There's a rather major difference between selective breeding (domestication over thousands of years, selection of certain traits, etc.) and actually going into the DNA and messing with it. For one thing, the former won't create traits that didn't exist in the first place, whereas the latter allows arbitrary traits, from almost any species, to be introduced into corn. For example, while it's going to take a really, really long time to produce corn that sweats citric acid, it could probably be artificially introduced by DNA modification within the next ten years, if someone today decided that it was a really good idea.
Fail.
From Wikipedia:
"The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States government (see 39 U.S.C. 201) responsible for providing postal service in the US. Within the United States, it is colloquially referred to simply as "the post office", "the postal service", "the mail" or "USPS"."
Hmmm... would you care to point me to a disk image which I can put on any device, which, when booted from, scans for hard drives with Linux and resets the root password to a configurable default? Just for research purposes, of course...
Oh, and by the by, that's not even needed: booting into the diagnostics/recovery/whatever it's called kernel on startup automatically goes into root, under Ubuntu 7.10. At least it did that yesterday, and I don't recall explicitly calling for that behavior, so I have to assume that it's the default. So, basically, if you can reboot a Ubuntu machine, you can get into root.
I'm not sure what your point is, but I download files from IRC bots all the time. It's the only way to get some subtitled anime, and it's almost always faster.
If the GPU (or anything else) dies, they bring it back to us and we fix it. Remember, this is all reuse, and there's little point in sending out systems which are expected to fail soon, and then not fixing them.
Ubuntu works perfectly with standard USB cameras (which are seen as normal USB drives. It also brings up a program to import the pictures, even though I wish that it wouldn't).
These are not people who use their computers to play games. These are people who need a computer for work, or whatever, and can't afford one. Sure, if they were hard-core gamers they wouldn't like Linux, but they also wouldn't like a 1GHz box with 512MBs of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive (to give an idea of what the standard is, sort of. That's the minimum, at least).
Yes, I am an asshole. However, I can accept that some people just don't like linux. What I can't accept is the reasons that most people give for not liking it, as it's pretty clear, from those reasons, that they don't know what they're talking about. If someone said, for example, "I prefer windows to ubuntu because all my programs run on it," or "because I know how it works," those would be valid reasons. Claiming that the terminal is needed for anything is not a vaid argument (okay, so there are some things which require the terminal, but not things that normal users will be doing). Claiming that an average user cannot use it is not a valid argument. Claiming that some programs which are needed are not available on linux is a valid argument.
So, each of those million machines sends out 100,000 messages per day on average. Thus, if you require any machine that sends out over, say, 10,000 messages per day to be registered, and to be held to a minimum standard of security (machines not registered would be kicked off the network as soon as they reached 10,001 messages in a single day, and would not be allowed back on until registered and secured), the spam problem would be reduced by around 90%, at least from these botnets.
Okay, so it would require too much regulation to work, and it would take a lot of effort to establish. But it's okay to dream, right?
I volunteer at a place which refurbishes old computers, and installs ubuntu on them. We then send them out to people who are average users, and who don't really want to do much more than browse the internet, word processing, maybe listening to music. Mostly people who can't afford their own computers, but still need computers. They are able to do everything they want to with them, with, as far as I know, next to no complaints. I can sit down pretty much any user in front of one of my Linux computers, and they'll be able to find the internet, word processing, and whatever games I have on it (it's all under the Applications menu. How easier could it be?). Add/Remove programs is also pretty self-explanatory, so they'll find it easy to add more programs, if I were to give them the password. In fact, often the largest problem they have is figuring out how to turn the computers on. Okay, so I'm talking about systems which I've configured a bit to be more usable, but this would also apply to a system with vanilla Ubuntu on it.
What version of Linux did you use yesterday, anyways? Did you just happen to boot up a live CD that you had lying around for the last 10 years, or did you download a.iso of Ubuntu 7.10, and boot it up as a live CD? I'm guessing that you didn't.
So, the government is able to levy taxes. Should every citizen be able to do that as well? It's also able to declare war upon another country, declare a state of emergency, and so on and so forth. Imagine what would happen if all of the idiots in the country were able to do that.
Well, that's where the user-destruct feature comes into play. Any user stupid enough to pour liquid into the cup, damage it, or hurt its feelings will be destroyed. Eventually, natural selection will result in all users being both intelligent enough not to damage the cup, and nice enough not to insult it.
I have an Eee, running eeeXubuntu (the default Xandros on it was... well, I just prefer Xubuntu, okay? I didn't even use the default, except to make sure that it booted), and I runs very well.
Before that, I ran XP on a machine with lower specs than the Eee (as I recall, a 500Mhz Celeron, and 512MB RAM). It ran well. Not amazingly, but well.
The Eee routinely outperforms my desktop (3.33GHz Celeron, 2GB RAM), in speed of opening applications, speed of booting, speed of decoding videos (one video skipped quite a lot on my desktop, and played perfectly on my Eee), and pretty much everything up to running word processors. Of course, the one I was using also constantly froze on my desktop, so I suppose that it's more of a software issue.
Disclaimer: While I am aware that specs other than processor speed and amount of RAM matter, I don't feel like giving you all of the hardware specs, especially because I don't remember some of them.
As someone with an Eee which can run Compiz (I installed it yesterday), I have the following comments to make:
1. It kills the battery life.
2. It's actually not that useful. No more user friendly than eeeXubuntu is, and, like I said, the decreased batter life prevents it from being that viable.
3. Shininess does not create usability.
4. The Eee is great, can't argue with that.
5. You are a bit too excited about this, and your grammar has suffered. It should be "then you have to pay more than $100 extra," not "then you have to Pay MORE THAN $100!!!"
6. Using more than one exclaimation mark makes people think that you are insane. It makes people pay attention for the same reason that people pay attention to the crazy people on the street - if you don't, they might stab you.
Features are nice, of course, but how does it perform? How much memory does it take to run? Will it work well on relatively slow hardware, or do I need the latest and greatest to run it? Is it significantly slower than the last version, significantly faster, or about the same?
How long before we see homosexual sex on TV (for all I know this has already been done but I don't think it has)?
Right. And how long before we see heterosexual sex on TV? Is homosexual sex somehow more damaging? Or are you just scared that seeing other options might let your children, and others, be able to choose something different? Cults tend to tell their members to avoid differing viewpoints, or, more to the point, prevent them from seeing differing viewpoints. I'm sure that you would hate it if someone decided to screen all propaganda (sorry, "advertisements") produced by people with a different viewpoint (republicans blocking democratic advertisements, car companies blocking each other, and so forth. Perhaps you would just enjoy having fewer ads - I know I would - but why would they stop at advertisements? What if programs that discussed or promoted topics that you were interested in, but which were objectionable to some other people, were blocked?)
Hmmm... I know, let's block all discussion of Evolution from television! After all, some people find it objectionable.
As I recall, the prosthetic leg allowed around 25% more speed with 25% less effort. Or maybe it was 50% more speed with 25% less effort? I don't remember the numbers, but he did have a pretty large advantage over everyone else.
How about looking at the image, and then taking a screenshot (or a number, depending on the size, and later stitching them together)? A watermark which would prevent that would have to actually modify the image, which I doubt most people (who care about the quality of the image) would want to do. That would reduce the quality a bit, of course, but that's a minor issue if you have a 10MP picture to work with.
Holding it hostage? Is Facebook threatening to send it to people if you don't give them money? If so, then yes, it's not legal. If not, well... keeping data which is given to you is legal, as long as you don't do anything with it that you've agreed not to. For example, I could tell you that I will sue you if you do not erase all memory of this post, but there isn't any fool-proof way for you to do that without damaging the rest of your mind (alternatively, if I knew that you kept a journal and had recorded this post in it - which a better analogy - I could sue you to remove all mention of me from the journal). Because of all of the backups that Facebook (probably) takes, it amounts to the same thing. After all, Corporations are legally people. Immortal sociopaths, yes, but still people.
Well, my Ubuntu system has around >90% of the RAM used right now (mostly Caching files - almost 75% of the RAM is being used to Cache stuff), and I suppose that you could cat/dev/random >/root/largefile if you really wanted to use up 10GBs of hard drive space (or have it download movies for a few days, or install every package available through apt-get). So, yes, Linux can eat up >50% of the available RAM, and 10GB of space on the hard drive. However, you have to put in a fair amount of effort for the hard drive. Windows, on the other hand, does all of that - and more! - out of the box! For example, when hooked up to a network, a vanilla Windows install will download viruses, while a vanilla Linux install will just sit there, wondering who keeps on pinging it.
Not a virus, just a trojan horse. Program claims it does something that it doesn't, program is installed, program does what it actually does. Nothing in the article suggests that this installs itself, just that it tries to get the user to install it.
Actually, any changes to the constitution have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states (that is, first congress has to agree, and then the citizens of 3/4ths of the states have to), and I don't think that that's going to happen any time soon for something like removing 5th amendment rights.
Of course, it's not like that matters any more. After all, terrorists don't have rights! But the rule will still be there, to make the rest of America feel nice and safe.
I'm not entirely sure that AT&T has done that. For example, I have AT&T DSL. Theoretically, I should be getting 756 kilobits/s. However, I can, almost all the time, get around 1.5 megabits/s. Still slow by the standards of most people, perhaps, but the fact that the speeds are higher than what they actually have to provide does not exactly suggest that they are overselling their bandwidth, at least where I am.
And how do you know that this additional security will result in the existing security being marginalized? If it does, then well and good, and I'm sure that the fact that it will begin to create a society where faces must be controlled at all times (like 1984) is merely a minor side-effect. However, it is much more likely that, after those who claim to be against it point out that terrorists are much more likely to be trained to control their expressions, it will be used in conjuncture with the current security measures, and all of the other ones which will be implemented in the future. After all, it is not in the interest of the government to give its subjects freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
And, of course, your alternative if the question of freedom bothers you would be to seek residency in another country.
There's a rather major difference between selective breeding (domestication over thousands of years, selection of certain traits, etc.) and actually going into the DNA and messing with it. For one thing, the former won't create traits that didn't exist in the first place, whereas the latter allows arbitrary traits, from almost any species, to be introduced into corn. For example, while it's going to take a really, really long time to produce corn that sweats citric acid, it could probably be artificially introduced by DNA modification within the next ten years, if someone today decided that it was a really good idea.
Wait, there are 90 Megapixel sensors for computers now? Why did no one tell me about this?
Fail.
From Wikipedia:
"The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States government (see 39 U.S.C. 201) responsible for providing postal service in the US. Within the United States, it is colloquially referred to simply as "the post office", "the postal service", "the mail" or "USPS"."
Hmmm ... would you care to point me to a disk image which I can put on any device, which, when booted from, scans for hard drives with Linux and resets the root password to a configurable default? Just for research purposes, of course ...
Oh, and by the by, that's not even needed: booting into the diagnostics/recovery/whatever it's called kernel on startup automatically goes into root, under Ubuntu 7.10. At least it did that yesterday, and I don't recall explicitly calling for that behavior, so I have to assume that it's the default. So, basically, if you can reboot a Ubuntu machine, you can get into root.
I'm not sure what your point is, but I download files from IRC bots all the time. It's the only way to get some subtitled anime, and it's almost always faster.
If the GPU (or anything else) dies, they bring it back to us and we fix it. Remember, this is all reuse, and there's little point in sending out systems which are expected to fail soon, and then not fixing them.
Ubuntu works perfectly with standard USB cameras (which are seen as normal USB drives. It also brings up a program to import the pictures, even though I wish that it wouldn't).
These are not people who use their computers to play games. These are people who need a computer for work, or whatever, and can't afford one. Sure, if they were hard-core gamers they wouldn't like Linux, but they also wouldn't like a 1GHz box with 512MBs of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive (to give an idea of what the standard is, sort of. That's the minimum, at least).
Yes, I am an asshole. However, I can accept that some people just don't like linux. What I can't accept is the reasons that most people give for not liking it, as it's pretty clear, from those reasons, that they don't know what they're talking about. If someone said, for example, "I prefer windows to ubuntu because all my programs run on it," or "because I know how it works," those would be valid reasons. Claiming that the terminal is needed for anything is not a vaid argument (okay, so there are some things which require the terminal, but not things that normal users will be doing). Claiming that an average user cannot use it is not a valid argument. Claiming that some programs which are needed are not available on linux is a valid argument.
So, each of those million machines sends out 100,000 messages per day on average. Thus, if you require any machine that sends out over, say, 10,000 messages per day to be registered, and to be held to a minimum standard of security (machines not registered would be kicked off the network as soon as they reached 10,001 messages in a single day, and would not be allowed back on until registered and secured), the spam problem would be reduced by around 90%, at least from these botnets.
Okay, so it would require too much regulation to work, and it would take a lot of effort to establish. But it's okay to dream, right?
I volunteer at a place which refurbishes old computers, and installs ubuntu on them. We then send them out to people who are average users, and who don't really want to do much more than browse the internet, word processing, maybe listening to music. Mostly people who can't afford their own computers, but still need computers. They are able to do everything they want to with them, with, as far as I know, next to no complaints. I can sit down pretty much any user in front of one of my Linux computers, and they'll be able to find the internet, word processing, and whatever games I have on it (it's all under the Applications menu. How easier could it be?). Add/Remove programs is also pretty self-explanatory, so they'll find it easy to add more programs, if I were to give them the password. In fact, often the largest problem they have is figuring out how to turn the computers on. Okay, so I'm talking about systems which I've configured a bit to be more usable, but this would also apply to a system with vanilla Ubuntu on it. .iso of Ubuntu 7.10, and boot it up as a live CD? I'm guessing that you didn't.
What version of Linux did you use yesterday, anyways? Did you just happen to boot up a live CD that you had lying around for the last 10 years, or did you download a
So, the government is able to levy taxes. Should every citizen be able to do that as well? It's also able to declare war upon another country, declare a state of emergency, and so on and so forth. Imagine what would happen if all of the idiots in the country were able to do that.
Well, that's where the user-destruct feature comes into play. Any user stupid enough to pour liquid into the cup, damage it, or hurt its feelings will be destroyed. Eventually, natural selection will result in all users being both intelligent enough not to damage the cup, and nice enough not to insult it.
I have an Eee, running eeeXubuntu (the default Xandros on it was ... well, I just prefer Xubuntu, okay? I didn't even use the default, except to make sure that it booted), and I runs very well.
Before that, I ran XP on a machine with lower specs than the Eee (as I recall, a 500Mhz Celeron, and 512MB RAM). It ran well. Not amazingly, but well.
The Eee routinely outperforms my desktop (3.33GHz Celeron, 2GB RAM), in speed of opening applications, speed of booting, speed of decoding videos (one video skipped quite a lot on my desktop, and played perfectly on my Eee), and pretty much everything up to running word processors. Of course, the one I was using also constantly froze on my desktop, so I suppose that it's more of a software issue.
Disclaimer: While I am aware that specs other than processor speed and amount of RAM matter, I don't feel like giving you all of the hardware specs, especially because I don't remember some of them.
I had two, and I put them on a large stone block and my printer. Anyone know how to install safari on a printer?
As someone with an Eee which can run Compiz (I installed it yesterday), I have the following comments to make:
1. It kills the battery life.
2. It's actually not that useful. No more user friendly than eeeXubuntu is, and, like I said, the decreased batter life prevents it from being that viable.
3. Shininess does not create usability.
4. The Eee is great, can't argue with that.
5. You are a bit too excited about this, and your grammar has suffered. It should be "then you have to pay more than $100 extra," not "then you have to Pay MORE THAN $100!!!"
6. Using more than one exclaimation mark makes people think that you are insane. It makes people pay attention for the same reason that people pay attention to the crazy people on the street - if you don't, they might stab you.
Features are nice, of course, but how does it perform? How much memory does it take to run? Will it work well on relatively slow hardware, or do I need the latest and greatest to run it? Is it significantly slower than the last version, significantly faster, or about the same?
How long before we see homosexual sex on TV (for all I know this has already been done but I don't think it has)?
... I know, let's block all discussion of Evolution from television! After all, some people find it objectionable.
Right. And how long before we see heterosexual sex on TV? Is homosexual sex somehow more damaging? Or are you just scared that seeing other options might let your children, and others, be able to choose something different? Cults tend to tell their members to avoid differing viewpoints, or, more to the point, prevent them from seeing differing viewpoints. I'm sure that you would hate it if someone decided to screen all propaganda (sorry, "advertisements") produced by people with a different viewpoint (republicans blocking democratic advertisements, car companies blocking each other, and so forth. Perhaps you would just enjoy having fewer ads - I know I would - but why would they stop at advertisements? What if programs that discussed or promoted topics that you were interested in, but which were objectionable to some other people, were blocked?)
Hmmm
Sorting them out at an early age ... oh, like in 1984, where the children are turned against everyone except the state?
As I recall, the prosthetic leg allowed around 25% more speed with 25% less effort. Or maybe it was 50% more speed with 25% less effort? I don't remember the numbers, but he did have a pretty large advantage over everyone else.
How about looking at the image, and then taking a screenshot (or a number, depending on the size, and later stitching them together)? A watermark which would prevent that would have to actually modify the image, which I doubt most people (who care about the quality of the image) would want to do. That would reduce the quality a bit, of course, but that's a minor issue if you have a 10MP picture to work with.
Holding it hostage? Is Facebook threatening to send it to people if you don't give them money? If so, then yes, it's not legal. If not, well ... keeping data which is given to you is legal, as long as you don't do anything with it that you've agreed not to. For example, I could tell you that I will sue you if you do not erase all memory of this post, but there isn't any fool-proof way for you to do that without damaging the rest of your mind (alternatively, if I knew that you kept a journal and had recorded this post in it - which a better analogy - I could sue you to remove all mention of me from the journal). Because of all of the backups that Facebook (probably) takes, it amounts to the same thing. After all, Corporations are legally people. Immortal sociopaths, yes, but still people.
Well, my Ubuntu system has around >90% of the RAM used right now (mostly Caching files - almost 75% of the RAM is being used to Cache stuff), and I suppose that you could cat /dev/random > /root/largefile if you really wanted to use up 10GBs of hard drive space (or have it download movies for a few days, or install every package available through apt-get). So, yes, Linux can eat up >50% of the available RAM, and 10GB of space on the hard drive. However, you have to put in a fair amount of effort for the hard drive. Windows, on the other hand, does all of that - and more! - out of the box! For example, when hooked up to a network, a vanilla Windows install will download viruses, while a vanilla Linux install will just sit there, wondering who keeps on pinging it.
Not a virus, just a trojan horse. Program claims it does something that it doesn't, program is installed, program does what it actually does. Nothing in the article suggests that this installs itself, just that it tries to get the user to install it.
Actually, any changes to the constitution have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states (that is, first congress has to agree, and then the citizens of 3/4ths of the states have to), and I don't think that that's going to happen any time soon for something like removing 5th amendment rights.
Of course, it's not like that matters any more. After all, terrorists don't have rights! But the rule will still be there, to make the rest of America feel nice and safe.
I'm not entirely sure that AT&T has done that. For example, I have AT&T DSL. Theoretically, I should be getting 756 kilobits/s. However, I can, almost all the time, get around 1.5 megabits/s. Still slow by the standards of most people, perhaps, but the fact that the speeds are higher than what they actually have to provide does not exactly suggest that they are overselling their bandwidth, at least where I am.
And how do you know that this additional security will result in the existing security being marginalized? If it does, then well and good, and I'm sure that the fact that it will begin to create a society where faces must be controlled at all times (like 1984) is merely a minor side-effect. However, it is much more likely that, after those who claim to be against it point out that terrorists are much more likely to be trained to control their expressions, it will be used in conjuncture with the current security measures, and all of the other ones which will be implemented in the future. After all, it is not in the interest of the government to give its subjects freedom.