's the whole "explaining a joke just ruins it" thing... Sorry, hopefully I didn't ruin it for someone else.:)
> it's the main window. It has buttons with drawings of tools on it. You can't even close the toolbox without closing the GIMP.
Well, after looking at screenshots of GIMP now, it has them. When I ran it, it did not.
> Jesus. You, sir, are an idiot.
Let's see... I state a fact: as of the last time I used it, those functions were not present. Then you say "Ha, you are wrong, look at the newest version." See the disparity there? If not, hello Pot.
> You're being serious? Yes. > Did your GIMP installation look anything like this?
Holy crap, it looked nothing like that! Whenever I ran GIMP I just got one box with menus and a text box that showed the currently-running commands. Perhaps I'll have to try it out again.
> how come cars can be made generally bug free or bugs are the responsibility of the manufacturer but software is generally taken to be impossible to make perfect?
Because people are actively trying to break the software (crackers, hackers...) to either gain access or knowledge. That's why the "hood is welded shut," to use a crappy premade analogy. On a car, however, all getting under the hood requires is a crowbar (or access to the cabin). At that point, you can start ripping out wires & stuff or simply hotwiring it -- in essence, "cracking" a car.
Also, cars are not bug-free. The difference is that car parts have tolerance -- if your third piston is off by two micrometers, it won't make much difference (really, because of the O-rings, but whatever). If software code is one character off, even in a billion lines of code, the whole thing can come crashing down.
I guess it partly comes down to how you think of the word "perfect." Perfectly made cars will run within 1% performance of barely-imperfect cars. Barely imperfect software, however, can cause major problems, depending on the location of the imperfection. Sometimes it's nearly impossible to find that one part because for the bug to show up, 20 other specific steps might have to take place before it appears. That is why software is more complex than a car -- it has less fault tolerance.
Who gets sued when my Windows server gets hacked? Microsoft, it its EULA disclaims all responsibility, so you can't sue them either. I find it strange that Microsoft's selling strategy is "you can sue us!" Especially since you can't, usually.
And Nike would still make a KILLING on it for their overpriced, shoddy, crap. Their CEO, however might go from 300mil/yr to only 280mil/yr. How horrible would that be!?!?!? It's almost like being on welfare!
> There simply has to be a figurehead or decision panel that can accept or deny feature requests or UI changes.
While that could seriously improve the productivity of many (most?) OSS projects, it kinda' goes against the community idea that, to me, seems to be an important part of Linux. Unfortunately, I can't come up with anything better.
Yes, it's basically a solar panel attached to a big battery. I knew it was unrelated to Apple, but I didn't think it resembled the iMac. I though the iMac was a one-piece workstation. After doing some quick googling, I realized that I had never seen an iMac before. I was thinking of the eMac, which is many times more ugly.
> I have GIMP, which does everything I need for photo editing.
That's because you are a frigging genius. Normal people, OTOH, only use graphics editors once in a while, and for them GIMP is impossible to use. I've tried using GIMP many times and I can't get much further than opening a file. Where's the paintbrush tool? Eraser? Hell, where are ANY tools? There are no toolbars/boxes to select tools, and there aren't any menu items that look like tool selectors or would open a toolbox window. If Linux had an intuitive GFX editing program like Paint Shop Pro, I would finally ditch my Windows partition and go Linux-only.
My information is slightly outdated: I haven't tried using GIMP in at least 6 months, but unless there has been a huge overhaul on the program, I imagine it is about the same.
> If Linux were anywhere near Macs as far as desktop market went, there would be at least as much hardware and software on the shelves marketed towards it.
I mostly agree with your point in general, but not this statement. If your target customer base could download just about any program you needed for free, as a software development company, why would you think that selling software that does the same thing would be a good money-making idea? Unless you're really good, have great new ideas/features, are just porting between platforms, or have preexisting customer base, there is little reason to write it.
Hardware? There is no such thing as Windows Hardware, so any PC hardware on those shelves is "Linux hardware."
I never see Mac hardware OR software in stores. That could just be because I am not looking for it, but there is certainly MUCH MUCH less of it, at least.
> I've wanted to be involved in Linux but it's closed to creative idea types.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you are saying. If you think that there is a feature missing in a OSS product, and the "project manager" doesn't think it would be good enough to insert into the code -- just say "fork it." Make your own. Yeah, it becomes much more difficult, since you have to do all work yourself, and it would take more work when newer versions of the original come out, but it can be done by anyone, creative or not.
If your addition to the program (in your forked version) turns out to be a great idea and enough people know about it, people will start using it, recognize it as a valuable feature, and perhaps the two parts can merge into one project again at a later time. Or you can keep it separate, if you prefer. Other than the large workload, the only "disadvantage" to this is purely personal -- the original project maintainer can simply grab your new code & insert it. That's partly how OSS works.
I've wanted to contribute myself, but I don't know if I'm a good enough coder to be enough help, and I wouldn't know where to start.
> I wonder how much it is for 1 Tracker. And what about batteries?
If made in high enough quantities (such as one for every homeless person in the U.S.?), the RFIDs could potentially cost less than a penny each. And the whole point of RFID is that it requires no batteries.
> Now we know where apple got the idea for the iMac
That is modded 5-Funny, but I don't understand what is so funny. Besides the similarity in name to the iPod, etc, what does that have to do with coming up with the idea of the iMac?
What am I missing? Or is it just a lame kind of "Mac Humor?"
> I stand by my assertion that you would not behave that way in front of me
Maybe if you are a bodybuilder or something, but that only suppresses my words, not my thoughts. Taken to its extreme (which you did not do, I know), this means that people should not speak their mind, for fear that they may offend someone. I prefer offending people sometimes to calm my mind, and sometimes it provokes though (which, admittedly, this did not). I guess you could say I'm a part-time troll.
> nobody ever does that
I know you said you wouldn't reply to me, which is fine, but you appear to be saying that no one has ever called you a name or insulted you to your face. Nobody ever does that? I do that. I do it because it has been done to me. I do it more online because I need to vent somewhere and people online are more used to it, or will be very soon (if they're new to the net).
> They know better, unless they're extremely drunk or just plain stupid
I think you underestimate the number of "just plain stupid" people in the world. You are likely of above-average intelligence. Possibly even very high intelligence. Look around -- more than half the people you see are "stupider" than you.
> as you've also gone back to pre-school with the last line of your latest message,
Hehe, I guess we are both humor-impaired, then. You see, humor crosses many subjects, and the use of childish taunts is just a way of producing humor in a different way. If you make a Polish joke, I don't call you a bigot. If it's funny, I'll laugh. If it's not, I'll bust your head! No, not really. Speaking of Polish jokes, they seem to have gone out of style. Cool. Unfortunately, it's moving to "French" jokes which are just plain dumb, usually.
But, since I pissed you off directly, I apologize.
Slashdot Mirror
> If they set off a laser tripwire (Snortbox)
;)
Sorry for my ignorance, but wouldn't the tripwire be.... Tripwire?
> the only tinfoil hat you can trust is the one you make yourself.
Yes, keep telling yourself that... Mwuhahahahahaaaaaaa!!!!
As I remember on good days and favorable conditions a HAM can go around the world.
"Favorable Conditions," AFAIK in this case do not mean a nice sunny day. If you have low Cirrus(?) clouds, the HAM radio signal can bounce off the clouds and come back down far away (and the reverse works as well). I'm trying to become a HAM technician at the moment -- it's pretty easy, but I might not remember the specifics of this one exactly.
> If you live in a place where this is difficult, move somewhere where it isn't.
Not all of us have the luxury of being rich & able to move on a whim just because the local area has no public transportation.
> I believe that legally, photo's are free speech
Depends on the subject.
> If you walk down the street, and your local newspaper (or TV station) takes your picture, they can publish it.
But don't they have to blur out your face if you did not give them consent? And I'm not talking about some random person in the background, the person in question is the subject of the photo.
> I'm shocked that someone on slashdot is still perpetuating that old myth.
There are people who still believe in God, so why does an extremely common misconception "shock" you?
Anyway, show me a place that "debunks" that, as I live in an area infested by raccoons, and while I can't prove they are washing food, they certainly hang out by the stream a lot. I looked on snopes (searched for "raccoon") and couldn't find anything. So where did you get your info?
> I don't think you've ever actually ran the gimp.
Thank you for telling me my own past. I'm guessing that you are the troll, since I HAVE run the GIMP and have never seen that tool panel. Maybe it's RedHat, since that's the only OS I've used it on.
> Do you think it's funny, now?
:)
Not particularly, but I see that it may have been, had I understood it at first. I guess it's the whole "explaining a joke just ruins it" thing... Sorry, hopefully I didn't ruin it for someone else.
> it's the main window. It has buttons with drawings of tools on it. You can't even close the toolbox without closing the GIMP.
Well, after looking at screenshots of GIMP now, it has them. When I ran it, it did not.
> Jesus. You, sir, are an idiot.
Let's see... I state a fact: as of the last time I used it, those functions were not present. Then you say "Ha, you are wrong, look at the newest version." See the disparity there? If not, hello Pot.
> You're being serious?
Yes.
> Did your GIMP installation look anything like this?
Holy crap, it looked nothing like that! Whenever I ran GIMP I just got one box with menus and a text box that showed the currently-running commands. Perhaps I'll have to try it out again.
> the government does indeed have quite a few linux servers. They aren't going to shoot themselves in the foot.
The only problem with your crackpot "reality" theory is that the government doesn't follow rules, they make them.
(only 1/4 serious)
> how come cars can be made generally bug free or bugs are the responsibility of the manufacturer but software is generally taken to be impossible to make perfect?
Because people are actively trying to break the software (crackers, hackers...) to either gain access or knowledge. That's why the "hood is welded shut," to use a crappy premade analogy. On a car, however, all getting under the hood requires is a crowbar (or access to the cabin). At that point, you can start ripping out wires & stuff or simply hotwiring it -- in essence, "cracking" a car.
Also, cars are not bug-free. The difference is that car parts have tolerance -- if your third piston is off by two micrometers, it won't make much difference (really, because of the O-rings, but whatever). If software code is one character off, even in a billion lines of code, the whole thing can come crashing down.
I guess it partly comes down to how you think of the word "perfect." Perfectly made cars will run within 1% performance of barely-imperfect cars. Barely imperfect software, however, can cause major problems, depending on the location of the imperfection. Sometimes it's nearly impossible to find that one part because for the bug to show up, 20 other specific steps might have to take place before it appears. That is why software is more complex than a car -- it has less fault tolerance.
> who gets sued when my linux server gets hacked?
Who gets sued when my Windows server gets hacked? Microsoft, it its EULA disclaims all responsibility, so you can't sue them either. I find it strange that Microsoft's selling strategy is "you can sue us!" Especially since you can't, usually.
> Take a pair of Nike's, make them in the US
And Nike would still make a KILLING on it for their overpriced, shoddy, crap. Their CEO, however might go from 300mil/yr to only 280mil/yr. How horrible would that be!?!?!? It's almost like being on welfare!
> There simply has to be a figurehead or decision panel that can accept or deny feature requests or UI changes.
While that could seriously improve the productivity of many (most?) OSS projects, it kinda' goes against the community idea that, to me, seems to be an important part of Linux. Unfortunately, I can't come up with anything better.
> Did you even *follow* the link that was posted?
Yes, it's basically a solar panel attached to a big battery. I knew it was unrelated to Apple, but I didn't think it resembled the iMac. I though the iMac was a one-piece workstation. After doing some quick googling, I realized that I had never seen an iMac before. I was thinking of the eMac, which is many times more ugly.
> I have GIMP, which does everything I need for photo editing.
That's because you are a frigging genius. Normal people, OTOH, only use graphics editors once in a while, and for them GIMP is impossible to use. I've tried using GIMP many times and I can't get much further than opening a file. Where's the paintbrush tool? Eraser? Hell, where are ANY tools? There are no toolbars/boxes to select tools, and there aren't any menu items that look like tool selectors or would open a toolbox window. If Linux had an intuitive GFX editing program like Paint Shop Pro, I would finally ditch my Windows partition and go Linux-only.
My information is slightly outdated: I haven't tried using GIMP in at least 6 months, but unless there has been a huge overhaul on the program, I imagine it is about the same.
> If Linux were anywhere near Macs as far as desktop market went, there would be at least as much hardware and software on the shelves marketed towards it.
I mostly agree with your point in general, but not this statement. If your target customer base could download just about any program you needed for free, as a software development company, why would you think that selling software that does the same thing would be a good money-making idea? Unless you're really good, have great new ideas/features, are just porting between platforms, or have preexisting customer base, there is little reason to write it.
Hardware? There is no such thing as Windows Hardware, so any PC hardware on those shelves is "Linux hardware."
I never see Mac hardware OR software in stores. That could just be because I am not looking for it, but there is certainly MUCH MUCH less of it, at least.
> I've wanted to be involved in Linux but it's closed to creative idea types.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you are saying. If you think that there is a feature missing in a OSS product, and the "project manager" doesn't think it would be good enough to insert into the code -- just say "fork it." Make your own. Yeah, it becomes much more difficult, since you have to do all work yourself, and it would take more work when newer versions of the original come out, but it can be done by anyone, creative or not.
If your addition to the program (in your forked version) turns out to be a great idea and enough people know about it, people will start using it, recognize it as a valuable feature, and perhaps the two parts can merge into one project again at a later time. Or you can keep it separate, if you prefer. Other than the large workload, the only "disadvantage" to this is purely personal -- the original project maintainer can simply grab your new code & insert it. That's partly how OSS works.
I've wanted to contribute myself, but I don't know if I'm a good enough coder to be enough help, and I wouldn't know where to start.
> failed to realize that you can't get a patent on "screwing someone's mom" without having prior art
What about Joseph? He could have? Luckily, the PTO wasn't in existence at the time of Jesus' birth...
> I wonder how much it is for 1 Tracker. And what about batteries?
If made in high enough quantities (such as one for every homeless person in the U.S.?), the RFIDs could potentially cost less than a penny each. And the whole point of RFID is that it requires no batteries.
> Now we know where apple got the idea for the iMac
That is modded 5-Funny, but I don't understand what is so funny. Besides the similarity in name to the iPod, etc, what does that have to do with coming up with the idea of the iMac?
What am I missing? Or is it just a lame kind of "Mac Humor?"
> I meant David Lynch, of course.
Wow, could you imagine David Lynch doing Star Wars? I'm not sure if it would kick ass or if it would suck because no one could figure it out.
> no wonder he has such a wacked out theory just check out that ugly face
Granted, I'm no judge of male beauty, but I don't think he looks that bad. Looks kinda' like my old apartment-mate.
> I stand by my assertion that you would not behave that way in front of me
Maybe if you are a bodybuilder or something, but that only suppresses my words, not my thoughts. Taken to its extreme (which you did not do, I know), this means that people should not speak their mind, for fear that they may offend someone. I prefer offending people sometimes to calm my mind, and sometimes it provokes though (which, admittedly, this did not). I guess you could say I'm a part-time troll.
> nobody ever does that
I know you said you wouldn't reply to me, which is fine, but you appear to be saying that no one has ever called you a name or insulted you to your face. Nobody ever does that? I do that. I do it because it has been done to me. I do it more online because I need to vent somewhere and people online are more used to it, or will be very soon (if they're new to the net).
> They know better, unless they're extremely drunk or just plain stupid
I think you underestimate the number of "just plain stupid" people in the world. You are likely of above-average intelligence. Possibly even very high intelligence. Look around -- more than half the people you see are "stupider" than you.
> as you've also gone back to pre-school with the last line of your latest message,
Hehe, I guess we are both humor-impaired, then. You see, humor crosses many subjects, and the use of childish taunts is just a way of producing humor in a different way. If you make a Polish joke, I don't call you a bigot. If it's funny, I'll laugh. If it's not, I'll bust your head! No, not really. Speaking of Polish jokes, they seem to have gone out of style. Cool. Unfortunately, it's moving to "French" jokes which are just plain dumb, usually.
But, since I pissed you off directly, I apologize.