Yeah, but "package managers" suck. Why are people so afraid to implement a real GUI installation/uninstallation routine
For a number of reasons,
If I have to install a program on 100 machines, I don't want to screw around with some stupid GUI popup. Packages let me install and forget. No, ghosting or programs that automate mouse-movements and button-clicking are not an acceptable solution.
I've dealt with several programs that couldn't be uninstalled because the custom uninstaller program was missing. (Deleted, whatever) All the data required to uninstall a program should be centrally located, pretty much the way package managers currently do it.
What we have now are silly hacks instead of real installers that configure programs, register them with the GUI, etc.
That's because every different desktop has different places to define and place menus, and so forth. A GUI installer wouldn't help this at all. What is really needed is real coordination between Gnome, KDE, Redhat, Ximian, Mandrake, et all, to make these sorts of tasks simpler and more compatible.
This program will let me buy songs on a Windows system, crack the encryption, and listen on Linux -- harly illegal, and not even immoral.
Probably not immoral, but it certainly is illegal. It's not hard to imagine Apple or the RIAA bringing in a DMCA suit saying that the encryption is an access control device. Cracking the encryption is a DMCA violation.
Regardless though, I'm looking forward to finally being able to play those ABBA songs on my Linux box!
It's one thing to say "I have the RIGHT to play DVDs on my PC" - that's something in and of itself. It's another to say "I NEED to play DVDs on my PC". Wouldn't it be better with a nice couch , a plasma screen, and a high-end surround sound setup? To some extent, the same thing can be said about mp3 files and crappy computer speakers, although listening to music while you study or surf the net or are doing some kind of boring work in the office IS a nice touch. But watching a DVD is a fairly all-encompassing experience - it pretty much takes up all your senses. You have to stop what you are doing, more or less, to watch a DVD.
Ah, but then there are the people with HTPCs. My Linux PC is nice and small (Shuttle XPC), making a nice bookend for the DVDs. It has TV-OUT for the TV, using mythtv for tv recordings and mplayer and xine for.avi files. The VGA-out goes straight into the projector, which requires very specific horizontal and vertical resolutions, else it starts scaling (badly) the picture. The PC outputs digital sound via coax cable into the receiver. So it is the centerpiece of a media center. One box that plays dvds, tv broadcasts, and files.
The major thing that this department is meant to handle, response to information indicating a threat to the U.S., has been implemented willy-nilly. Terror alert levels are raised and lowered without reason or a set of expected responses, causing panic and nothing at all productive.
Maybe they haven't been productive from your perspective, but from the perspective of the people running it, I'm sure they have been. The terror alert levels (nice name too) have been good at keeping the fear level elevated. Making sure people stay nervous about outside threats -- that benefits the current administration greatly.
I say we just memorize IP addresses from now on. From "Hey, run a Google on him." to "Hey, run a 24.175.19.234 on him."
There's an idea! But that's a lot to remember, so maybe we could print them out in a large book with lines like "Google Corp website: 24.175.19.234". With the changes in ip addresses, we'll most likely have to appoint some organization to update the book and send out new ones. We could call it the Internet Corporation of Assigned Numbers. (ICAN) That would solve all the ICANN problems!
Atheism is not the belief that there are no gods. Atheism is the lack of belief in gods. There is a difference. Atheism does not have anything to do with faith, only a lack of belief, i.e. the lack of belief in a god. To say that atheism has not been proven is true but the problem is that there is nothing to prove. You mention philosophy so I assume that you have some background in this. Atheism is a negative not a positive (if you dont have a philosophy background this statement may not make sense; I'll respond later if necessary). It is true that there are many athiests who say that they believe that God does not exist. But this nonbelief in God is not necessary for atheism. There are many atheists who lack the positive belief "There are no Gods."
You are confusing atheism with agnosticism. Unfortunately, many atheists and agnostics do this too, and a number of atheists say atheism and agnosticism all fall under the umbrella of atheism, even if there is an important distinction.
Atheism: A strong belief that there is no God.
Agnosticism: A lack of belief in God.
Well, there are independent movie theaters around, but you don't find them everywhere. That too, however, may change as distribution changes to some sort of disk-based process (high quality DVD's) or secure Internet delivery over high-speed, commercial lines. The economics of running smaller theaters may become affordable.
Unfortunately the extremely high cost of digital projection is going to hurt small theater owners even more, and there is no reason to suspect that price will come down appreciably soon.
IANAD (I am not a Democrat), but really, what was the purpose of asking Clinton under oath about a sexual relationship? Especially since the leaders of the Republican party who pushed for his impeachment later were found to have had extramarital affairs anyways?
I believe the impeachment was justified. The questions he was asked were frivilous and unjustified ("Did you have sexual relations with your interns?"), and they never should have been asked... but Clinton doesn't have the luxury of deciding which questions to answer truthfully under oath, and which ones to lie to. I believe in nailing a president when he lies to the American public. Which is why, although I'm sure it will never happen, I'd love to see Bush impeached.
Just look in the first book of the Bible, where God says "the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die".
I don't tend to buy conspiracy theories, but I also don't eliminate valid possibilities without investigation because I can make up an explanation. Want to know for sure what the hell the 'Glass Worm' is? Drop a lander there and FIND OUT.
Do you know how expensive that is? That's a lot of money to sink into debunking some crackpot's claims, and that's why it's not done. You put your money into what you think will give you the most gain, and proving Hoagland is wrong is not very scientifically (or politically) valuable.
Oh, I rather liked Are You Being Served? Unfortunately, it gets monotenous after a few episodes, but then again, so do most sitcoms in general.
and the other show with the very odd women who tries to keep up appearances.
Never could understand the fascination with that one. I watched it for awhile and waited and waited though it, expecting at some point it would be funny.
Funny thing is is that I haven't seen prices come down for goods and services of American companies that have offshored a fair amount of back office computing/processing/development/etc to India or China.
Really? Do you think you could always get a high-quality PC for $500 before?
Judges aren't idiots. They're not going to define a blank space as an advert. At the very least, an advert has to promote some entity - what entity does a blank space promote?
I'm not saying anything about Indian poverty, just the fact America likes free trade when America benefits, but gets all pissy when America 'loses'.
Uh huh.. and who is bitching about free trade now? The same people who were bitching about it years ago. Middle america has never been happy about free trade, especially when what's being traded are jobs.
Heh, maybe he is a fan of the original Sealab 2020, which does occassionally air on the Cartoon Network. I wanted to see what it was like compared to 2021 (See where the inspiration came from), and I could only watch about 5 minutes of it before turning it off and deciding it was one of the worst cartoons ever made...
The above statement is not true for small businesses. If you make (revenue) less then 10 million a year then you are probably running an ethical businessness. If your reveues are above that then you have already let go of the lessons your parents and teachers thought you.
Speeding is not a victimless crime. It results in more accidents, higher death rates and more severe injuries.
Speeding in itself does not lead to accidents, reckless driving leads to accidents. Reckless driving can involve speeding, but not all speeding is reckless driving.
So.. What's wrong with sharing your own personal mp3 that you created on Napster?
There's nothing wrong with that.. except almost no one did that. In fact, that's not even what Napster was created to do, according to the founders. The internal documents revealed during court procedings were very damaging, showing the intent of the executives was to facilitate copying popular label songs. Making it easier for small-time artists to distribute their own works rarely entered into the picture, and that's what got them into the most trouble.
There's the DMCA, the Napster lawsuit, 2600's issues with the MPAA over DeCSS, UnTrusted Computing, and on, and on, and on.
It's a nice list, but the Napster lawsuit doesn't belong. Ripping a CD and sharing the files with a hundred strangers is hardly fair use. Sharing an mp3 with a friend? Perhaps.
Now, something that could easily have taken its place in the list was the mp3.com lawsuit. I'm still mad about that one.
You call them 'cheaters', I see it as changing the dynamic of the game--it's no longer about how well you play the game, but how well you program your computer to play the game. And what's wrong with that?
So you're playing a multiplayer game and your opponent starts using a bot to get ahead...so why not load up your own bot then?
Because it's cheating, and it's not at all what the person signed up for. When I go to play online, having the expectation that the game isn't hacked and people aren't cheating to get ahead isn't unreasonable. You want to change the game dynamics? Fine, do it on your own server. Invite your friends, others, whomever. Just don't involve people who actually want to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, or at least not without their permission.
If you actully read any of the extended universe books, you'd know that *snip*
Unless it was in the movies or written by Lucas, it didn't happen, or is simply speculation. It's not part of the official Star Wars canon. Though it does make sense.:) I mean, if someone blew up the White House, it wouldn't mean the US would be defeated. Just set back.
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For a number of reasons,
If I have to install a program on 100 machines, I don't want to screw around with some stupid GUI popup. Packages let me install and forget. No, ghosting or programs that automate mouse-movements and button-clicking are not an acceptable solution.
I've dealt with several programs that couldn't be uninstalled because the custom uninstaller program was missing. (Deleted, whatever) All the data required to uninstall a program should be centrally located, pretty much the way package managers currently do it.
What we have now are silly hacks instead of real installers that configure programs, register them with the GUI, etc.
That's because every different desktop has different places to define and place menus, and so forth. A GUI installer wouldn't help this at all. What is really needed is real coordination between Gnome, KDE, Redhat, Ximian, Mandrake, et all, to make these sorts of tasks simpler and more compatible.
Probably not immoral, but it certainly is illegal. It's not hard to imagine Apple or the RIAA bringing in a DMCA suit saying that the encryption is an access control device. Cracking the encryption is a DMCA violation.
Regardless though, I'm looking forward to finally being able to play those ABBA songs on my Linux box!
Ah, but then there are the people with HTPCs. My Linux PC is nice and small (Shuttle XPC), making a nice bookend for the DVDs. It has TV-OUT for the TV, using mythtv for tv recordings and mplayer and xine for .avi files. The VGA-out goes straight into the projector, which requires very specific horizontal and vertical resolutions, else it starts scaling (badly) the picture. The PC outputs digital sound via coax cable into the receiver. So it is the centerpiece of a media center. One box that plays dvds, tv broadcasts, and files.
Maybe they haven't been productive from your perspective, but from the perspective of the people running it, I'm sure they have been. The terror alert levels (nice name too) have been good at keeping the fear level elevated. Making sure people stay nervous about outside threats -- that benefits the current administration greatly.
There's an idea! But that's a lot to remember, so maybe we could print them out in a large book with lines like "Google Corp website: 24.175.19.234". With the changes in ip addresses, we'll most likely have to appoint some organization to update the book and send out new ones. We could call it the Internet Corporation of Assigned Numbers. (ICAN) That would solve all the ICANN problems!
You are confusing atheism with agnosticism. Unfortunately, many atheists and agnostics do this too, and a number of atheists say atheism and agnosticism all fall under the umbrella of atheism, even if there is an important distinction.
Atheism: A strong belief that there is no God.
Agnosticism: A lack of belief in God.
An important subtlety that many miss.
Unfortunately the extremely high cost of digital projection is going to hurt small theater owners even more, and there is no reason to suspect that price will come down appreciably soon.
I believe the impeachment was justified. The questions he was asked were frivilous and unjustified ("Did you have sexual relations with your interns?"), and they never should have been asked... but Clinton doesn't have the luxury of deciding which questions to answer truthfully under oath, and which ones to lie to. I believe in nailing a president when he lies to the American public. Which is why, although I'm sure it will never happen, I'd love to see Bush impeached.
But.. they did die. Just not that second.
Do you know how expensive that is? That's a lot of money to sink into debunking some crackpot's claims, and that's why it's not done. You put your money into what you think will give you the most gain, and proving Hoagland is wrong is not very scientifically (or politically) valuable.
Probably because Richard Gere lives here.
Not bad if you like that sortof thing..
shows about a group of people in a dept store,
Oh, I rather liked Are You Being Served? Unfortunately, it gets monotenous after a few episodes, but then again, so do most sitcoms in general.
and the other show with the very odd women who tries to keep up appearances.
Never could understand the fascination with that one. I watched it for awhile and waited and waited though it, expecting at some point it would be funny.
Really? Do you think you could always get a high-quality PC for $500 before?
Maybe it's an ad for nihilism.com?
Uh huh.. and who is bitching about free trade now? The same people who were bitching about it years ago. Middle america has never been happy about free trade, especially when what's being traded are jobs.
Ralph Nader, is that you?
Speeding in itself does not lead to accidents, reckless driving leads to accidents. Reckless driving can involve speeding, but not all speeding is reckless driving.
There's nothing wrong with that.. except almost no one did that. In fact, that's not even what Napster was created to do, according to the founders. The internal documents revealed during court procedings were very damaging, showing the intent of the executives was to facilitate copying popular label songs. Making it easier for small-time artists to distribute their own works rarely entered into the picture, and that's what got them into the most trouble.
It's a nice list, but the Napster lawsuit doesn't belong. Ripping a CD and sharing the files with a hundred strangers is hardly fair use. Sharing an mp3 with a friend? Perhaps.
Now, something that could easily have taken its place in the list was the mp3.com lawsuit. I'm still mad about that one.
So you're playing a multiplayer game and your opponent starts using a bot to get ahead...so why not load up your own bot then?
Because it's cheating, and it's not at all what the person signed up for. When I go to play online, having the expectation that the game isn't hacked and people aren't cheating to get ahead isn't unreasonable. You want to change the game dynamics? Fine, do it on your own server. Invite your friends, others, whomever. Just don't involve people who actually want to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, or at least not without their permission.
He probably doesn't want to get pied in the face, like Bill Gates was.
Unless it was in the movies or written by Lucas, it didn't happen, or is simply speculation. It's not part of the official Star Wars canon. Though it does make sense. :) I mean, if someone blew up the White House, it wouldn't mean the US would be defeated. Just set back.