I agree that Social Security should not have the same stigma as low-income welfare, nor the connotation usually associated with it, but it certainly is welfare. It's financial aid provided to people in need (by the government, in fact).
No, it isn't.
People pay into social security with the agreement that they will draw on that income later in life. This is in direct contrast to hand-outs given to the poor and needy, and does not qualify as "financial or other aid," any more than a return on an investment or a collection on insurance would.
By your defintion of social security as "...aid provided to people in need" one could argue that some military roles the government plays (NOT Iraq, of course) is "welfare," in that it is "financial or other aid provided...to people in need." Certainly WW2 and Kosovo would qualify.
I do agree that welfare shouldn't have a negative connotation, and share your concern with how the right has demonized the word (along with the word liberal, btw). Even so, I disagree that Social Security qualifies as welfare, even by the definition you cited.
Okay the guy sounds pissed, but it doesn't make sense why you'd drop all your hardware at the same time as you'd drop XP. Any PC that can run XP can in all liklihood run Linux (or BSD) and benefit from security goodness too.
Yes, and long term that would be wiser. My mom runs GNU/Linux and loves it. My sister, her husband, and their children likewise. However, my wife uses Mac OS X. Why? Because Microsoft used up all her tolerance of cantankerous technology, and while Linux is anything but cantakerous, it does have a learning curve that she simply wasn't willing to climb. Had I caught her before her experience with Dell and Microsoft, she probably would have been very willing to learn a new system (my mom and sister were delighted--but they hadn't lost entire weekends reinstalling bug-ridden, chronically unstable OSes).
I suspect this guy is in the same boat. He's worn out, and wants something that Just Works(tm) (this isn't Microsoft, regardless of what their deceptive advertising may say) with no learning required. Apple comes as close to fulfilling the "no learning required" aspect as anything.
Having said that, you're absolutely right and people really shoudln't kid themselves. Once Apple gets sufficient market-share it's going to be as ill-behavied as Microsoft is today. Granted, OS X will probably never be as insecure as Microsoft Windows--after all, its foundation is FreeBSD, which is very, very solid, while windows foundation is more akin to to quicksand--but if you think Bill Gates' customer lockin is bad (and it is), imagine what Steve Jobs is going to do once he's secured a big enough chunk of the market.
Don't believe me? Take a good, hard look at Apple's history. Apple has done it before--and drove a mass migration to IBM compatibles as a result. People forget that Microsoft initially emerged as the market leader because IBM clones emerged as the market leader, as a result of the hardware being open (despite IBM's efforts to the contrary) and competition making for a very robust marketplace, a lot of innovation, and (at the time) a lack of customer lockin. It was only later that Microsoft applied that customer lock-in at the software level...and Apple is almost certain to follow suit (repeating their old behavior) once their market share makes them feel confident enough to do so.
Long term, FreeBSD and GNU/Linux are the future for anyone who values their digital freedom in any form. But short term, Apple is a quick and painless way to get out from under the pile of Microsoft shit that includes, but is hardly limited to, endless spyware, endless viruses, endless worms, endless trojans, endless popup ads, endless crashes, endless security flaws crackers can drive a fleet of container trucks through, and endless demands for upgrades (and your hard earned dollars/euros/yen/what-have-you) that just give you more of the same.
Apple can give people breathing room, let them recuperate, and then, when Apple starts to get a little too big for its britches, people can look to making the move to a free foundation, such as Linux or FreeBSD. But until then, for those exhausted and traumatized by the Microsoft treadmill and the convicted monopolist's abuses, Apple offers a welcome, and easy, respite.
I'm not sold on Open Source entertainment. I have my tastes, you have yours. I doubt that you'd appreciate my imposing my creative vision on your work, and I know that I would resist your attempts to impose upon mine.
You don't seam to "get" collaborative projects. Don't feel bad--I used free software almost exclusively for years (based on quality, not politics) before I understood how and why collaborative projects work so well. When one is spoon-fed "you get what you pay for," "profit motive required for progress/production," "no one will create without monopoly entitlements (patents/copyright)," and similiar corporate untruths all of one's life (and we have all been spoonfed that nonsense since they day we were born), free collaboration can be a very difficult concept to get one's head around. As I said, it took me years, and I'm generally fairly quick.
First, collaboration != piecemeal. For that matter, Free Software is rarely piecemail either--equating the two shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the process and its results.
Second, unlike writing a novel (where what you say has some applicability, though by no means is it an axiom--there have been collaborative novels written in the sci-fi genre by well-known authors that are excellent) nearly every film and telivision project of any size involves multiple writers (in the case of telivision projects, sometimes hundreds of writers), and hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people performing supporting functions (compsing the soundtrack, performing the music, lighting, choreagraphy, set design, editing, post-production, etc.).
In short, virtually every project of any size is a collaboration--we're just not used to seeing it as such. Indeed, there is absolutely nothing intrinsicly different between a large collaboration done under the the auspices of a commercial enterprise and that done under an open collaboration, other than perhaps the overall budget that is available. Star Wars Episode 3-1/2 "Revelations" is a fine example of a fan film made entirely through collaboration on a tiny budget.
Yes, collaboration can and does produce absolute dreck. So to does Hollywood...in abundance. Profit motive and corporate-feudal power structures do nothing to insure quality, nor are the a prerequisite to the production of quality, whether it is software or a film.
I do agree, doing the entire project start-to-finish using only free software would be a powerful demonstration of what is possible using only the resources of the Free World.
I'm so glad that taking care of our retired is thrown in with welfare. Thanks for sharing, fascist.
Amen. The poster should be ashamed of themselves, and the moderates who modded you down as "flaimbait" for speaking the truth even more so.
1) Social Security isn't "welfare." We pay into the system, we get benefits out of the system. Social Security recipients are not getting "something for nothing," so to lump them in with welfare recipients is just plain Ignorant(tm) and Stupid(tm).
2) You want to discuss welfare, start by discussing the savings and loan bailout, the tax subsidies virtually every large corporation gets from state, local, and federal governments, and the immense amount of government pork in the defense budget which amounts to Yet Another Subsidy. The amount of tax dollars spent on corporate welfare, an appalling percentage of which goes directly to line the pockets of the very wealthy, dwarfs by an order of magnitude the amount of money being returned to those who've paid into the Social Security system, being paid to those who've paid into the Unemployment Benefits system, being returned to those who've paid into the Medicare and Medicaide system during their working lives, and yes, even those getting free handouts ('welfare') because they're too poor, too uneducated, lack resources, lack opportunity, or (in some cases, but not even close to all) are simply too lazy to work.
That doesn't change the fact that funding the space agency should be one of our top priorities, not one of our last, but to blame it on "welfare" is numerical nonsense--and to blame it on the modest, half-assed social programs we call Social Security and Medicare simply unconscionable right wing and, yes, fascist dogma. The Right in America has become so toxic it boggles the mind.
And, yet, humankind has yet to replicate a bird's wing. Instead we have created things we call wings that only superficially behave like actual bird wings. So, bzzzzzz. Try again.
You really are dense, aren't you (so much for it taking a generation or two to show you're an idiot. Less than 24 hours and you've proven the point). We didn't need to replicate a birds with to FLY. What part of that concept didn't you grasp?
It is entirely possible, even probable, that the wetware structure of our minds is neither the most effecient or dense representation of the data (knowledge/memories) or algorithms (personality/reasoning/thought) that make up our minds. We'll probably find we can replicate them without mimicking even a fraction of the underlying biological, chemical, and electrical complexity.
You didn't even wait a generation to be proven an idiot--you managed to do it within a day. Congratulations.
Please, whatever you do, don't click on any links to my novel. Whatever you do, dont read it online! Oh, the humanity! (and I say this as one who has been published, and is well on the way toward doing so again).
Has no one considered that Google will be allowing word and phrase searches in books, but won't necessarilly be providing the full text online? I suspect that is the case (I really can't see google wrecking their business by engaging in wholesale, deliberate copyright infringement), and that will drive more sales, not less.
Naysaying bunk does not debunk bunk
on
Download Your Brain
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There is no plausible way for replicating the structure and billions of individual minute biological connections present in the brain. Making such a promise is a good way to garner interest and sell your books and speeches to a gullible public. Particularly, a rich gullible public.
(ca. 1880) FUTURIST CLAIMS MANNED FLIGHT WILL BE POSSIBLE BY 1930, though initially cost will limit it to the wealthy.
"There is no plausible way for replicating the structure and billions of individual, minute biological connections present in the wings of a bird. Making such a promise is a good way to garner interest and sell your books and speeches to a gullible public. Particularly, a rich gullible public."
Unlike ones and zeros represented on a medium for a computer's use, there is no steady-state representation for the human mind.
Three points.
1) Quantum computers (and their analogous storage media, if any ever exists) may not require a steady-state representation of the human mind. Certainly the biological computers we call our brains don't require such, yet they manage to store and compute our consciousness in realtime, and reboot our minds at least once a day (we typically call that "waking up").
2) You assume there is no steady state (binary) representation of the human mind. You do not know this for a fact (otherwise, please cite references and evidence). The fact that we may lack the knowledge and technology for captureing such a state today does not mean it is impossible, either theoritecially, or practically given a few decades development.
3) You assume the representation must be binary. That is not necessarilly true. Said computers could be nondigital (either analog hardware in the old sense of the word, or quantum systems manipulating complex waveforms and superpositions), or could represent their data in a non-binary digital format (though the latter would almost certainly decompose into a binary solution).
It may not happen, or it may, but for you to try and "authoritatively" nay-say its possibility demonstrates your own arrogance far more than it does the implausibility of the conjecture. Furthermore, history is littered with literally thousands of naysayers like yourself claiming X is impossible, only to be proven an idiot within a couple of generations.
What does this have to do with the father? What does this have to do with which sperm gets into the egg?
While I agree with you that this is total crap, it is concievable that some environmental factor (e.g estrogen level in a woman, diet, whatever) could favor sperm carrying Y chromosomes over those carrying X chromosome, or visa versa. So, while it may not have anything to do with what the male delivers, it might affect what portion of that delivery are most likely to reach its target.
The correlation is real. We may have no idea of the cause (and the cause could be a simple as an inadvertantly biased sample), but there is a cause nevertheless.
And I thought only Windows users were dumb. How silly of me!
They are. Anyone who chooses a bug-riddled, virus/worm/trojan/spyware/malware-ridden, DRM-crippled, monopoly driven platform over easier to use and more stable alternatives (Apple) and more robust, more stable alternatives (FreeBSD/Linux) is making a stupid, indeed idiotic choice. They know they have the Apple alternative, yet they moronicly choose familiarity over security and ease of use.
Contrast this with Apple users, who may be ignorant of the specific designs of their laptops (there are, after all, portable tablets and laptops, including some of Apple's offerings, that do not run without the battery regardless of AC power), but having chosen Apple of Windows they are, by definition, not stupid.
(The humor-impaired and Microsoft apologists will doubtless pop a vein or two and mod this down . . . joke notwithstanding. As a GNU/Linux user myself, I can hardly be accused of being an Apple fanboy by any reasonable human being, but I recognize quality when I see it and like to give credit where credit is due. Microsoft deserves little-to-no credit (c.f. the last 15 years of their shoddy product and unethical, even criminal, behavior), but Apple definitely deserves credit for their fine products, even if Jobs is a Gate's wannabe at the bottom of his heart.
If you follow Cuban's argument through, the RIAA could easily claim that it is due $5 per month from you and everyone who got a copy of a song from you illegally . Which puts the damages back where the RIAA wants them.
Uh, no. Lets define
D = n*s, where
s = amount of money sharers would have spent
n = number of sharers who downloaded a shared song
Before unlimited $5.00/month subscriptions existed, s was arguably $17.00 or so times the number of CDs required to cover all of the songs downloaded. Now that you can legally download all those songs for a flat $5.00/month subscription fee, s equals $5.00, not some hypothetically (and always inflated) value of $17.00 x a whole bunch of mostly-rotton one-hit-wonder CDs.
That makes D = n*$5.00 instead of n*$17.00*(whatever big number the RIAA wants to make up).
In other worse, D just got a whole lot smaller, and a whole lot more rigorous in how its defined (you can only multiply by the number of unique downloaders you identify, not that plus a gob of CDs).
So, while $5.00/month damages for a big uplaoder might be wrong, $5.00/month/downloader is correct, and a whole lot less than the $millions/downloader the copyright cartels are currently getting judges to buy into.
As for me, if a girl requires a natural diamond for my hand in marriage then she can keep walking. True love is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.
Absolutely right. Any woman who would put her own shiny status symbol ahead of the unethical consiquences and bad economics of buying a diamond (they have no resale value, and the amount of human suffering the DeBeers monopoly has created around the world makes buying a gem from that cartel orders of magnitude more destructive and unethical than buying truckloads of heroin from the Taliban) is a toxic, amoral, uncairing bitch from which you should run like the wind, not walk.
Thankfully, my wife felt exactly the same way--so we went with simple, white-gold bands that go well with her silver and platinum jewelry (sans diamonds), and spent the money on new laptops and a rockin' honeymoon.
the reason comes tomorrow. Oh, and you should also give me all your cash today because it is obsolete, more details to come tomorrow.
Yes. While I am a "full-disclosure is better than not" guy, you (or others like you) would be screaming even louder about how "irresponsible" this guy would be if he had released the "reason" today (said "reason," BTW is a proof-of-concept exploit, one that malicious jerks will probably adapt to their desires after it's released).
Oh yes sysadmins, disable hyperthreading because some poster on slashdot said so. This is just too gay.
Not as asinine as clueless AC posts like yours, modded up as "insightful" by equally clueless people who happen to have moderation points today. The guy is awaiting his doctorate at one of the world's most prestigious universities, has an excellent track record, and has chosen a conservative but less-controviersial approach in disclosing this issue.
All of which you would have known, if you'd bother to read TFA rather than spouting off nonsense here.
I won't be a fan of Ipods until the play my ogg files (until then, my Rio Karma will do just fine), but Bill Gate's is full of shit.
The Ipod interface is excellent, and with manufacturers producing quad-channel-GSM cell-phones-on-a-chip, Apple is going to have a much easier time adding cell-phone functionality to an Ipod than Microsoft is ever going to have adding an equivelently easy-to-use and satisfying interface to their so-called smart-phones.
I like my Motorola A700 PDA/Phone, but I don't use it to listen to music despite the fact that it is a capable MP3 player. The Ipod and Rio Karma are optimized for music playback--I've yet to see a cell phone that is so optimized without giving up PDA or cell-phone features to do it. I suspect Apple will be the first out with something that does just work, and it will probably be some variation of the Ipod.
That '...made the kessel run in under 12 parsecs...' line always bothered me. Did Georgie just hear 'parsec' one day in the context of astronomy and just ASSUME it was a unit of time or what?
George fucked up, no question about it.
However, if you set the speed of light constant to 1, and define all of your other units from there, you get e=mc^2 -> e=m. Some other interesting relationships emerge as well.
One is that distance and time become the same. We have an inkling of that in our current units, such as "light-years," the distance light travels in a year. Saying something is three seconds away, with units defined such that one is always referencing lightspeed (defined as "1", remember?), is the same as saying it is three light-seconds away. Any distance could be stated as a unit of time.
Since time=space (along a 4th dimensional curve), you only need one set of units. With c=1, that unit could as well be what we have traditionally used as distance rather than time. I.e. I'll do it in two hundred billion miles would translate roughly to "I'll do it in 12.4 days".
Personally, I prefer measuring distance in units of time, but either works. Of course, George Lucas had no clue about this stuff when he picked his units, so none of this changes the fact that he didn't know what he was doing and screwed up.
I'm disgusted that our democrat senators that are overly 'concerned' with civil liberties voted for this. I guess that they are just paying lip service to civil liberties
As am I. The Democrats are cowards, and have been ever since they caved and supported Bush's invasion of Iraq because they feared a backlash from the ignorant public, despite the knowledge they had that it was wrong.
The Democrats lost the midterm elections because of that -- why vote for weak republicans (ie. Democrats cowtowing to a Republican majority and/or an irrational populace) when you can vote for strong republicans (who at least believe and hold true to their ideals, no matter how toxic they are)?
The Democrats remain cowards, every time they pander for fear of offending the Right and their mindless minions, whether it's Bill Clinton complimenting and saying how much he likes the fool we currently have as president, their support of legislation like the PATRIOT-ACT, or simply their unwillingness to be a party of opposition on any substantive issue. Even Kerry was afraid to step up to the plate in defending a woman's right to chose (a truly emberrassing moment in the debates for him)... the one issue the Democrats actually still have a modicum of backbone on (though even that bit of backbone, too, appears to be fleeting).
Until the Democrats do grow a backbone and show some courage of their convictions they will keep losing elections. They may anyway, now that the Republicans have perfected the stealing of federal elections irrespective of how the vote actually turns out, but be that as it may, without a backbone and willingness to stand up to the ruling party, they'll lose outright and the Bush supporters won't have any need to fix any elections.
Kind of like when I nailed an "environmentalist" friend of mine who was ticketed for burning the plastic insulation off of old telephone wire to get to the copper.... on Earth Day.
Heh! There is indeed humor in that. As to the over/under 40 thing, there is a generational discrepency between those using P2P and those pushing for legislation to ban it. That doesn't mean those of us over 40 (or 50, or 60...) can all be lumped into the RIAA/MPAA category, but one look at the leaders of those groups, and the politicians who enact their will, and one does see a very strong generational divide. It isn't politically correct to note the agist aspects of this reality, but it is true nevertheless, and none of us should be intimidated into not speaking of the obvious.
That of course doesn't excuse any discrimination or other agist behavior against those over [insert arbitrary number here], but it does serve to show a socialogical relationship (and change in attitudes over time) and point out what group(s) may need reaching out to and education if we are to get out from under the architectures of control the patent and copyright cartels have held us under for the last several centuries. Not that we're all that likely to succeed, but it never hurts to try.
And I'm certainly not PC (though I thought you might be).
I may be liberal (a dirty word here in the US, which shows just how little we as a people know about anything), but I'm anything but PC. In fact, I oppose any dogma (and "PC" is a form of dogma, whether it's the liberal "PC" of the ninetees or the newer, conservative "PC" of the naughties). Knock down, drawn out arguments over issues are far healthier than PC-enforced silence... even if the non-PC point of view is despicable and vile (e.g. racist points of view). I guess this is a long winded way of saying "I may despise what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it" which is something a lot of people pay lip service to, but don't really support when they burn a singer's records for speaking out against the president's asinine policies in Iraq, or try to silence some pro-Bush right-winger because they find what s/he says offensive (as I probably would, even while defending their right to say it and be heard).
Shortly after 9/11 when they gave billions to "save" the airlines.
Oh for crying out loud, go lookup the meaning of the word "nationalize." Then go look up the meaning of the word "subsidize." They aren't anything close to the same. To help the intellectually lazy and mouse-click challenged:
1. To convert from private to governmental ownership and control: nationalize the steel industry.
When did the government nationalize the farms?
Throughout the past few decades in the form of farm subsidies.
See above.
When did the government nationalize the factories?
Not entirely yet, but it's in progress. For a good example, read up on government price fixing of television sets.
That's called regulation. It may not be good regulation, but it isn't even in the same conceptual universe as "nationalizing."
When did the government nationalize the hospitals?
Another one in progress... if you commies get your way, it'll be finished by 2007 or so.
You really are an ignorant fool, a troll, and probably both. Even countrys with civilized levels of national health care, such as England and Germany, don't have their entire health care system owned by the government... though some have chosen to nationalize portions of it. In any event, nothing even the most liberal Americans are proposing (our left extreme is very right-wing from the point of view of the rest of the civilized world) comes anywhere close to nationalizing a single doctor's clinic, much less the entire health-care system.
When did the govenrment nationalize all media?
Are you kidding me?
Again, intimidation and coercion aren't the same as "nationalizing." It is disingenous, and counterproductive, to lump the Republicans' and the Bush family's success in intimidating reporters and the media, and using the carrot-stick approach to access to the white house and public figures (as well as their brazen refusal to answer any questions they don't like relevant to their leadership, something that is a fundamental responsibility of any elected leader, of any party) with the government assuming ownership of the media (which it has not done).
We need to develop a robot to watch soccer, an activity Americans generally consider too tedious for humans.
Heh. This from the country[1] that foisted baseball upon a portion of the world...arguably the most tedious of games (cricket would win, except they're civilized enough to stop for tea now and then).
What we need is a robot for watching sports in general... always far too tedious for human beings to watch. Of course, that could be generalized to television as a whole, with the added caveat "...almost always far too tedious for humans..." (though of course, one could save the $5000 dollars for a robot to watch sports/tv and just turn the damn thing off, but where's the fun in that?:-))
[1] IAAA - "I Am An American" (so I can mock my country and its silly sports all I like, and I do)
You're your own worst enemy, you know? I mean, I read the first paragraph of your post and thought "Hey, I forgot Knoppix, that makes everything easier; what a good suggestion" (I'm the original AC who raised the problems). Then I read your personal insult in the rest of the post and I feel like ignoring everything you ever say and write as ill-mannered political drivel.
*shrug*
Well, I apologize if I mischaracterized you. However, that is the risk you run when you post anonymously to a forum where there is so much Microsoft astroturfing, where there are so many paid apologists spamming the forum with pro-MS drivel, most of which doesn't stand a second's critical analysis. I apologize if I erroneously lumped you in with that crowd, but I think if you seriously examine most of the pro-MS and anti-Linux AC posts around here you'll agree it's a pretty easy mistake to make.
The point stands, even if the target (you) was misidentified . . . Microsoft and its supporters' only recourse is to argue that black is white: "we're cheaper even though we cost money and they don't, because if you use anything but our product, you'll have to learn something (shhhh...don't tell them they'll have to learn the new version of our product too, that doesn't really count, wink wink."
It gets really ugly when the GPL is violated, but the good thing is that once violated, the GPL is no longer even an issue, its a clear-cut US Copyright violation.
And for non-US people this would mean...?...that it is a violation of non-US copyright law (in probably every country on the planet outside of perhaps Iran, North Korea, and Utah). If the license is revoked, the local copyright statutes take effect. In virtually every country on the planet, that means you lose the right to copy or distribute the product.
This wasn't exactly a huge leap in logic to figure out, much less rocket science.
5. The students do their homework on home PCs which are almost always Windows. If the school has Linux or BSD machines, then the work and the files needs to be perfectly portable between M$ and OSS. That simply isn't the case (yet) and no amount of OSS evangelism chances that fact. In fact, schools are a good metric for when OSS and M$ become _really_ interchangeable.
What's preventing them from installing the same program they use at school on these home PCs ?
That isn't even necessary. They can boot up a knoppix live CD-R or CD-RW and run GNU/Linux on their own PC, do their homework, without installing anything on daddy's computer (except maybe storing their homework file on his C: drive).
Of course, students will probably WANT to install Linux on their home PCs, as their tolerance for Windows' worms, viruses, trojans, spyware, and general flakiness will be at an absolute minimum once they've learned to use Linux. Even my mom and sister (who use Linux and are not anything close to computer literate) can't stand windows now...students will almost certainly be more inclined in this way.
Which is really what the likely employer of the Microsoft apologist you are responding to fears the most.
You know, OpenOffice run on windows also. And it's really the same interface, and since the total cost is $0, what could be the reason to NOT install them ?
Absolutely. You are responding to the inane drivelings of Microsoft apologists arguing "black is white" because the hard facts are against them. Paying recurring licensing fees to use proprietary software which stores school, community, and students' data in a proprietary format owned by a foreign monopolist convicted on two continents, when free (cost and liberty) alternatives exist that store data in open formats embraced by the standards body of the EU is madness...one that can only be sustained in said convicted monopolist succeeds in befuddling the policy makers of Europe and the UK. Seeing how easily the extreme right was able to befuddle the American population, Microsoft has reason for optomism. It may not yet have sunk into Redmond that the rest of the world, developed and developing alike, isn't anywhere near as stupid as my own country has become, so there is hope that sensible policies will be adopted by the UK school system and Europe as a whole. Not certainty, of course (witness the software patent debacle), but hope...which is more than most Americans to the left of Ghengis Khan are left with these days (but I digress).
I agree, this is integral "Your Rights Online." I protest this grave infringement against my inherent right as a human to operate a deadly weapon using some Flash game on my desktop.
How long before a real-life hunter walks into the frame, and some jackass takes a potshot, killing a human being by clicking their mouse? Will it really matter all that much (aside from lawyer wrangling in the court) whether the murderer-by-click is a snot-nosed prepubescent who figured he'd never get caught and it would be "cool to draw real blood," or a self-righteous anti-hunting zealot who thinks offing a hunter would "serve the cause?" Frankly, to the victim and their family, probably not.
I have no problem with hunting for meat. I like meat, and I love venison (though to be fair, I don't much care for hunting. Sweaty, dirty work and not very entertaining for me, but then, I'm not much of an outdoorsman. That, however, is a question of personal taste) and frankly, the better the herds of deer are culled, the better off the entire eco-system is. But allowing anyone with a computer and an internet link to operate a deadly weapon is criminally stupid. Eventually it will be used to kill a real human being, by some amoral fuck (and the Internet is full of those) who thinks, for whatever reason, it would be real cool to click on that link and ice the guy in the orange vest who happened to walk across the video feed.
I can't believe he's trying to patent all forms of information transfer on the internet! This is absurd and an example of why IP is wrong or its application corrupt!
Should probably read
I can't believe he's trying to patent all forms of information transfer on the internet! This is absurd and an example of why IP is wrong AND its application corrupt!
The private ownership of thought, be it ideas or expression, is an abomination and IMHO a crime against the human mind. Being first to say or do something shouldn't give you any special priveleges beyond getting public credit for having thought of it first (and perhaps being first to market, if you're clever). Certainly these government monopoly entitlements completely undermine the competition upon which capitalism is predicated.
Well, referring to all of them as zealots is a start.
I didn't refer to "all of them" as zealots, I referred to religious zealots, who in particular make use of the colloquialisms being discussed, in my experience to a far greater degree than religious moderates.
Specificity towards Christianity is a second.
Again, we were referring to the modern day use of "thee", "thy" and "thou." That is specific to Christianity--one doesn't hear buddhists, wiccans, muslims, or jews using those particular terms. Specificity to Christianity was part and parcel to the discussion at hand.
You seem to be just as closed minded as they.
Examining a belief, determining it is ignorant and foolish, and dismissing it is not "closed minded." Failure to examine the belief in the first place would be, but that is hardly the case here.
Perhaps you're still too young to realize that civility and respect are not signs of weakness, nor political correctness
No, but being required to pretend nonsense is "reasonable," and being forbidden from stating the obvious is a form of political correctness. In the case of Christianity (and, to be fair, plenty of other religions) such "politeness" is in reality simply a form of refusing to voice the obvious fact that the emporer wears no clothes. OTOH etiquette and modern poltical correctness doesn't place evangelists under any such constraints, leaving us in the position where religious dogma is preached and expounded upon ad nauseum, while the rational are forbidden from offering a counterpoint for fear of being labelled "impolite," "closed minded," or inteloerant, as I have by you.
then I realized that first of all, no matter what logical arguments I made to the contrary, there simply was no way to sway the believers from their belief,
True, but you can help dissuade others from falling under their influence. Stopping the meme from spreading is a positive result, even if you cannot help those who've already succumbed. I speak with personal experience, having a sibling and parent who succumbed to Mormonism.
Secondly, that their belief (with the exception of a rather obnoxious and loud few) didn't really hurt me in any way
If you live in the US, it has already hurt you. The evangelicals have hijacked our government, are in the process of dismantling the separation of church and state, and are driving an agenda that has already devalued our currency by 40% and threatens the medium and long term financial and political strength of the nation itself. That is harm, caused in no small part as a direct result of religious zealotry and the incapacitating effect it has on people's ability to think critically.
it actually made living with them better to be civil than it was to call them fools and stupid.
That's all fine and dandy, but you do help create an environment where they can recruit vulnerable people with little or no trouble. This is contrasted with an environment in other, more secular societies (such as parts of Europe) where the assoiciation of religious zealotry with stupidyt and foolishness makes selling their message to the vulnerable more difficult. Again, it helps slow, stop, and even reverse the spread of the meme, which is to everyone's benefit.
In short, its better to call it as you see it than to stand silent or smiling and thereby help facilitate its spread. Oh, and by the way, there are worse things than being disliked by a few people because you're outspoken against their beliefs... like living in a theocracy, which is where the USA is currently headed (and, lest you think it can only happen here, I would urge you to take a good, hard look at the political policies of the Vatican vis-a-vis divorce in Ireland--only recently made legal--, in South America, and their policies with respect to Eastern Europe. Their agenda is ugly by any measure to anyone who values a secular society).
Freedom of religion must include freedom from religion, particularly in education and government, and that requires that people not be afraid to speak out against it.
That's not fucking good enough, Locas! Jar Jar needs to die in agony, on screen, in as demeaning and humiliating way as is possible for one of his species, as a small downpayment for all the pain and suffering (not to mention irritation) his existence in the first two films has caused for those unfortunate enough to watch them.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that Social Security should not have the same stigma as low-income welfare, nor the connotation usually associated with it, but it certainly is welfare. It's financial aid provided to people in need (by the government, in fact).
No, it isn't.
People pay into social security with the agreement that they will draw on that income later in life. This is in direct contrast to hand-outs given to the poor and needy, and does not qualify as "financial or other aid," any more than a return on an investment or a collection on insurance would.
By your defintion of social security as "...aid provided to people in need" one could argue that some military roles the government plays (NOT Iraq, of course) is "welfare," in that it is "financial or other aid provided...to people in need." Certainly WW2 and Kosovo would qualify.
I do agree that welfare shouldn't have a negative connotation, and share your concern with how the right has demonized the word (along with the word liberal, btw). Even so, I disagree that Social Security qualifies as welfare, even by the definition you cited.
Okay the guy sounds pissed, but it doesn't make sense why you'd drop all your hardware at the same time as you'd drop XP. Any PC that can run XP can in all liklihood run Linux (or BSD) and benefit from security goodness too.
Yes, and long term that would be wiser. My mom runs GNU/Linux and loves it. My sister, her husband, and their children likewise. However, my wife uses Mac OS X. Why? Because Microsoft used up all her tolerance of cantankerous technology, and while Linux is anything but cantakerous, it does have a learning curve that she simply wasn't willing to climb. Had I caught her before her experience with Dell and Microsoft, she probably would have been very willing to learn a new system (my mom and sister were delighted--but they hadn't lost entire weekends reinstalling bug-ridden, chronically unstable OSes).
I suspect this guy is in the same boat. He's worn out, and wants something that Just Works(tm) (this isn't Microsoft, regardless of what their deceptive advertising may say) with no learning required. Apple comes as close to fulfilling the "no learning required" aspect as anything.
Having said that, you're absolutely right and people really shoudln't kid themselves. Once Apple gets sufficient market-share it's going to be as ill-behavied as Microsoft is today. Granted, OS X will probably never be as insecure as Microsoft Windows--after all, its foundation is FreeBSD, which is very, very solid, while windows foundation is more akin to to quicksand--but if you think Bill Gates' customer lockin is bad (and it is), imagine what Steve Jobs is going to do once he's secured a big enough chunk of the market.
Don't believe me? Take a good, hard look at Apple's history. Apple has done it before--and drove a mass migration to IBM compatibles as a result. People forget that Microsoft initially emerged as the market leader because IBM clones emerged as the market leader, as a result of the hardware being open (despite IBM's efforts to the contrary) and competition making for a very robust marketplace, a lot of innovation, and (at the time) a lack of customer lockin. It was only later that Microsoft applied that customer lock-in at the software level...and Apple is almost certain to follow suit (repeating their old behavior) once their market share makes them feel confident enough to do so.
Long term, FreeBSD and GNU/Linux are the future for anyone who values their digital freedom in any form. But short term, Apple is a quick and painless way to get out from under the pile of Microsoft shit that includes, but is hardly limited to, endless spyware, endless viruses, endless worms, endless trojans, endless popup ads, endless crashes, endless security flaws crackers can drive a fleet of container trucks through, and endless demands for upgrades (and your hard earned dollars/euros/yen/what-have-you) that just give you more of the same.
Apple can give people breathing room, let them recuperate, and then, when Apple starts to get a little too big for its britches, people can look to making the move to a free foundation, such as Linux or FreeBSD. But until then, for those exhausted and traumatized by the Microsoft treadmill and the convicted monopolist's abuses, Apple offers a welcome, and easy, respite.
I'm not sold on Open Source entertainment. I have my tastes, you have yours. I doubt that you'd appreciate my imposing my creative vision on your work, and I know that I would resist your attempts to impose upon mine.
You don't seam to "get" collaborative projects. Don't feel bad--I used free software almost exclusively for years (based on quality, not politics) before I understood how and why collaborative projects work so well. When one is spoon-fed "you get what you pay for," "profit motive required for progress/production," "no one will create without monopoly entitlements (patents/copyright)," and similiar corporate untruths all of one's life (and we have all been spoonfed that nonsense since they day we were born), free collaboration can be a very difficult concept to get one's head around. As I said, it took me years, and I'm generally fairly quick.
First, collaboration != piecemeal. For that matter, Free Software is rarely piecemail either--equating the two shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the process and its results.
Second, unlike writing a novel (where what you say has some applicability, though by no means is it an axiom--there have been collaborative novels written in the sci-fi genre by well-known authors that are excellent) nearly every film and telivision project of any size involves multiple writers (in the case of telivision projects, sometimes hundreds of writers), and hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people performing supporting functions (compsing the soundtrack, performing the music, lighting, choreagraphy, set design, editing, post-production, etc.).
In short, virtually every project of any size is a collaboration--we're just not used to seeing it as such. Indeed, there is absolutely nothing intrinsicly different between a large collaboration done under the the auspices of a commercial enterprise and that done under an open collaboration, other than perhaps the overall budget that is available. Star Wars Episode 3-1/2 "Revelations" is a fine example of a fan film made entirely through collaboration on a tiny budget.
Yes, collaboration can and does produce absolute dreck. So to does Hollywood...in abundance. Profit motive and corporate-feudal power structures do nothing to insure quality, nor are the a prerequisite to the production of quality, whether it is software or a film.
I do agree, doing the entire project start-to-finish using only free software would be a powerful demonstration of what is possible using only the resources of the Free World.
I'm so glad that taking care of our retired is thrown in with welfare. Thanks for sharing, fascist.
Amen. The poster should be ashamed of themselves, and the moderates who modded you down as "flaimbait" for speaking the truth even more so.
1) Social Security isn't "welfare." We pay into the system, we get benefits out of the system. Social Security recipients are not getting "something for nothing," so to lump them in with welfare recipients is just plain Ignorant(tm) and Stupid(tm).
2) You want to discuss welfare, start by discussing the savings and loan bailout, the tax subsidies virtually every large corporation gets from state, local, and federal governments, and the immense amount of government pork in the defense budget which amounts to Yet Another Subsidy. The amount of tax dollars spent on corporate welfare, an appalling percentage of which goes directly to line the pockets of the very wealthy, dwarfs by an order of magnitude the amount of money being returned to those who've paid into the Social Security system, being paid to those who've paid into the Unemployment Benefits system, being returned to those who've paid into the Medicare and Medicaide system during their working lives, and yes, even those getting free handouts ('welfare') because they're too poor, too uneducated, lack resources, lack opportunity, or (in some cases, but not even close to all) are simply too lazy to work.
That doesn't change the fact that funding the space agency should be one of our top priorities, not one of our last, but to blame it on "welfare" is numerical nonsense--and to blame it on the modest, half-assed social programs we call Social Security and Medicare simply unconscionable right wing and, yes, fascist dogma. The Right in America has become so toxic it boggles the mind.
And, yet, humankind has yet to replicate a bird's wing. Instead we have created things we call wings that only superficially behave like actual bird wings. So, bzzzzzz. Try again.
You really are dense, aren't you (so much for it taking a generation or two to show you're an idiot. Less than 24 hours and you've proven the point). We didn't need to replicate a birds with to FLY. What part of that concept didn't you grasp?
It is entirely possible, even probable, that the wetware structure of our minds is neither the most effecient or dense representation of the data (knowledge/memories) or algorithms (personality/reasoning/thought) that make up our minds. We'll probably find we can replicate them without mimicking even a fraction of the underlying biological, chemical, and electrical complexity.
You didn't even wait a generation to be proven an idiot--you managed to do it within a day. Congratulations.
I agree!
Please, whatever you do, don't click on any links to my novel. Whatever you do, dont read it online! Oh, the humanity! (and I say this as one who has been published, and is well on the way toward doing so again).
Has no one considered that Google will be allowing word and phrase searches in books, but won't necessarilly be providing the full text online? I suspect that is the case (I really can't see google wrecking their business by engaging in wholesale, deliberate copyright infringement), and that will drive more sales, not less.
There is no plausible way for replicating the structure and billions of individual minute biological connections present in the brain. Making such a promise is a good way to garner interest and sell your books and speeches to a gullible public. Particularly, a rich gullible public.
(ca. 1880) FUTURIST CLAIMS MANNED FLIGHT WILL BE POSSIBLE BY 1930, though initially cost will limit it to the wealthy.
"There is no plausible way for replicating the structure and billions of individual, minute biological connections present in the wings of a bird. Making such a promise is a good way to garner interest and sell your books and speeches to a gullible public. Particularly, a rich gullible public."
Unlike ones and zeros represented on a medium for a computer's use, there is no steady-state representation for the human mind.
Three points.
1) Quantum computers (and their analogous storage media, if any ever exists) may not require a steady-state representation of the human mind. Certainly the biological computers we call our brains don't require such, yet they manage to store and compute our consciousness in realtime, and reboot our minds at least once a day (we typically call that "waking up").
2) You assume there is no steady state (binary) representation of the human mind. You do not know this for a fact (otherwise, please cite references and evidence). The fact that we may lack the knowledge and technology for captureing such a state today does not mean it is impossible, either theoritecially, or practically given a few decades development.
3) You assume the representation must be binary. That is not necessarilly true. Said computers could be nondigital (either analog hardware in the old sense of the word, or quantum systems manipulating complex waveforms and superpositions), or could represent their data in a non-binary digital format (though the latter would almost certainly decompose into a binary solution).
It may not happen, or it may, but for you to try and "authoritatively" nay-say its possibility demonstrates your own arrogance far more than it does the implausibility of the conjecture. Furthermore, history is littered with literally thousands of naysayers like yourself claiming X is impossible, only to be proven an idiot within a couple of generations.
More testosterone in the womb leads to boys.
What does this have to do with the father? What does this have to do with which sperm gets into the egg?
While I agree with you that this is total crap, it is concievable that some environmental factor (e.g estrogen level in a woman, diet, whatever) could favor sperm carrying Y chromosomes over those carrying X chromosome, or visa versa. So, while it may not have anything to do with what the male delivers, it might affect what portion of that delivery are most likely to reach its target.
The correlation is real. We may have no idea of the cause (and the cause could be a simple as an inadvertantly biased sample), but there is a cause nevertheless.
And I thought only Windows users were dumb. How silly of me!
They are. Anyone who chooses a bug-riddled, virus/worm/trojan/spyware/malware-ridden, DRM-crippled, monopoly driven platform over easier to use and more stable alternatives (Apple) and more robust, more stable alternatives (FreeBSD/Linux) is making a stupid, indeed idiotic choice. They know they have the Apple alternative, yet they moronicly choose familiarity over security and ease of use.
Contrast this with Apple users, who may be ignorant of the specific designs of their laptops (there are, after all, portable tablets and laptops, including some of Apple's offerings, that do not run without the battery regardless of AC power), but having chosen Apple of Windows they are, by definition, not stupid.
(The humor-impaired and Microsoft apologists will doubtless pop a vein or two and mod this down . . . joke notwithstanding. As a GNU/Linux user myself, I can hardly be accused of being an Apple fanboy by any reasonable human being, but I recognize quality when I see it and like to give credit where credit is due. Microsoft deserves little-to-no credit (c.f. the last 15 years of their shoddy product and unethical, even criminal, behavior), but Apple definitely deserves credit for their fine products, even if Jobs is a Gate's wannabe at the bottom of his heart.
If you follow Cuban's argument through, the RIAA could easily claim that it is due $5 per month from you and everyone who got a copy of a song from you illegally . Which puts the damages back where the RIAA wants them.
Uh, no. Lets define
D = n*s, where
s = amount of money sharers would have spent
n = number of sharers who downloaded a shared song
Before unlimited $5.00/month subscriptions existed, s was arguably $17.00 or so times the number of CDs required to cover all of the songs downloaded. Now that you can legally download all those songs for a flat $5.00/month subscription fee, s equals $5.00, not some hypothetically (and always inflated) value of $17.00 x a whole bunch of mostly-rotton one-hit-wonder CDs.
That makes D = n*$5.00 instead of n*$17.00*(whatever big number the RIAA wants to make up).
In other worse, D just got a whole lot smaller, and a whole lot more rigorous in how its defined (you can only multiply by the number of unique downloaders you identify, not that plus a gob of CDs).
So, while $5.00/month damages for a big uplaoder might be wrong, $5.00/month/downloader is correct, and a whole lot less than the $millions/downloader the copyright cartels are currently getting judges to buy into.
As for me, if a girl requires a natural diamond for my hand in marriage then she can keep walking. True love is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.
Absolutely right. Any woman who would put her own shiny status symbol ahead of the unethical consiquences and bad economics of buying a diamond (they have no resale value, and the amount of human suffering the DeBeers monopoly has created around the world makes buying a gem from that cartel orders of magnitude more destructive and unethical than buying truckloads of heroin from the Taliban) is a toxic, amoral, uncairing bitch from which you should run like the wind, not walk.
Thankfully, my wife felt exactly the same way--so we went with simple, white-gold bands that go well with her silver and platinum jewelry (sans diamonds), and spent the money on new laptops and a rockin' honeymoon.
the reason comes tomorrow. Oh, and you should also give me all your cash today because it is obsolete, more details to come tomorrow.
Yes. While I am a "full-disclosure is better than not" guy, you (or others like you) would be screaming even louder about how "irresponsible" this guy would be if he had released the "reason" today (said "reason," BTW is a proof-of-concept exploit, one that malicious jerks will probably adapt to their desires after it's released).
Oh yes sysadmins, disable hyperthreading because some poster on slashdot said so. This is just too gay.
Not as asinine as clueless AC posts like yours, modded up as "insightful" by equally clueless people who happen to have moderation points today. The guy is awaiting his doctorate at one of the world's most prestigious universities, has an excellent track record, and has chosen a conservative but less-controviersial approach in disclosing this issue.
All of which you would have known, if you'd bother to read TFA rather than spouting off nonsense here.
I won't be a fan of Ipods until the play my ogg files (until then, my Rio Karma will do just fine), but Bill Gate's is full of shit.
The Ipod interface is excellent, and with manufacturers producing quad-channel-GSM cell-phones-on-a-chip, Apple is going to have a much easier time adding cell-phone functionality to an Ipod than Microsoft is ever going to have adding an equivelently easy-to-use and satisfying interface to their so-called smart-phones.
I like my Motorola A700 PDA/Phone, but I don't use it to listen to music despite the fact that it is a capable MP3 player. The Ipod and Rio Karma are optimized for music playback--I've yet to see a cell phone that is so optimized without giving up PDA or cell-phone features to do it. I suspect Apple will be the first out with something that does just work, and it will probably be some variation of the Ipod.
That '...made the kessel run in under 12 parsecs...' line always bothered me. Did Georgie just hear 'parsec' one day in the context of astronomy and just ASSUME it was a unit of time or what?
George fucked up, no question about it.
However, if you set the speed of light constant to 1, and define all of your other units from there, you get e=mc^2 -> e=m. Some other interesting relationships emerge as well.
One is that distance and time become the same. We have an inkling of that in our current units, such as "light-years," the distance light travels in a year. Saying something is three seconds away, with units defined such that one is always referencing lightspeed (defined as "1", remember?), is the same as saying it is three light-seconds away. Any distance could be stated as a unit of time.
Since time=space (along a 4th dimensional curve), you only need one set of units. With c=1, that unit could as well be what we have traditionally used as distance rather than time. I.e. I'll do it in two hundred billion miles would translate roughly to "I'll do it in 12.4 days".
Personally, I prefer measuring distance in units of time, but either works. Of course, George Lucas had no clue about this stuff when he picked his units, so none of this changes the fact that he didn't know what he was doing and screwed up.
I'm disgusted that our democrat senators that are overly 'concerned' with civil liberties voted for this. I guess that they are just paying lip service to civil liberties
... the one issue the Democrats actually still have a modicum of backbone on (though even that bit of backbone, too, appears to be fleeting).
As am I. The Democrats are cowards, and have been ever since they caved and supported Bush's invasion of Iraq because they feared a backlash from the ignorant public, despite the knowledge they had that it was wrong.
The Democrats lost the midterm elections because of that -- why vote for weak republicans (ie. Democrats cowtowing to a Republican majority and/or an irrational populace) when you can vote for strong republicans (who at least believe and hold true to their ideals, no matter how toxic they are)?
The Democrats remain cowards, every time they pander for fear of offending the Right and their mindless minions, whether it's Bill Clinton complimenting and saying how much he likes the fool we currently have as president, their support of legislation like the PATRIOT-ACT, or simply their unwillingness to be a party of opposition on any substantive issue. Even Kerry was afraid to step up to the plate in defending a woman's right to chose (a truly emberrassing moment in the debates for him)
Until the Democrats do grow a backbone and show some courage of their convictions they will keep losing elections. They may anyway, now that the Republicans have perfected the stealing of federal elections irrespective of how the vote actually turns out, but be that as it may, without a backbone and willingness to stand up to the ruling party, they'll lose outright and the Bush supporters won't have any need to fix any elections.
Kind of like when I nailed an "environmentalist" friend of mine who was ticketed for burning the plastic insulation off of old telephone wire to get to the copper.... on Earth Day.
... even if the non-PC point of view is despicable and vile (e.g. racist points of view). I guess this is a long winded way of saying "I may despise what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it" which is something a lot of people pay lip service to, but don't really support when they burn a singer's records for speaking out against the president's asinine policies in Iraq, or try to silence some pro-Bush right-winger because they find what s/he says offensive (as I probably would, even while defending their right to say it and be heard).
Heh! There is indeed humor in that. As to the over/under 40 thing, there is a generational discrepency between those using P2P and those pushing for legislation to ban it. That doesn't mean those of us over 40 (or 50, or 60...) can all be lumped into the RIAA/MPAA category, but one look at the leaders of those groups, and the politicians who enact their will, and one does see a very strong generational divide. It isn't politically correct to note the agist aspects of this reality, but it is true nevertheless, and none of us should be intimidated into not speaking of the obvious.
That of course doesn't excuse any discrimination or other agist behavior against those over [insert arbitrary number here], but it does serve to show a socialogical relationship (and change in attitudes over time) and point out what group(s) may need reaching out to and education if we are to get out from under the architectures of control the patent and copyright cartels have held us under for the last several centuries. Not that we're all that likely to succeed, but it never hurts to try.
And I'm certainly not PC (though I thought you might be).
I may be liberal (a dirty word here in the US, which shows just how little we as a people know about anything), but I'm anything but PC. In fact, I oppose any dogma (and "PC" is a form of dogma, whether it's the liberal "PC" of the ninetees or the newer, conservative "PC" of the naughties). Knock down, drawn out arguments over issues are far healthier than PC-enforced silence
Shortly after 9/11 when they gave billions to "save" the airlines.
Oh for crying out loud, go lookup the meaning of the word "nationalize." Then go look up the meaning of the word "subsidize." They aren't anything close to the same. To help the intellectually lazy and mouse-click challenged:
In stark contrast to
When did the government nationalize the farms?
Throughout the past few decades in the form of farm subsidies.
See above.
When did the government nationalize the factories?
Not entirely yet, but it's in progress. For a good example, read up on government price fixing of television sets.
That's called regulation. It may not be good regulation, but it isn't even in the same conceptual universe as "nationalizing."
When did the government nationalize the hospitals?
Another one in progress... if you commies get your way, it'll be finished by 2007 or so.
You really are an ignorant fool, a troll, and probably both. Even countrys with civilized levels of national health care, such as England and Germany, don't have their entire health care system owned by the government
When did the govenrment nationalize all media?
Are you kidding me?
Again, intimidation and coercion aren't the same as "nationalizing." It is disingenous, and counterproductive, to lump the Republicans' and the Bush family's success in intimidating reporters and the media, and using the carrot-stick approach to access to the white house and public figures (as well as their brazen refusal to answer any questions they don't like relevant to their leadership, something that is a fundamental responsibility of any elected leader, of any party) with the government assuming ownership of the media (which it has not done).
We need to develop a robot to watch soccer, an activity Americans generally consider too tedious for humans.
... always far too tedious for human beings to watch. Of course, that could be generalized to television as a whole, with the added caveat "...almost always far too tedious for humans..." (though of course, one could save the $5000 dollars for a robot to watch sports/tv and just turn the damn thing off, but where's the fun in that? :-))
Heh. This from the country[1] that foisted baseball upon a portion of the world...arguably the most tedious of games (cricket would win, except they're civilized enough to stop for tea now and then).
What we need is a robot for watching sports in general
[1] IAAA - "I Am An American" (so I can mock my country and its silly sports all I like, and I do)
You're your own worst enemy, you know? I mean, I read the first paragraph of your post and thought "Hey, I forgot Knoppix, that makes everything easier; what a good suggestion" (I'm the original AC who raised the problems). Then I read your personal insult in the rest of the post and I feel like ignoring everything you ever say and write as ill-mannered political drivel.
*shrug*
Well, I apologize if I mischaracterized you. However, that is the risk you run when you post anonymously to a forum where there is so much Microsoft astroturfing, where there are so many paid apologists spamming the forum with pro-MS drivel, most of which doesn't stand a second's critical analysis. I apologize if I erroneously lumped you in with that crowd, but I think if you seriously examine most of the pro-MS and anti-Linux AC posts around here you'll agree it's a pretty easy mistake to make.
The point stands, even if the target (you) was misidentified . . . Microsoft and its supporters' only recourse is to argue that black is white: "we're cheaper even though we cost money and they don't, because if you use anything but our product, you'll have to learn something (shhhh...don't tell them they'll have to learn the new version of our product too, that doesn't really count, wink wink."
And for non-US people this would mean...?
This wasn't exactly a huge leap in logic to figure out, much less rocket science.
5. The students do their homework on home PCs which are almost always Windows. If the school has Linux or BSD machines, then the work and the files needs to be perfectly portable between M$ and OSS. That simply isn't the case (yet) and no amount of OSS evangelism chances that fact. In fact, schools are a good metric for when OSS and M$ become _really_ interchangeable.
What's preventing them from installing the same program they use at school on these home PCs ?
That isn't even necessary. They can boot up a knoppix live CD-R or CD-RW and run GNU/Linux on their own PC, do their homework, without installing anything on daddy's computer (except maybe storing their homework file on his C: drive).
Of course, students will probably WANT to install Linux on their home PCs, as their tolerance for Windows' worms, viruses, trojans, spyware, and general flakiness will be at an absolute minimum once they've learned to use Linux. Even my mom and sister (who use Linux and are not anything close to computer literate) can't stand windows now...students will almost certainly be more inclined in this way.
Which is really what the likely employer of the Microsoft apologist you are responding to fears the most.
You know, OpenOffice run on windows also. And it's really the same interface, and since the total cost is $0, what could be the reason to NOT install them ?
Absolutely. You are responding to the inane drivelings of Microsoft apologists arguing "black is white" because the hard facts are against them. Paying recurring licensing fees to use proprietary software which stores school, community, and students' data in a proprietary format owned by a foreign monopolist convicted on two continents, when free (cost and liberty) alternatives exist that store data in open formats embraced by the standards body of the EU is madness...one that can only be sustained in said convicted monopolist succeeds in befuddling the policy makers of Europe and the UK. Seeing how easily the extreme right was able to befuddle the American population, Microsoft has reason for optomism. It may not yet have sunk into Redmond that the rest of the world, developed and developing alike, isn't anywhere near as stupid as my own country has become, so there is hope that sensible policies will be adopted by the UK school system and Europe as a whole. Not certainty, of course (witness the software patent debacle), but hope...which is more than most Americans to the left of Ghengis Khan are left with these days (but I digress).
I agree, this is integral "Your Rights Online." I protest this grave infringement against my inherent right as a human to operate a deadly weapon using some Flash game on my desktop.
How long before a real-life hunter walks into the frame, and some jackass takes a potshot, killing a human being by clicking their mouse? Will it really matter all that much (aside from lawyer wrangling in the court) whether the murderer-by-click is a snot-nosed prepubescent who figured he'd never get caught and it would be "cool to draw real blood," or a self-righteous anti-hunting zealot who thinks offing a hunter would "serve the cause?" Frankly, to the victim and their family, probably not.
I have no problem with hunting for meat. I like meat, and I love venison (though to be fair, I don't much care for hunting. Sweaty, dirty work and not very entertaining for me, but then, I'm not much of an outdoorsman. That, however, is a question of personal taste) and frankly, the better the herds of deer are culled, the better off the entire eco-system is. But allowing anyone with a computer and an internet link to operate a deadly weapon is criminally stupid. Eventually it will be used to kill a real human being, by some amoral fuck (and the Internet is full of those) who thinks, for whatever reason, it would be real cool to click on that link and ice the guy in the orange vest who happened to walk across the video feed.
Not to put words in your mouth, but ...
I can't believe he's trying to patent all forms of information transfer on the internet! This is absurd and an example of why IP is wrong or its application corrupt!
Should probably read
I can't believe he's trying to patent all forms of information transfer on the internet! This is absurd and an example of why IP is wrong AND its application corrupt!
The private ownership of thought, be it ideas or expression, is an abomination and IMHO a crime against the human mind. Being first to say or do something shouldn't give you any special priveleges beyond getting public credit for having thought of it first (and perhaps being first to market, if you're clever). Certainly these government monopoly entitlements completely undermine the competition upon which capitalism is predicated.
Well, referring to all of them as zealots is a start.
... like living in a theocracy, which is where the USA is currently headed (and, lest you think it can only happen here, I would urge you to take a good, hard look at the political policies of the Vatican vis-a-vis divorce in Ireland--only recently made legal--, in South America, and their policies with respect to Eastern Europe. Their agenda is ugly by any measure to anyone who values a secular society).
I didn't refer to "all of them" as zealots, I referred to religious zealots, who in particular make use of the colloquialisms being discussed, in my experience to a far greater degree than religious moderates.
Specificity towards Christianity is a second.
Again, we were referring to the modern day use of "thee", "thy" and "thou." That is specific to Christianity--one doesn't hear buddhists, wiccans, muslims, or jews using those particular terms. Specificity to Christianity was part and parcel to the discussion at hand.
You seem to be just as closed minded as they.
Examining a belief, determining it is ignorant and foolish, and dismissing it is not "closed minded." Failure to examine the belief in the first place would be, but that is hardly the case here.
Perhaps you're still too young to realize that civility and respect are not signs of weakness, nor political correctness
No, but being required to pretend nonsense is "reasonable," and being forbidden from stating the obvious is a form of political correctness. In the case of Christianity (and, to be fair, plenty of other religions) such "politeness" is in reality simply a form of refusing to voice the obvious fact that the emporer wears no clothes. OTOH etiquette and modern poltical correctness doesn't place evangelists under any such constraints, leaving us in the position where religious dogma is preached and expounded upon ad nauseum, while the rational are forbidden from offering a counterpoint for fear of being labelled "impolite," "closed minded," or inteloerant, as I have by you.
then I realized that first of all, no matter what logical arguments I made to the contrary, there simply was no way to sway the believers from their belief,
True, but you can help dissuade others from falling under their influence. Stopping the meme from spreading is a positive result, even if you cannot help those who've already succumbed. I speak with personal experience, having a sibling and parent who succumbed to Mormonism.
Secondly, that their belief (with the exception of a rather obnoxious and loud few) didn't really hurt me in any way
If you live in the US, it has already hurt you. The evangelicals have hijacked our government, are in the process of dismantling the separation of church and state, and are driving an agenda that has already devalued our currency by 40% and threatens the medium and long term financial and political strength of the nation itself. That is harm, caused in no small part as a direct result of religious zealotry and the incapacitating effect it has on people's ability to think critically.
it actually made living with them better to be civil than it was to call them fools and stupid.
That's all fine and dandy, but you do help create an environment where they can recruit vulnerable people with little or no trouble. This is contrasted with an environment in other, more secular societies (such as parts of Europe) where the assoiciation of religious zealotry with stupidyt and foolishness makes selling their message to the vulnerable more difficult. Again, it helps slow, stop, and even reverse the spread of the meme, which is to everyone's benefit.
In short, its better to call it as you see it than to stand silent or smiling and thereby help facilitate its spread. Oh, and by the way, there are worse things than being disliked by a few people because you're outspoken against their beliefs
Freedom of religion must include freedom from religion, particularly in education and government, and that requires that people not be afraid to speak out against it.
He died in Episode IV on Alderaan....
That's not fucking good enough, Locas! Jar Jar needs to die in agony, on screen, in as demeaning and humiliating way as is possible for one of his species, as a small downpayment for all the pain and suffering (not to mention irritation) his existence in the first two films has caused for those unfortunate enough to watch them.