If I recall correctly, the EFF is looking for a plaintiff specifically on the DVD reverse engineering issue. I suggest those involved get in touch with them and look into the possibility of coordinating a counter attack on the DVD Forum. I suspect if this ever went to trial with a reasonably well financed plaintiff, the DVD Forum would stand to lose allot of clout when their licensing terms become unenforcable.
This is about intimidation -- the DVD Forum has allot more to lose in a trial than a plaintiff does.
Well, perhaps their enthusiasm for free/open source software (unless paid mercenery astroturfers count as slashdotters these days), but beyond that I doubt you'll find slashdotters agreeing on much of anything.
Some of us (such as myself) believe that patents should be eliminated entirely, that they are a diservice to humankind and do more to harm and slow down technological progress in all areas of scientific endeavor than any other single thing.
Others are against software patents, but do not feel the same reasoning applies to other disciplines.
Others are simply against the pathetically obvious patents being issued by the USPO, and would like to replace the people issuing these patents but keep the system as it is largely unchanged.
Still others feel the same as above, except they would like to see the system reformed in various ways. How exactly it would be reformed is a conversation that, among slashdotters at least, will result in numerious, boistrous, and often mutually exclusive opinions and suggestions.
Finally, there are some here who ardently support and approve of the patenting system just the way it is.
All of these points of view probably stack up as a minority opinion when taken against all the others.
The myth of a "typical" slashdotter is one being bandied about by Microsoft-paid astroturfers and the like, and has little if anything to do with reality. It is as nonsensical as arguing that a crowd of people who unanimously expect the sun to rise in the east are therefor conformist and can be expected to agree on just about everything else. As with most things, we mostly disagree on the issue of patents and what to do about them and the problems some of us believe they cause. Hell, we even argue about the implimentation of the one thing we all do agree on -- how best to create and nurture free software (BSD vs GPL, Gnome vs. KDE, etc.). If we can't agree on that, it is highly unlikely we'll agree on anything, except maybe that the sun, probably, will rise in the east tommorow, unless of course it doesn't.
After Y2k has come and gone, and life moves on its merry way with narry a quiver, can we please just keep these people locked in the bunker? It would help winnow the gene pool and provide society with endless entertainment as they slowly go mad with cabin fever and turn on each other...
Consider it a study for the betterment of humanity: what happens when several media whores, craving attention, are locked indefinitely together in a small space. They know intellectually that an (ever shrinking) audience is watching, yet are denied the feedback they so crave. Would they revel in their new role, without knowing their current ratings or enjoying the perks of fame, or would they go slowly mad in such a confined state? Enquiring minds want to know! Most importantly, no normal person ever has to have anything to do with any of them ever again! [applaus]
It would have been more representational to have provided a little more context on the issue. While I vehemently disagree with what the crackers and script kiddies are doing, this is clearly a problem which etoys.com brought upon themselves with their unwarrented attack on etoy.com . Network managers at large company, who should be worrying about such things, need to know the context lest they, or their legal departments, step into the same wasps' nests.
While you are correct in pointing out that many of the assumptions made in the west are a result of anti-soviet propoganda and downright wrong (athiesm == evil; communism can't work; Reagan was responsible for reform in Russia, not Gorbochov; etc.), you are wrong on a couple of points:
The same things happen within any large company [...] there is upper management in HQ, management in offices/branches, middle management, etc., all making their decisions on behalf of the company. The same kind of system was used in USSR. While I am not a fan of huge companies, last time I have checked, American economy is mostly ruled by them, so I don't see any fundamental difference.
The differences are twofold:
1) Central planning vs. unplanned "organic" self-organization. In the USSR, one government planned and executed the entire economy. In western capitalism, while each company (large and small) may or may not be autocratic, the economy is composed of thousands upon thousands of these autonomous entities operating within the economy. The only force even remotely "controlling" the economy is the Federal Reserve, and while it is in many ways far too involved in micromanaging the economy (see an earlier post I made), it is not the same as an economy centrally managed around Five Year Plans.
This is not to say communism couldn't work (it worked after a fashion for fifty years, though I wouldn't characterize the results as particularly stellar), but to point out that your assertion that there is little difference between an economy run by a central government and one in which numerous companies participate is simply false.
2) Democracy was IMHO the critical factor which allowed western capitalism to succeed in many areas where communism did not. Each economic system has its weaknesses and strengths, and both have lethal internal dichotomies and contradictions which, if left unaddressed, will consume their respective economic systems. Capitalism relies on free markets as its check and balance, with competition providing goods to consumers at the best price/product ratio. Unfortunately, unregulated markets become quickly dominated by one or only a few of the most successful producers, at which point competition dies, the free market ceases to exist, and the entire economic model begins to fall apart. Similarly with communism, the inherent notion that each contributes according to their ability and receives according to their need in an egalitarian context ignores the fundamental requirement that someone must administer the collection and distribution of goods. This administrator has inherent power over others, and the equality of the system is compromized. There to, eventually the economy devolves and falls apart. These are just a couple of examples, both systems have numerous other lethal flaws which I'm sure you'll recognize if you give it some thought.
The key difference is that, in the west, the democratic institutions provided avenues of generally peaceful (though often bitter and angry) feedback which resulted in legislation to curb the most extreme aspects of capitalism and provide dampening effects designed to prevent monopolists from destroying markets. Unfortunately for the communists, there was no such feedback mechanism to allow the system to recognize dysfunctions and remodel itself in order to alleviate those problems, until Gorbochov's 11th hour reforms which were too little, too late. Had that occurred in the 50's instead of the 80's I think history would have been much different, and we would be living in a world with two dominant and successful economic systems (which would probably be a more stable economic structure than an entire world with all of its eggs in the single capitalist basket).
The other point I think you miss:
Real prosperity is a bottom-up phenomenon.
This entirely depends on the society in question. Of course, in US concentration of wealth already made this point close to becoming moot.
Even in communist economies, it is the individual worker who produces the "wealth," whenever he or she converts a piece of rock into a statue, a piece of sheet metal, or a wrought-iron fence. In both systems wealth and prosperity are generated from the bottom up. Communism could have reformed to take this into account, had there been a democratic form of government in place to allow the necessary feedback and pressure to mandate such reform. (Think incentive, which capitalism, for all of its other problems, has down pat).
As to America being addicted to imports, the same goes for every country in the world (including the Soviets, who for many years as a communist nation received grain imported from the United States). Self-sufficiency is a myth. We live in a global economy, and have since at least the era of the Egyptians. Every nation is dependent on another for goods too numerous to mention. Neither the US nor the USSR were ever islands unto themselves, and although both met most of their internal needs themselves up until the early 20th century, neither could ever do fully without imports to (and exports from) their neighbors without suffering economic hardship.
Remember the hedge fund that went bust recently, at a cost of $18 billion or so? The Fed bailed them out. How? By "monetizing the debt" -- i.e., printing more money.
They also took money directly out of smaller investment firms' pockets (I know, I'm a partner in one), by manipulating market parameters such as interest rates the very week of a "triple-witch" expiration (something hitherto unheard of). The result was a market which behaved as they intended -- more or less the opposite of what would have happened if the Fed had not intervened. The little folks lost a bundle, but the big, insolvent funds whos mismanaged positions were so exposed were bailed out. In short, that money wasn't just "printed," much of it was stolen directly from the pockets of smaller investors and financial firms -- the very ones most critical to the success and continued functioning, not to mention prosperity, of the entire system.
That entire fiasco made a mockery of free market economics and is, to me, one of the more stark examples of just how subsidized our whole economy really is, and how much corruption is built in to the entire apparatus. There is allot more "central planning" in the west than any of the politicians let on, and than most of us realize. Greenspan may work in "six month" rather than "five year" plans (which he then tweaks every month or two), he may use capital, rather than (or in addition to) the gun as a tool of coercion, and, yes, the result may be a system that works better than what the soviets had, but it is by no means a truly "free" market, and hasn't been for decades.
BTW - Anyone else notice the rather large "bubble" in this year's markets?
Here are the current results of Thorsten Janke's and Markus Koppers' Thesis. An application has been developed which runs on Linux using the KDE Desktop. Like most applications under Linux, the installation is thankfully very simple: 1) download, 2) untar, 3) configure, 4) make, and 5) make install (as root). The program requires access to the video4linux device/dev/video and the remote controll device/dev/ttyS*.
If I were an astroturfer on Billy G's payroll, I'd try to start the kind of inter-freeware flame fest comments like yours tend to engender. BSD is very good at some things and not so good at others. Ditto for Linux. Even Windows, for all of its numerous and severe flaws, has its uses (extreme masochism comes to mind, as does playing a few games unavailable on the other platforms.:-))
It's a case of while Linux gets the publicity, FreeBSD "gets the work done." Many high-volume trafficked web sites use FreeBSD, including Hotmail.
Not true. It is a case of BSD starting out with a solid base of code while Linux was written from scratch. FreeBSD had the misfortune of having its legal status put into question at a critical juncture -- a period of time where people like myself were looking for a good, open UNIX for our PCs and ended up joining the Linux camp because it was unambigiously free, while *BSD looked like it might be shut down by the attourneys of Berkely.
Fortunately for us all, the legal issues were resolved and BSD is thriving in its own way, here to compete with and cross-polinate with Linux. Had there not been this legal limbo during those critical few months, we would probably all be dancing on the BSD bandwagen, and Linux would be the "alternative" OS.
Argue the pros and cons of BSD and Linux if you like, or even the BSD License vs. the GPL if you like, but save your prejudicial innuendo for an appropriate forum such as alt.flame please.
Oh, and by the way, as parallel examples of Linux performing similar duties to BSD, consider deja.com and google.com. Both OSes are excellent and have many things in common, not the least of which they both outperform any and all of Microsoft's offerings by orders of magnitude.
In Illinois we get it both coming and going - we have both a 3% income tax and a 7% or so sales tax. In Chicago it is even worse -- the city adds a percent or two, so that our net sales tax is something on the order of 8%.
Of course, we know the money is being well spent. They just tore up another perfectly good peice of road and are resurfacing it yet again, for the third time in as many years...
You are absolutely correct with respect to chemical depression and other biochemical disorders. I know people who suffer similarly and are helped through medication.
However, the poster you flamed is also correct. We are resorting to chemical solutions for nearly all of our problems, in no small part because pharmeceutical companies are creating and expanding markets for their products. As another poster commented, calling every minor deviation from an unattainable "norm" a sign of mental illness is an insult to those who truly are mentally ill and require help. Worse, it obfuscates the entire issue and ruins any chance at attaining a coherent public policy to effectively help those who need it.
I find it absolutely chilling, though unsurprising, that another poster mentioned a friend of his who is a pharmacist and whos business strategy is to "keep people a little sick as long as possible" to milk their prescription dollars. Make no mistake about it, pharmaceutical companies are doing the same thing on a much, much grander scale. Yes, they make medicine which help us. But at the same time, they patent folk-lore cures which have been in use for thousands of years, then price the product out of reach for many who need it. How long before the patent a really effective cure for, say, cancer, then bury it to maintain their profit margins on their other cancer treatments? (Perhaps AIDS would be a better hypothetical scenerio, but the point remains). On the one hand they help us, while on the other they abuse and even sometimes destroy us. I do not find it the least bit inappropriate to condemn them when they behave in the latter manner, and to call attention to their behavior when it is inappropriate. Which IMHO labelling anyone with minor issues as mentally ill is.
Napsters tools are no more inherently tools for pircacy than ftp is. Yes, it provides a mechanism for people to exchange information. Music happens to be information, so yes, it, too, can be exchanged. Illegally, if both parties are unscrupulous enough to do so. So what?
The "cp" command allows one to do the same (copy to disk and distribute at will). rcp and scp are even worse -- they do the same thing across a network. The venerable ftp protocol allows users to download information in binary format at will. Oh shit! So does http, come to think of it! Then there is IRQ, the most evil of evils. Poeple speaking freely with one another in realtime. Good Lord! Not just a piracy tool, but a conspiricy tool as well! Call the FBI stat!
The RIAA, in even filing this lawsuit, is effectively proposing the banning of the entire internet and all of the utilities and protocols which make it a usable medium for any type of information exchange. This is an attempt to do two things: (1) intimidate a small company with a large legal fist and (2), if they should be so lucky as to find a judge with sufficient sympathy (or a great deal of Sony stock in his portfolio), to effectively ban any tool that lets users exchange binary information of any kind ('cuz it just might be music).
If this doesn't make the absurdity of their lawsuit clear, nothing will.
Blackdown mistakenly thought that Java was the next big thing, and that for Linux to remain viable it *needed* Java. They reasonably agreed to whatever license Sun would grant, simply to get a JDK available for Linux before Linux missed the bandwagon completely. A reasonable, indeed selfless act, which, had Java really been as important as Sun convinced many of us it would be, would have been critical to Linux's success.
In hindsight it turns out to have been the other way around. Java, while a nice language in some respects, was basically just so much hype. Linux on the other hand quietly attracted 10-20 million users and snuck its way into corporate server rooms everywhere. It's growth rate appears to have not slowed down in the least, while Java languishes for lack of mindshare. Java needs Linux far more than Linux needs Java, and Sun successfully suckered good people into doint their work for them at no cost.
Very unfortunate, but a good lesson why one should really think twice, or even ten times, before contributing to a project under Sun's "community" license.
This is exactly the kind of timely and relevant news I for one keep readhing slashdot for.
I have yet to start my Christmas shopping, and intend to do most of it on-line (for my nefew, four nieces aged one to six, and various other relatives). I probably would have wound up using etoys.com for at least some purchases, but in light of these events I will make a point in not doing so.
Those of us (in the US at least) conscientious enough vote every couple of years. ALL OF US vote with our money (dollars, yen, euros, whatever) every day. It is my profound pleasure to vote against the fucks at etoys.com for what they have done this Christmas season.
I think it's rather presumptuous to assume that the fall of Microsoft would throw this country into a huge depression. As huge and as important a company it is, there is always another waiting in the background to seize the day.
You are correct. The concern is that their stock options pyramid scheme is being emulated by other companies (whos stock prices "compete" against MSFT for investors and therefor value). That the scheme was not anticipated by finance law and is therefor of dubious legality (rather than being illegal outright) only serves to exhaserbate this problem. Depending on how large the pyramid grows (US$60 billion in options debt and growing geometricly), and how many other fortune 500 companies emulate this behavior, this could take down allot more than just MSFT. With any luck new legislation will be passed to prevent this, or the pyramid will collapse before the damage becomes too widespread, but alas, there are no garuntees of either.
Worst of all, if and when this happens it could easilly destroy the public's faith in the equity markets themselves, precipitating a huge capital drain out of the financial markets altogether. In this worst-case scenerio you are talking about mutual funds and stocks losing huge percentages of their values (this could easilly mean retirement funds going bust or paying fractions on the dollar, money market accounts losing value, and so forth). It's an unsettling case of the Emporer's clothes all over again.
What with an entire generation never having seen a bear market, and hedging at an all time low ("but that cuts into my profits, and the S&P's never go down!"), the results could be far uglier than one would otherwise expect. Add to that that an unusually high percentage of poeple have invested at least a portion of their savings in the markets to date, and you have an excellent recipe for an Albanian scenerio[1] all over again...
[1]Much of the Albanian population lost their life savings to a more primitive pyramid scheme when it collapsed a couple of years ago, resulting in widespread, violent unrest throughout the country.
The Germans are concerned about Scientology's well documented track record for
- suppressing free speach through legal intimidation - violating people's privacy through various means, legal and otherwise - efforts to gain positions of trust and power - willingness to use such positions to promote their own corporate... ah, religious... goals
They are concerned that Scientology is engaged in a power grab of titanic proportions which poses a direct threat to their democracy, which the above pattern of behavior appears to underscore rather clearly. Having a corporation controlled by Scientologists in turn controlling a critical peice of software (such as, say, an integral component of an operating system running on 95% of all PCs) is, they feel, a grave concern.
OTOH if a scientologist contributes to Linux, the code is under the GPL. This takes control away from the Scientologists and puts it in the hands of the user. I doubt the German government would have any problem with that, though I suspect the hypothetical Scientologist contributing software of this kind might face immediate excommunication for giving away "intellectual" property which could have belonged to The Church.:-) (one must use a very liberal definition of intellectual to include anything written by Hubbard. Talk about horrible science fiction!).
Which is, in turn, a Hunter S. Thompson reference.
Yes, exactly! I should have said "... a movie based loosely on a Hunter S Thompson book, starring Bill Murray..." (who played Hunter S. Thompson BTW). Fun flick -- much more entertaining IMHO than the Fear and Loathing film was.
This is a false dichotomy. Another scenario is we we drop back to a much smaller population that is supported with sustainable energy sources/agriculture/etc. In your eco-sensitive world what resources are we running out of that the pie is getting smaller?
It is not a false dichotomy. Even a smaller population will be using resources, which in turn will result in less resources for further generations. A shrinking population will slow the inevitable, not stop it. Even in the rosiest scenerio all the metals will eventually have been recycled to the point to where there is nothing left (remember, no process is 100% effecient -- the laws of thermodynamics don't permit it). Ditto for numerous other resources we take for granted, such as arable land, for example[1]. The net result: someday we will have consumed all of the non-renewable resources of this world, until there are enough left to support a population of exactly 0.
Now, if you are arguing we should give up our luxurious lifestyle and return to the trees then yes, we could probably live in a fashion sustainable by this world until conditions change such that human life is no longer possible. We did it for 3,000,000 years or so, after all. However, I do think there are valuable aspects to a modern, technological society that are worth keeping, and the only way to do this on any kind of long term basis is to move our exploitation of resources away from the Earth's biosphere, which cannot sustain such abuse much longer.
Technology demands resources, many of which are not renewable, even through recycling. Those which can be recycled are not 100% recoverable. No procedure is 100% effecient (the laws of thermodynamics prevent that), so even in a world of shrinking population and wonderful levels of ecological sensitivity, you will, eventually, wind up with a world capable of supporting 0 people in a technological society, or alternatively some tens of millions as unusually clever animals.
Even if you "terraform" every square meter of the earth's surface and ocean floors, you will only slow, not stop, the erosion of resources over time. In the end, the only alternatives are either a decreasing standard of living, or obtaining new resources elsewhere. Whether the decision is done in time to allow billions to benefit, or done when only millions can, or postponed so long until the choice is no longer possible, won't really change that rather unpleasant fact.
Our goals should include the colonization and exploitation of the other worlds of this solar system, and whatever nearby stars we find ourselves able to reach in the centuries ahead. There is wealth almost beyond counting, in the form of usable energy, minerals, materials, space, and even worlds. We would be fools to turn our back on it.
[1]Unless we use sustainable, non-absolutist agriculture, as proposed by Daniel Quinne and others. This is really a completely different discussion, orthogonal to the arguments pro and con as to the benefits of space exploration and exploitation.
You have no idea. A few cents can per person can pay for a years clean water, a few more for grain, a few more for medicine. $7 is a HELL of a lot for a HELL of a lot of people.
Yes, and then they have children, and you have twice as severe a problem as before, so instead of needing $20 billion, you need $40 billion. These kinds of problems aren't solved with the kinds of short term bandages you suggest. What is needed are more resources, less expensive power, economic growth and yes, economic help for the less fortunate. Both goals must be served: (1) short term comfort and help and (2) long term investment in infrastructure for space exploration and exploitation, to provide us with the resources future generations will need in order to enjoy a standard of living comparable (or even better) than our own. If there isn't enough wealth to do both, then short term comfort needs to take a back seat in favor of long term prosperity. Failure to do this will condemn everyone in future generations to ever increasing levels of poverty, until all of the resources of this one planet have been exhausted and there is literally nothing left.
Just kidding. (The subject is a line from "Where the Buffalo Roam" starring Bill Murray that I've always wanted to use. Thank you for giving me the perfect opportunity to do so.:-) )
Seriously, while taking care of the weak, poor, and less fortunate makes us all feel nicely warm and fuzzy, doing so at the expense of your future posterity is not only stupid, it is IMHO criminally negligent of your own children's future.
The resource of Earth are finite and rapidly being depleated. The choices which face us are fairly stark: either accept an ever sinking standard of living, or find more resources elsewhere. I suppose a third option would be to hope for a magic new technological breakthrough a la' Star Trek's replicator, but, just as occasionally someone wins the lottery, death by lightning strike is far more probable. And frankly, there is little else that would suffice: recycling cannot result in 100% recovery, so even in the best, most eco-sensitive world, with a population that stops growing, we will be sharing (or, more likely, killing each other over) an ever shrinking pie.
While space is hardly a panacea for all the world's problems, the space program, including manned space exploration, is a critical first step in building a sustainable infrastructure for exploiting the cheap energy and mineral wealth of the solar system. It is, in its infancy, expensive, dangerous, and requires some level of sacrifice, but it is nevertheless very important that it be done. Space provides opportunity for additional living space, very cheap energy from the sun, and sufficient mineral wealth to sustain economic growth and prosperity for millenia. Not that this alone will automagically solve all our problems, but at least it will help provide us with the means to do so, which staying planet bound to Earth will not.
The effort to reach Mars has allot of value. It will push technologies and demand resources (and infrastructure) that will facilitate commercial and industrial uses of both near-earth and martian space. Possible medium-term benefits include moving much of our industry into space and away from the Earth's biosphere and microwaving very inexpensive energy back to earth. Long term benefits are too numerous to mention, but include the possiblity of seeding a new biosphere on mars and creating a wealth of new living space in space habitats with access to inexpensive energy and minerals.
To squander all of today's limited wealth feeding the world's poor is to condemn everyone in future generations to a much lower (and ever decreasing) standard of living, until one day the exploited Earth is home only to the impoverished, rightfully cursing their shortsited forfathers for condemning them to their fate.
The approach currently being taken is the correct one -- spend some money alleviating some of most acute the problems of the world, while spending some on building an infrastructure that can sustain and assure future generations of opportunity and wealth. While we may argue over how much should be spent on one versus the other, the contention that we should spend all of our wealth on quick and temporary bandages for today's problems while ignoring the investments necessary for a prosperous future defies all reason and common sense.
What's typical is that liberals read what they want to read, not what's actually there.
What is typical of the written word is for the reader to not only read the literal words, but to interpret their underlying meaning based on context and verbiage. When one is caught out making assertions or implications which are out of line, the typical defense is to deny any underlying meaning and insist on second-grade, literal interpretation of the words written, ignoring or playing down any context or common meaning of the verbiage employed.
It is also very common for extremests to lump large, disparate groups of people together and assign to them attributes which they either do not possess at all, those only a small mintority of them possess, or those which all people possess with the implication that it is an attribute primarilly of that particular group (in this case "liberals"). This is generally coupled with denying any positive attributes said group may have, even those so obvious as to be common knowledge. Examples of this behavior include:
"LOL! I can't believe how much credit you give to the whining middle class white children of the 60s."
("whining" is a negative attribute which is by no means unique to middle class white children of the hippies. Witness your own off-topic whining about the alleged impact of "hippies" on our current affairs.)
"Women... again, you give credit where none is due, unless you count silly gestures like "burning bras" somehow got woman into boardrooms."
(Here you state emphatically that the women's movement had little or no effect on the treatment of women and the opening of career opportunities previously denied them. To underscore this, you use a popularized image taken from a protest in an effort to imply the women were foolish, ineffectual, crazy, or all of the above, while ignoring both the importance of protest as a method for catalyzing social change and the fact that symbolic acts such as bra-burning were just that, symbolic.)
I think it should be becoming clear to you why I and others do get the impression that you are espousing extreme views, based on your rhetoric. I could go on with further examples, but I think the rest of your comments more or less speaks for themselves, and I do not take much joy in tearing your words apart in such a public manner.
Exactly where did I say that everyone opposed to Vietnam approved of Jane Fonda?
"Vietnam war... there is no doubt that the hippies were part of it, but it was primarily the huge losses that changed public opinion. Public opinion, not "hippie opinion". Of course, we could bring up Jane Fonda, who called a bunch of prisoners "liars" for claiming they were tortured. I guess you think JF was a national hero?"
While you did not state word for word that those "opposed to Vietname approved of Jane Fonda", you clearly make this implication in both the context with which you raise Jane Fonda and the assertion you then make regarding my beliefs in that context. (Not that it matters, but for the record I vehemently disagree with what she did. Being on the right side of an issue does not magically transform an ass into a saint, as she so very clearly demonstrated.)
Your response will no doubt now be to use semantics to reduce the limit and scope of your assertions and their implications, now that I and others have spoken out against them, or to resort to additional ad hominim attacks against myself or others. Be my guest -- I think even those sympathetic to your political stance will see that for what it is. In the meantime, I have work to do.
I have no argument with what you have said. However, what remains unsaid is I think important.
Extreme views have a way of becoming legitimized through simple repetition if they are not countered and countered forcefully. Laughter, mockery, and the pointing out of their absurdity is an important tool in countering such viewpoints, and do serve to illustrate ignorance quite well. Education and forgiveness are also legitimate tools, but not exclusively so.
I make no claims of enlightenment, beyond some level of common sense which appears to exceed that of the post to which I replied. My "flame" was quite mild, given the venom with which the original poster chose to demonize an entire demographic group and, in his response to my comments, an entire generation during which, ironically, some of the most important social changes and progress took place.
If you have any doubts as to the original poster's extremety, may I refer you to his response to my comments? I leave it to any rational, dispassionate observer to draw their own conclusions at this point.
To me, a hippie represents self-indulgent destructiveness. We're still suffering the damage that was caused by these self-titled "free thinkers".
Are you referring to the terrible damage the hippies caused in protesting the Vietnam war, applying sufficient political pressur to eventually force the US Government to cut its losses and pull out, thereby ending decades of sensless bloodshed?
Or perhaps you refer to the untold damage the civil rights movement (supported in no small part by these "self indulgent hippies" of yore) has caused this country? Absolutely shameless, to demand that we adhere to the notion that "all men are created equal."
Or is it the ACLU which is the subject of your ire, which owes no small part of its existence and continued support to hippies and aging ex-hippies, among others? Damn liberals, always insisting people have inalienable rights!
Or is it the flooding of the workplace by those uppity women, who have since the sixties been insisting on equal employment opportunities and equivelent pay (which BTW they've yet to recieve)? Damn bitches, taking all those good jobs away from hard working, testosterone driven men!
Perhaps it is free thought itself which offends you most. Goddamn non-conformist long hairs, saying things that contradict my world view and make me feel uncomfortable.
Then of course, there are all those Marijuana Addicts, killing their families with axes! The Menance surrounds us, you might have read about it in the papers.[1]
While it is your constitutional right to adhere to and promote political philosophies that are to the right of Gengis Khan, it is thankfully the constitutional right of the rest of us to openly laugh at and mock you for espousing such extreme views.
[1]Paraphrased from the 1930's propoganda film "Reefer Madness."
You are unethical to make such unsubstantiated accusations.
These rumours are being bandied about on various USENET groups and other forums read by people who trade this and other stocks in lots of tens of thousands. Rob's reporting it on slashdot, in comparison, will have virtually no appreciable effect on the value of the stock (how many day traders and brokers do you think read this forum?), and it does qualify as "news for nerds" more than several stories posted here in the last few days, as CORL is not only a venerable software company, but one with an aggressive Linux strategy as well.
The price climbed, fell, will climb again, will fall again, ad nauseum. The short term, intraday price is driven much more by day traders trying to make a quick buck than by technically savvy folks reading rumours on slashdot and running out to buy the stock at $27.00. In fact, those of us savvy enough to see the direction of the technology tide (toward open source OSes) got in on this early enough to not care what the day traders do to the intra-day stock price.
Those wise enough to hang onto [insert favorite Linux stock here] over the long haul will make a killing. Yes, probably even those unfortunate enough to now own $27 shares of CORL. Of course, they are the most likely ones to panic and sell at $17, locking in a $10 loss, but then they have only themselves to blame. Trying to be Mr/Ms Day Trader Extrodinair is foolish even for the professionals -- the rest of us should stick with what we know, invest in companies we feel are viable for whatever underlying reasons we understand, and not gawk at the stock price every two minutes trying to outguess the professionals on when to buy and when to sell. Leave that to the professional traders -- at least they have a 50% chance of coming out winners, whcih is alot better than the rest of us do when we start trying to go up against them day trading.
As an enthusiastic user of Debian, one of its greatest weaknesses to me has been the apparent "orphaning" of stable releases once they are released. All further development (security updates aside) appears to be done for the new, unstable development version. Even new versions of existing, well defined and stable products are rarely backported into the stable tree, resulting in the stable version of Debian quickly consisting mostly of outdated software.
Is there any provision being made to allow for and support a more aggressive backporting of newly released software in current, stable releases, such as newer versions of xmms, netscape, mozilla, and so forth?
I understand and recognize that some software (e.g. gcc, glibc, X, perl) may affect too many other dependent packages to be supported in both stable and development trees, but other software such as xmms and enlightenment don't fall into that category at all, yet debian packages often are never created to support the current stable release.
Slashdot Mirror
If I recall correctly, the EFF is looking for a plaintiff specifically on the DVD reverse engineering issue. I suggest those involved get in touch with them and look into the possibility of coordinating a counter attack on the DVD Forum. I suspect if this ever went to trial with a reasonably well financed plaintiff, the DVD Forum would stand to lose allot of clout when their licensing terms become unenforcable.
This is about intimidation -- the DVD Forum has allot more to lose in a trial than a plaintiff does.
Well, perhaps their enthusiasm for free/open source software (unless paid mercenery astroturfers count as slashdotters these days), but beyond that I doubt you'll find slashdotters agreeing on much of anything.
Some of us (such as myself) believe that patents should be eliminated entirely, that they are a diservice to humankind and do more to harm and slow down technological progress in all areas of scientific endeavor than any other single thing.
Others are against software patents, but do not feel the same reasoning applies to other disciplines.
Others are simply against the pathetically obvious patents being issued by the USPO, and would like to replace the people issuing these patents but keep the system as it is largely unchanged.
Still others feel the same as above, except they would like to see the system reformed in various ways. How exactly it would be reformed is a conversation that, among slashdotters at least, will result in numerious, boistrous, and often mutually exclusive opinions and suggestions.
Finally, there are some here who ardently support and approve of the patenting system just the way it is.
All of these points of view probably stack up as a minority opinion when taken against all the others.
The myth of a "typical" slashdotter is one being bandied about by Microsoft-paid astroturfers and the like, and has little if anything to do with reality. It is as nonsensical as arguing that a crowd of people who unanimously expect the sun to rise in the east are therefor conformist and can be expected to agree on just about everything else. As with most things, we mostly disagree on the issue of patents and what to do about them and the problems some of us believe they cause. Hell, we even argue about the implimentation of the one thing we all do agree on -- how best to create and nurture free software (BSD vs GPL, Gnome vs. KDE, etc.). If we can't agree on that, it is highly unlikely we'll agree on anything, except maybe that the sun, probably, will rise in the east tommorow, unless of course it doesn't.
After Y2k has come and gone, and life moves on its merry way with narry a quiver, can we please just keep these people locked in the bunker? It would help winnow the gene pool and provide society with endless entertainment as they slowly go mad with cabin fever and turn on each other ...
Consider it a study for the betterment of humanity: what happens when several media whores, craving attention, are locked indefinitely together in a small space. They know intellectually that an (ever shrinking) audience is watching, yet are denied the feedback they so crave. Would they revel in their new role, without knowing their current ratings or enjoying the perks of fame, or would they go slowly mad in such a confined state? Enquiring minds want to know! Most importantly, no normal person ever has to have anything to do with any of them ever again! [applaus]
Adam,
It would have been more representational to have provided a little more context on the issue. While I vehemently disagree with what the crackers and script kiddies are doing, this is clearly a problem which etoys.com brought upon themselves with their unwarrented attack on etoy.com . Network managers at large company, who should be worrying about such things, need to know the context lest they, or their legal departments, step into the same wasps' nests.
While you are correct in pointing out that many of the assumptions made in the west are a result of anti-soviet propoganda and downright wrong (athiesm == evil; communism can't work; Reagan was responsible for reform in Russia, not Gorbochov; etc.), you are wrong on a couple of points:
The same things happen within any large company [...] there is upper management in HQ, management in offices/branches, middle management, etc., all making their decisions on behalf of the company. The same kind of system was used in USSR. While I am not a fan of huge companies, last time I have checked, American economy is mostly ruled by them, so I don't see any fundamental difference.
The differences are twofold:
1) Central planning vs. unplanned "organic" self-organization. In the USSR, one government planned and executed the entire economy. In western capitalism, while each company (large and small) may or may not be autocratic, the economy is composed of thousands upon thousands of these autonomous entities operating within the economy. The only force even remotely "controlling" the economy is the Federal Reserve, and while it is in many ways far too involved in micromanaging the economy (see an earlier post I made), it is not the same as an economy centrally managed around Five Year Plans.
This is not to say communism couldn't work (it worked after a fashion for fifty years, though I wouldn't characterize the results as particularly stellar), but to point out that your assertion that there is little difference between an economy run by a central government and one in which numerous companies participate is simply false.
2) Democracy was IMHO the critical factor which allowed western capitalism to succeed in many areas where communism did not. Each economic system has its weaknesses and strengths, and both have lethal internal dichotomies and contradictions which, if left unaddressed, will consume their respective economic systems. Capitalism relies on free markets as its check and balance, with competition providing goods to consumers at the best price/product ratio. Unfortunately, unregulated markets become quickly dominated by one or only a few of the most successful producers, at which point competition dies, the free market ceases to exist, and the entire economic model begins to fall apart. Similarly with communism, the inherent notion that each contributes according to their ability and receives according to their need in an egalitarian context ignores the fundamental requirement that someone must administer the collection and distribution of goods. This administrator has inherent power over others, and the equality of the system is compromized. There to, eventually the economy devolves and falls apart. These are just a couple of examples, both systems have numerous other lethal flaws which I'm sure you'll recognize if you give it some thought.
The key difference is that, in the west, the democratic institutions provided avenues of generally peaceful (though often bitter and angry) feedback which resulted in legislation to curb the most extreme aspects of capitalism and provide dampening effects designed to prevent monopolists from destroying markets. Unfortunately for the communists, there was no such feedback mechanism to allow the system to recognize dysfunctions and remodel itself in order to alleviate those problems, until Gorbochov's 11th hour reforms which were too little, too late. Had that occurred in the 50's instead of the 80's I think history would have been much different, and we would be living in a world with two dominant and successful economic systems (which would probably be a more stable economic structure than an entire world with all of its eggs in the single capitalist basket).
The other point I think you miss:
Real prosperity is a bottom-up phenomenon.
This entirely depends on the society in question. Of course, in US concentration of wealth already made this point close to becoming moot.
Even in communist economies, it is the individual worker who produces the "wealth," whenever he or she converts a piece of rock into a statue, a piece of sheet metal, or a wrought-iron fence. In both systems wealth and prosperity are generated from the bottom up. Communism could have reformed to take this into account, had there been a democratic form of government in place to allow the necessary feedback and pressure to mandate such reform. (Think incentive, which capitalism, for all of its other problems, has down pat).
As to America being addicted to imports, the same goes for every country in the world (including the Soviets, who for many years as a communist nation received grain imported from the United States). Self-sufficiency is a myth. We live in a global economy, and have since at least the era of the Egyptians. Every nation is dependent on another for goods too numerous to mention. Neither the US nor the USSR were ever islands unto themselves, and although both met most of their internal needs themselves up until the early 20th century, neither could ever do fully without imports to (and exports from) their neighbors without suffering economic hardship.
Remember the hedge fund that went bust recently, at a cost of $18 billion or so? The Fed bailed them out. How? By "monetizing the debt" -- i.e., printing more money.
They also took money directly out of smaller investment firms' pockets (I know, I'm a partner in one), by manipulating market parameters such as interest rates the very week of a "triple-witch" expiration (something hitherto unheard of). The result was a market which behaved as they intended -- more or less the opposite of what would have happened if the Fed had not intervened. The little folks lost a bundle, but the big, insolvent funds whos mismanaged positions were so exposed were bailed out. In short, that money wasn't just "printed," much of it was stolen directly from the pockets of smaller investors and financial firms -- the very ones most critical to the success and continued functioning, not to mention prosperity, of the entire system.
That entire fiasco made a mockery of free market economics and is, to me, one of the more stark examples of just how subsidized our whole economy really is, and how much corruption is built in to the entire apparatus. There is allot more "central planning" in the west than any of the politicians let on, and than most of us realize. Greenspan may work in "six month" rather than "five year" plans (which he then tweaks every month or two), he may use capital, rather than (or in addition to) the gun as a tool of coercion, and, yes, the result may be a system that works better than what the soviets had, but it is by no means a truly "free" market, and hasn't been for decades.
BTW - Anyone else notice the rather large "bubble" in this year's markets?
The "Initiative No Advertise" project has the goal of preventing the recording of commercial blocks when a program is recorded on a VCR.
Argh! I even proofread it twice and still overlooked that! I need to get some coffee...
www.ktet.Fh-Muenster.de/ina/:
/dev/video and the remote controll device /dev/ttyS*.
:-)
The "Initiative No Advertise" has the goal of preventing the recording of commercial blocks when a program is recorded on a VCR.
Subsections:
[...]
Download the Linux Software:
Here are the current results of Thorsten Janke's and Markus Koppers' Thesis. An application has been developed which runs on Linux using the KDE Desktop. Like most applications under Linux, the installation is thankfully very simple: 1) download, 2) untar, 3) configure, 4) make, and 5) make install (as root). The program requires access to the video4linux device
202104 Sep 30 13:07 noad2-0.1.tar.gz
The Thesis is available online (No, I'm not gonna translate their thesis)
If I were an astroturfer on Billy G's payroll, I'd try to start the kind of inter-freeware flame fest comments like yours tend to engender. BSD is very good at some things and not so good at others. Ditto for Linux. Even Windows, for all of its numerous and severe flaws, has its uses (extreme masochism comes to mind, as does playing a few games unavailable on the other platforms. :-))
It's a case of while Linux gets the publicity, FreeBSD "gets the work done." Many high-volume trafficked web sites use FreeBSD, including Hotmail.
Not true. It is a case of BSD starting out with a solid base of code while Linux was written from scratch. FreeBSD had the misfortune of having its legal status put into question at a critical juncture -- a period of time where people like myself were looking for a good, open UNIX for our PCs and ended up joining the Linux camp because it was unambigiously free, while *BSD looked like it might be shut down by the attourneys of Berkely.
Fortunately for us all, the legal issues were resolved and BSD is thriving in its own way, here to compete with and cross-polinate with Linux. Had there not been this legal limbo during those critical few months, we would probably all be dancing on the BSD bandwagen, and Linux would be the "alternative" OS.
Argue the pros and cons of BSD and Linux if you like, or even the BSD License vs. the GPL if you like, but save your prejudicial innuendo for an appropriate forum such as alt.flame please.
Oh, and by the way, as parallel examples of Linux performing similar duties to BSD, consider deja.com and google.com. Both OSes are excellent and have many things in common, not the least of which they both outperform any and all of Microsoft's offerings by orders of magnitude.
In Illinois we get it both coming and going - we have both a 3% income tax and a 7% or so sales tax. In Chicago it is even worse -- the city adds a percent or two, so that our net sales tax is something on the order of 8%.
...
Of course, we know the money is being well spent. They just tore up another perfectly good peice of road and are resurfacing it yet again, for the third time in as many years
You are absolutely correct with respect to chemical depression and other biochemical disorders. I know people who suffer similarly and are helped through medication.
However, the poster you flamed is also correct. We are resorting to chemical solutions for nearly all of our problems, in no small part because pharmeceutical companies are creating and expanding markets for their products. As another poster commented, calling every minor deviation from an unattainable "norm" a sign of mental illness is an insult to those who truly are mentally ill and require help. Worse, it obfuscates the entire issue and ruins any chance at attaining a coherent public policy to effectively help those who need it.
I find it absolutely chilling, though unsurprising, that another poster mentioned a friend of his who is a pharmacist and whos business strategy is to "keep people a little sick as long as possible" to milk their prescription dollars. Make no mistake about it, pharmaceutical companies are doing the same thing on a much, much grander scale. Yes, they make medicine which help us. But at the same time, they patent folk-lore cures which have been in use for thousands of years, then price the product out of reach for many who need it. How long before the patent a really effective cure for, say, cancer, then bury it to maintain their profit margins on their other cancer treatments? (Perhaps AIDS would be a better hypothetical scenerio, but the point remains). On the one hand they help us, while on the other they abuse and even sometimes destroy us. I do not find it the least bit inappropriate to condemn them when they behave in the latter manner, and to call attention to their behavior when it is inappropriate. Which IMHO labelling anyone with minor issues as mentally ill is.
Napsters tools are no more inherently tools for pircacy than ftp is. Yes, it provides a mechanism for people to exchange information. Music happens to be information, so yes, it, too, can be exchanged. Illegally, if both parties are unscrupulous enough to do so. So what?
The "cp" command allows one to do the same (copy to disk and distribute at will). rcp and scp are even worse -- they do the same thing across a network. The venerable ftp protocol allows users to download information in binary format at will. Oh shit! So does http, come to think of it! Then there is IRQ, the most evil of evils. Poeple speaking freely with one another in realtime. Good Lord! Not just a piracy tool, but a conspiricy tool as well! Call the FBI stat!
The RIAA, in even filing this lawsuit, is effectively proposing the banning of the entire internet and all of the utilities and protocols which make it a usable medium for any type of information exchange. This is an attempt to do two things: (1) intimidate a small company with a large legal fist and (2), if they should be so lucky as to find a judge with sufficient sympathy (or a great deal of Sony stock in his portfolio), to effectively ban any tool that lets users exchange binary information of any kind ('cuz it just might be music).
If this doesn't make the absurdity of their lawsuit clear, nothing will.
Blackdown mistakenly thought that Java was the next big thing, and that for Linux to remain viable it *needed* Java. They reasonably agreed to whatever license Sun would grant, simply to get a JDK available for Linux before Linux missed the bandwagon completely. A reasonable, indeed selfless act, which, had Java really been as important as Sun convinced many of us it would be, would have been critical to Linux's success.
In hindsight it turns out to have been the other way around. Java, while a nice language in some respects, was basically just so much hype. Linux on the other hand quietly attracted 10-20 million users and snuck its way into corporate server rooms everywhere. It's growth rate appears to have not slowed down in the least, while Java languishes for lack of mindshare. Java needs Linux far more than Linux needs Java, and Sun successfully suckered good people into doint their work for them at no cost.
Very unfortunate, but a good lesson why one should really think twice, or even ten times, before contributing to a project under Sun's "community" license.
This is exactly the kind of timely and relevant news I for one keep readhing slashdot for.
I have yet to start my Christmas shopping, and intend to do most of it on-line (for my nefew, four nieces aged one to six, and various other relatives). I probably would have wound up using etoys.com for at least some purchases, but in light of these events I will make a point in not doing so.
Those of us (in the US at least) conscientious enough vote every couple of years. ALL OF US vote with our money (dollars, yen, euros, whatever) every day. It is my profound pleasure to vote against the fucks at etoys.com for what they have done this Christmas season.
I think it's rather presumptuous to assume that the fall of Microsoft would throw this country into a huge depression. As huge and as important a company it is, there is always another waiting in the background to seize the day.
...
You are correct. The concern is that their stock options pyramid scheme is being emulated by other companies (whos stock prices "compete" against MSFT for investors and therefor value). That the scheme was not anticipated by finance law and is therefor of dubious legality (rather than being illegal outright) only serves to exhaserbate this problem. Depending on how large the pyramid grows (US$60 billion in options debt and growing geometricly), and how many other fortune 500 companies emulate this behavior, this could take down allot more than just MSFT. With any luck new legislation will be passed to prevent this, or the pyramid will collapse before the damage becomes too widespread, but alas, there are no garuntees of either.
Worst of all, if and when this happens it could easilly destroy the public's faith in the equity markets themselves, precipitating a huge capital drain out of the financial markets altogether. In this worst-case scenerio you are talking about mutual funds and stocks losing huge percentages of their values (this could easilly mean retirement funds going bust or paying fractions on the dollar, money market accounts losing value, and so forth). It's an unsettling case of the Emporer's clothes all over again.
What with an entire generation never having seen a bear market, and hedging at an all time low ("but that cuts into my profits, and the S&P's never go down!"), the results could be far uglier than one would otherwise expect. Add to that that an unusually high percentage of poeple have invested at least a portion of their savings in the markets to date, and you have an excellent recipe for an Albanian scenerio[1] all over again
[1]Much of the Albanian population lost their life savings to a more primitive pyramid scheme when it collapsed a couple of years ago, resulting in widespread, violent unrest throughout the country.
The Germans are concerned about Scientology's well documented track record for
... ah, religious ... goals
:-) (one must use a very liberal definition of intellectual to include anything written by Hubbard. Talk about horrible science fiction!).
- suppressing free speach through legal intimidation
- violating people's privacy through various means, legal and otherwise
- efforts to gain positions of trust and power
- willingness to use such positions to promote their own corporate
They are concerned that Scientology is engaged in a power grab of titanic proportions which poses a direct threat to their democracy, which the above pattern of behavior appears to underscore rather clearly. Having a corporation controlled by Scientologists in turn controlling a critical peice of software (such as, say, an integral component of an operating system running on 95% of all PCs) is, they feel, a grave concern.
OTOH if a scientologist contributes to Linux, the code is under the GPL. This takes control away from the Scientologists and puts it in the hands of the user. I doubt the German government would have any problem with that, though I suspect the hypothetical Scientologist contributing software of this kind might face immediate excommunication for giving away "intellectual" property which could have belonged to The Church.
Which is, in turn, a Hunter S. Thompson reference.
..." (who played Hunter S. Thompson BTW). Fun flick -- much more entertaining IMHO than the Fear and Loathing film was.
Yes, exactly! I should have said "... a movie based loosely on a Hunter S Thompson book, starring Bill Murray
This is a false dichotomy. Another scenario is we we drop back to a much smaller population that is supported with sustainable energy sources/agriculture/etc. In your eco-sensitive world what resources are we running out of that the pie is getting smaller?
It is not a false dichotomy. Even a smaller population will be using resources, which in turn will result in less resources for further generations. A shrinking population will slow the inevitable, not stop it. Even in the rosiest scenerio all the metals will eventually have been recycled to the point to where there is nothing left (remember, no process is 100% effecient -- the laws of thermodynamics don't permit it). Ditto for numerous other resources we take for granted, such as arable land, for example[1]. The net result: someday we will have consumed all of the non-renewable resources of this world, until there are enough left to support a population of exactly 0.
Now, if you are arguing we should give up our luxurious lifestyle and return to the trees then yes, we could probably live in a fashion sustainable by this world until conditions change such that human life is no longer possible. We did it for 3,000,000 years or so, after all. However, I do think there are valuable aspects to a modern, technological society that are worth keeping, and the only way to do this on any kind of long term basis is to move our exploitation of resources away from the Earth's biosphere, which cannot sustain such abuse much longer.
Technology demands resources, many of which are not renewable, even through recycling. Those which can be recycled are not 100% recoverable. No procedure is 100% effecient (the laws of thermodynamics prevent that), so even in a world of shrinking population and wonderful levels of ecological sensitivity, you will, eventually, wind up with a world capable of supporting 0 people in a technological society, or alternatively some tens of millions as unusually clever animals.
Even if you "terraform" every square meter of the earth's surface and ocean floors, you will only slow, not stop, the erosion of resources over time. In the end, the only alternatives are either a decreasing standard of living, or obtaining new resources elsewhere. Whether the decision is done in time to allow billions to benefit, or done when only millions can, or postponed so long until the choice is no longer possible, won't really change that rather unpleasant fact.
Our goals should include the colonization and exploitation of the other worlds of this solar system, and whatever nearby stars we find ourselves able to reach in the centuries ahead. There is wealth almost beyond counting, in the form of usable energy, minerals, materials, space, and even worlds. We would be fools to turn our back on it.
[1]Unless we use sustainable, non-absolutist agriculture, as proposed by Daniel Quinne and others. This is really a completely different discussion, orthogonal to the arguments pro and con as to the benefits of space exploration and exploitation.
You have no idea. A few cents can per person can pay for a years clean water, a few more for grain, a few more for medicine. $7 is a HELL of a lot for a HELL of a lot of people.
Yes, and then they have children, and you have twice as severe a problem as before, so instead of needing $20 billion, you need $40 billion. These kinds of problems aren't solved with the kinds of short term bandages you suggest. What is needed are more resources, less expensive power, economic growth and yes, economic help for the less fortunate. Both goals must be served: (1) short term comfort and help and (2) long term investment in infrastructure for space exploration and exploitation, to provide us with the resources future generations will need in order to enjoy a standard of living comparable (or even better) than our own. If there isn't enough wealth to do both, then short term comfort needs to take a back seat in favor of long term prosperity. Failure to do this will condemn everyone in future generations to ever increasing levels of poverty, until all of the resources of this one planet have been exhausted and there is literally nothing left.
Just kidding. (The subject is a line from "Where the Buffalo Roam" starring Bill Murray that I've always wanted to use. Thank you for giving me the perfect opportunity to do so. :-) )
Seriously, while taking care of the weak, poor, and less fortunate makes us all feel nicely warm and fuzzy, doing so at the expense of your future posterity is not only stupid, it is IMHO criminally negligent of your own children's future.
The resource of Earth are finite and rapidly being depleated. The choices which face us are fairly stark: either accept an ever sinking standard of living, or find more resources elsewhere. I suppose a third option would be to hope for a magic new technological breakthrough a la' Star Trek's replicator, but, just as occasionally someone wins the lottery, death by lightning strike is far more probable. And frankly, there is little else that would suffice: recycling cannot result in 100% recovery, so even in the best, most eco-sensitive world, with a population that stops growing, we will be sharing (or, more likely, killing each other over) an ever shrinking pie.
While space is hardly a panacea for all the world's problems, the space program, including manned space exploration, is a critical first step in building a sustainable infrastructure for exploiting the cheap energy and mineral wealth of the solar system. It is, in its infancy, expensive, dangerous, and requires some level of sacrifice, but it is nevertheless very important that it be done. Space provides opportunity for additional living space, very cheap energy from the sun, and sufficient mineral wealth to sustain economic growth and prosperity for millenia. Not that this alone will automagically solve all our problems, but at least it will help provide us with the means to do so, which staying planet bound to Earth will not.
The effort to reach Mars has allot of value. It will push technologies and demand resources (and infrastructure) that will facilitate commercial and industrial uses of both near-earth and martian space. Possible medium-term benefits include moving much of our industry into space and away from the Earth's biosphere and microwaving very inexpensive energy back to earth. Long term benefits are too numerous to mention, but include the possiblity of seeding a new biosphere on mars and creating a wealth of new living space in space habitats with access to inexpensive energy and minerals.
To squander all of today's limited wealth feeding the world's poor is to condemn everyone in future generations to a much lower (and ever decreasing) standard of living, until one day the exploited Earth is home only to the impoverished, rightfully cursing their shortsited forfathers for condemning them to their fate.
The approach currently being taken is the correct one -- spend some money alleviating some of most acute the problems of the world, while spending some on building an infrastructure that can sustain and assure future generations of opportunity and wealth. While we may argue over how much should be spent on one versus the other, the contention that we should spend all of our wealth on quick and temporary bandages for today's problems while ignoring the investments necessary for a prosperous future defies all reason and common sense.
I'll answere this one for anoymous.
What's typical is that liberals read what they want to read, not what's actually there.
What is typical of the written word is for the reader to not only read the literal words, but to interpret their underlying meaning based on context and verbiage. When one is caught out making assertions or implications which are out of line, the typical defense is to deny any underlying meaning and insist on second-grade, literal interpretation of the words written, ignoring or playing down any context or common meaning of the verbiage employed.
It is also very common for extremests to lump large, disparate groups of people together and assign to them attributes which they either do not possess at all, those only a small mintority of them possess, or those which all people possess with the implication that it is an attribute primarilly of that particular group (in this case "liberals"). This is generally coupled with denying any positive attributes said group may have, even those so obvious as to be common knowledge. Examples of this behavior include:
"LOL! I can't believe how much credit you give to the whining middle class white children of the 60s."
("whining" is a negative attribute which is by no means unique to middle class white children of the hippies. Witness your own off-topic whining about the alleged impact of "hippies" on our current affairs.)
"Women... again, you give credit where none is due, unless you count silly gestures like "burning bras" somehow got woman into boardrooms."
(Here you state emphatically that the women's movement had little or no effect on the treatment of women and the opening of career opportunities previously denied them. To underscore this, you use a popularized image taken from a protest in an effort to imply the women were foolish, ineffectual, crazy, or all of the above, while ignoring both the importance of protest as a method for catalyzing social change and the fact that symbolic acts such as bra-burning were just that, symbolic.)
I think it should be becoming clear to you why I and others do get the impression that you are espousing extreme views, based on your rhetoric. I could go on with further examples, but I think the rest of your comments more or less speaks for themselves, and I do not take much joy in tearing your words apart in such a public manner.
Exactly where did I say that everyone opposed to Vietnam approved of Jane Fonda?
"Vietnam war... there is no doubt that the hippies were part of it, but it was primarily the huge losses that changed public opinion. Public opinion, not "hippie opinion". Of course, we could bring up Jane Fonda, who called a bunch of prisoners "liars" for claiming they were tortured. I guess you think JF was a national hero?"
While you did not state word for word that those "opposed to Vietname approved of Jane Fonda", you clearly make this implication in both the context with which you raise Jane Fonda and the assertion you then make regarding my beliefs in that context. (Not that it matters, but for the record I vehemently disagree with what she did. Being on the right side of an issue does not magically transform an ass into a saint, as she so very clearly demonstrated.)
Your response will no doubt now be to use semantics to reduce the limit and scope of your assertions and their implications, now that I and others have spoken out against them, or to resort to additional ad hominim attacks against myself or others. Be my guest -- I think even those sympathetic to your political stance will see that for what it is. In the meantime, I have work to do.
I have no argument with what you have said. However, what remains unsaid is I think important.
Extreme views have a way of becoming legitimized through simple repetition if they are not countered and countered forcefully. Laughter, mockery, and the pointing out of their absurdity is an important tool in countering such viewpoints, and do serve to illustrate ignorance quite well. Education and forgiveness are also legitimate tools, but not exclusively so.
I make no claims of enlightenment, beyond some level of common sense which appears to exceed that of the post to which I replied. My "flame" was quite mild, given the venom with which the original poster chose to demonize an entire demographic group and, in his response to my comments, an entire generation during which, ironically, some of the most important social changes and progress took place.
If you have any doubts as to the original poster's extremety, may I refer you to his response to my comments? I leave it to any rational, dispassionate observer to draw their own conclusions at this point.
To me, a hippie represents self-indulgent destructiveness. We're still suffering the damage that was caused by these self-titled "free thinkers".
Are you referring to the terrible damage the hippies caused in protesting the Vietnam war, applying sufficient political pressur to eventually force the US Government to cut its losses and pull out, thereby ending decades of sensless bloodshed?
Or perhaps you refer to the untold damage the civil rights movement (supported in no small part by these "self indulgent hippies" of yore) has caused this country? Absolutely shameless, to demand that we adhere to the notion that "all men are created equal."
Or is it the ACLU which is the subject of your ire, which owes no small part of its existence and continued support to hippies and aging ex-hippies, among others? Damn liberals, always insisting people have inalienable rights!
Or is it the flooding of the workplace by those uppity women, who have since the sixties been insisting on equal employment opportunities and equivelent pay (which BTW they've yet to recieve)? Damn bitches, taking all those good jobs away from hard working, testosterone driven men!
Perhaps it is free thought itself which offends you most. Goddamn non-conformist long hairs, saying things that contradict my world view and make me feel uncomfortable.
Then of course, there are all those Marijuana Addicts, killing their families with axes! The Menance surrounds us, you might have read about it in the papers.[1]
While it is your constitutional right to adhere to and promote political philosophies that are to the right of Gengis Khan, it is thankfully the constitutional right of the rest of us to openly laugh at and mock you for espousing such extreme views.
[1]Paraphrased from the 1930's propoganda film "Reefer Madness."
You are unethical to make such unsubstantiated accusations.
These rumours are being bandied about on various USENET groups and other forums read by people who trade this and other stocks in lots of tens of thousands. Rob's reporting it on slashdot, in comparison, will have virtually no appreciable effect on the value of the stock (how many day traders and brokers do you think read this forum?), and it does qualify as "news for nerds" more than several stories posted here in the last few days, as CORL is not only a venerable software company, but one with an aggressive Linux strategy as well.
The price climbed, fell, will climb again, will fall again, ad nauseum. The short term, intraday price is driven much more by day traders trying to make a quick buck than by technically savvy folks reading rumours on slashdot and running out to buy the stock at $27.00. In fact, those of us savvy enough to see the direction of the technology tide (toward open source OSes) got in on this early enough to not care what the day traders do to the intra-day stock price.
Those wise enough to hang onto [insert favorite Linux stock here] over the long haul will make a killing. Yes, probably even those unfortunate enough to now own $27 shares of CORL. Of course, they are the most likely ones to panic and sell at $17, locking in a $10 loss, but then they have only themselves to blame. Trying to be Mr/Ms Day Trader Extrodinair is foolish even for the professionals -- the rest of us should stick with what we know, invest in companies we feel are viable for whatever underlying reasons we understand, and not gawk at the stock price every two minutes trying to outguess the professionals on when to buy and when to sell. Leave that to the professional traders -- at least they have a 50% chance of coming out winners, whcih is alot better than the rest of us do when we start trying to go up against them day trading.
As an enthusiastic user of Debian, one of its greatest weaknesses to me has been the apparent "orphaning" of stable releases once they are released. All further development (security updates aside) appears to be done for the new, unstable development version. Even new versions of existing, well defined and stable products are rarely backported into the stable tree, resulting in the stable version of Debian quickly consisting mostly of outdated software.
Is there any provision being made to allow for and support a more aggressive backporting of newly released software in current, stable releases, such as newer versions of xmms, netscape, mozilla, and so forth?
I understand and recognize that some software (e.g. gcc, glibc, X, perl) may affect too many other dependent packages to be supported in both stable and development trees, but other software such as xmms and enlightenment don't fall into that category at all, yet debian packages often are never created to support the current stable release.