Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
[...]
Now, the suggestion to Slashdot coders: Why not create a special section called "Ignore shitty articles by Michael?" After all, it's not that I want to exclude stories as much as I don't like my time wasted by a jackass like him.
BEGIN Translation [Neocon Doublespeak->English]:
Slashdot ran a story linking to information that is damning to my candidate of choice and my own toxic political philosophy. I resent being forced to face facts I find uncomfortable, and doubly resent doing so on slashdot where I expected to read technical articles and keep my political head firmly encased in sand.
Slashdot has a feature to allow me and others to do this, which I am touting here lest other conservatives be exposed to unpleasant facts and possibly vote against My Chosen Candidate(tm).
But this feature isn't sufficiently insulting to those who have exposed me to these uncomfortable truths, so I think the people who code this free site I don't pay for should create a new option that does exactly the same thing existing options already do, but does so in a manner as insulting as possible to those who dared post a story that points out facts which undermine my own ever more fragile filtered view of the world.
Let's just remember (let me ephasize these words) most ex-members who persecute the church tend to be those who have themselves violated the covenants they agreed to live by in the church and were cast out for not repenting and obeying the covenants they agreed to live by (others may call thse people hypocrite), I just see these people as angry and ashamed of themselves, so they blame someone else for their problems.
I suspect this is the only post I will have made to slashdot that will be in agreement with the grandfather post (anyone examining our/. "relationship" will see we've marked each other as foes, so we obviously don't see eye to eye on much.)
Your characterization of ex-Mormons may be true of a few particularly dysfunctional refugees from that particular cult, but it is hardly representative of the majority of people who manage to free themselves from the LDS church's clutches.
My grandparents (descendents of Aaron Johnson, the man who designed many of the roads and bridges in Utah, who had extensive dealings and correspondence with Brigham Young, and who was a polygamist with 12 wives and hid in the hills during the 1850s as the US calvary was hunting said polygamists... until the civil war forced the US government to recall the troups for more pressing issues) managed to get free of Mormonism and raise their kids in a secular manner. They remained quite positive toward the church's social stances (a mistake IMHO, but they came from a conservative generation), while quite dismissive of its theocracy (well founded, as it turned, out, particularly now that genetic science has disproven the fundamental premis of the Book of Mormon, a bit of scientific reality check Mormon professors at BYU dismiss as "unscientific" and "irrelevant" without any cause beyond their desire not to accept the facts on the ground, and to obfuscate their own inability to rebut the factual data).
Unfortunately, my mother and my sister converted back to that cult, and the results have been absolutely detrimental to their lives. Aside from the 10% income loss that they can ill afford, my sister's talents go unused as she struggles to raise the 7 children she and her Mormon husband had, despite the fact that they had no income to raise them with and are now subsisting in poverty in a small town with no economic options, and no funds to get out. Other examples in their lives abound, such as the toxic relationships they have had with abusive Mormon men (granted, not a statistical universe, but a decent sized anectdotal sample with thus far 100% failure rate). Whereas I, and all of my cousins whose parents were fortunately not coaxed back into the snare have had very successful lives and excelled beyond anyone's expectations, my sister (who started out with the same resources, more talent, and similar intelligence, but lacked the critical defiance necessary to assert one's autonomy in the face of institutional repression) has boxed herself into a deplorable situation through the beliefs and familial "duties" foisted upon her by her religion.
People who get out of Mormonism aren't ashamed of getting out. They're ashamed of having been in.. of having been suckered so completely, and been made an ass of for so many years. They are angry not because they don't "measure up" to some cult's silly notion of what people should be (don't drink that coffee sinner!), but because a religious cult has robbed them of so much of their life, and so much of the joy life has to offer, and left them struggling to overcome the painfule emotional aftermath that any abusive relationship leaves behind... and don't kid yourself, there is no other kind of relationship between a human mind and a cult such as the LDS church, and it is a rare mind indeed that can free itself from the clutches of such organized indoctrination. I am very grateful my grandparents succeeded, and my defia
I have to say, watching this little exchange has been quite informative (from your side) and quite entertaining (from both sides).
Where the fuck are you coming up with this crap?
Really, you should be more respectful of others opinions. This sort of attitude will alienate others from you.
He's upset that you are right and he is wrong.
I suspect he is even more upset that Russian law can actually apply to purchases in the United States. Most Americans are used to exporting their own laws and imposing them on the rest of the world (up to and including abducting non-Americans abroad and bringing them to the United States for having violated American law outside of America). We are not used to having the treaties we've shoved down other nations' throats come back and bite us... it upsets our notion of How Things Should Be (tm).
Personally, I rather enjoy this turnabout... but judging the be vehemence your verbal opponent substitutes for reasoned argument, and his willingness to swear and demean those that do not parrot his opinion, I'd say you hit a nerve.
The answer of course as to why the RIAA hasn't made an issue of allofmp3.com is that they recognize it as legal and know better: the last thing in the world they would want to do is draw attention to a legal download service as fine as allofmp3.com by raising a fuss... iTunes et. al. would be out of business inside of a month.
More people protested bush then any other person in the history of mankind. GW may very well be the most hated person in the world right now. I seriously doubt that our nation's reputation can be saved as long as he is office. If he is re-elected then the world will just presume that Americans support his vision of a world living under our domination.
And they will be correct. Approximately 50% of Americans do support that toxic agenda. Approximately 50% are vehemently opposed. Unfortunately, the 50% who are vehemently opposed will be lumped together with the 50% that support our imperialism, consider Rush Limbaugh to be inciteful, believe O'Reilly to be "spin-free", and actually think Fox News is anything close to "Fair and Balanced" should Bush Junior actually be elected to office legitimately.
In that event, after these terrible policies run their coarse, we will (at best) be like the Germans were for three generations: apologizing for the terrible behavior of our government, the terrible behavior of our people in supporting it, and frankly emberressed by our own nationality. Depending on how far Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush Junior are able to persue their agenda before something, be it foreign pressure or domestic revolt, puts an end to it, our grandchildren may still be apologizing to the rest of the world.
This is the most important election of our lives. Every American reading this, on whatever side, had better be registered to vote, and be excersizing that right.
Yikers! Me too. Shame on me, a pathetic paddy, for suggesting that what's good for the goose is also good for the gander. Jesus, I'll never bother pointing flaws in the system out to my American friends again. Apparently, election systems in western Europe are fair game, but to suggest that anything dodgy could happen here is just... un-American! (but I'm not American!)
Damn unamerican foreigners!;-)
Our Democracy (tm) is the Best in the World (tm). The System Works (tm), and as the Leader of the Free World (tm), Our President (tm) is Staying the Course (tm) in important matters such as Family Values (tm), a Womans Right Not to Choose (tm), the War on Terror (tm), the March of Democracy in Iraq (tm), and other Pro Life (tm) measures.
I know we have the best democracy. I was told so in grammar school, numerous times, for the first 18 years of my life. Plus the TV says so.
Who are you to question such irrefutable facts, you damn foreigner!
Alas, the above should be funny, but aside from the gratuitious trademark symbols, it is appallingly close to exactly what happens here in America. I remember being spoon fed Amercan political myth, particularly about the founding of the country, until I was ready to vomit it up, year after year after year after year. "Social Studies" in America is one big propoganda fest, with history taught from around 1776 through the civil war -- if you have a smart class that can move through the material quickly -- and the next year you start all over again, back at 1776.
We are told by the media we are the best in everything, all the time. Is it any wonder anyone who hasn't been outside of the country believes this nonsense to be true... and that so many of us are shocked to find it isn't the first time we venture outside of our borders. We are spoonfed appallingly manipulative and patently untrue propoganda, while being kept uninformed of events in the rest of the world, to such a degree that my non-American friends who visit are shocked when they see the (lack of) information we get.
American people by and large aren't bad folks, and are generally well meaning (Republican nationalist swagger and Bush's unconscionable warmongering nothwithstanding). But we are all indoctrinated every day with large amounts appallingly bad data, and I'm afraind in the tatters of our democracy you really are still stuck with the Garbabe In, Garbage Out truism, which is why this election is neck and neck despite the behavior of the incumbant government over the past four years.
Senator Kerry, several witnesses place you at a VVAW meeting in Kansas City in 1971, where you reportedly voted against a plan to assassinate US Senators. To your credit, you reportedly resigned immediately thereafter. Did you report the plot to the appropriate law enforcement authorities? If not, why not?
And a followup question, Senator Kerry.
Have you stopped beating your wife? If not, why not?
"reportedly voted against a plane to assassinate US Senators"? Who did the reporting? The much-debunked, lying Swiftboat Veterans for (un)Truth?
What concerns me though is: if we do away with patents what will replace them?
You start off with a false premise: that something must replace patents (else there will be little or no innovation)
Patents do not need to be replaced with anything. The software world experienced much more innovation without them, and continued innovation in the United States only exists because they go largely unenforced.
Have any/.ers seen or thought of a solution to this problem?
There is no such problem. Your assumption is false.
I'm all for making software as "free" as possible, but I'm also of the mind that there would have to be some kind of IP structure in place.
I am assuming you are new to the software industry (apologies if this is not the case, but your statement indicates that you are unfamiliar with how the software economy worked in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s prior to software patents, and prior to their being widespread). Having said that, you have some interesting thoughts despite the false premise from which you begin (you very correctly identify and express unease with the monopoly entitlement the government is granting on so many basic ideas and software implimentations, and the catastrophic consiquences to a robust and free market that follow).
Software has always enjoyed the protection of copyright, which has always been enough protection for companies large and small (c.f. Apple Computers, Microsoft & Joe's consulting) to make excellent profits. Patents are in fact antithetical to this, as they lock down basic ideas. Patents only came along much later (in the 1980s IIRC) If you write software in the United States, you violate patents. You can thank your lucky stars no one has decided to enforce them against you... if they did, you would probably be broke.
Has anyone run into an IP scheme that would balance the creator/user relationship? Our present system is skewed and prone to monopolism, and a total absence of ownership would entail its own set of problems.
It depends on what you mean by "IP". If you're talking about trade secrets, the current laws work reasonably well. If you're talking about trademarks, the current scheme works pretty well modulo people abusing trademark law to silence critics using their name (this seems to get sorted out reasonably by the courts most of the time).
If you're talking about patents, the best reform is to eliminate patents. Government entitlement monopolies have been shown historically to not only NOT encourage innovation, but to actively stifle it. As an example, read up on the history of the airplane, the Wright Brother's patents, and America's desperation to catch up to advanced European (non-patent-encumbered) aviation technology during world war I. For those to lazy or uninterested to look it up, the short answer is that the US Government, in a tacit admission that the Wright Brother's patent on airplanes stifled innovation and improvements, effectively seized their patent (nationalized it), paid them a flat 1% royalty, and threw the technology open to all comers and competitors to develop modern airplanes. The amount of innovation that followed was truly phenominal.
If you are talking about copyrights, some have suggested a form of non-monopoly "authorright" as an alternative... a type of non-transferable copyright with manditory licensing attached, where the author is entitled to some percentage of any money made on their work (or derivative works), but cannot restrict how their work (or any derivative works) are used, with anti-plagerism statues requiring citation in perpetuity. Others have suggested shortening the length of copyrights back to their original 12 or 24 years. Reform is needed, and many have suggested all kinds of innovative approaches to replace or at least weaken the current monopoly entitlement schemes... it is a subject that has b
But as to 'Christian' (with no such ajective attached) it is clearly supported by all the literature cited that Hitler was, in fact, Christian.
1889 April 20 Adolfus (Adolf) Hitler is born at Braunau-am-Inn, Austria. According to his birth certificate, he was born at six o'clock in the evening and baptized two days later by Father Ignaz Probst at the local Catholic Church. (Payne)
According to public records he was born and baptised Catholic.
According to public statements and records he was (what most of us would call) a firm believer. Certainly he professed to be, if Mein Kampf and his various public speeches are any indication.
According to the Church's own records, he remained in good standing until his death.
This, in most peoples reckoning, would make him a Catholic, which in turn makes him a Christian.
There is no evidence that he was non-Christian, beyond a few references to cynical back-room dealings in which he planned to supplant or subjegate the church to the state, which is clearly a political move and does not provide any real indication as to his underlying Christian belief (or lack thereof).
quoting various sources, trivially accessible via google, one finds (chosen more or less randomly out of several hundred references):
Going by what the Christian clergy teach about the virtues that the faith inspires, Nazism, Hitler's wars, and the Holocaust should not have been possible. Not only did they occur, but with insignificant and wavering exceptions, neither theologians, clergy, nor ordinary Christians as individuals, nor churches as corporate bodies, objected. In fact they overwhelmingly supported them. Look at three of the most distinguished German Protestant theologians--Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanual Hirsch. These men were highly respected, extremely erudite, uncommonly productive, and internationally known professors, each at a different, first-class university.
Professor Robert P. Erickson did an unusually comprehensive investigation of the three theologians' writings, utterances, and activities as they pertain to Nazism and the Jewish Question. He reports his findings in a book, Theologians Under Hitler. If anyone should know whether submission or opposition is demanded of the followers of the living Christ when confronted with a regime as totally reprehensible as that of the Nazis, surely it would be these theologians.
What conclusions did Erickson reach as to the stance of the three men who would be expected to exemplify the ultimate in the embodiment of those noble values that millions of Sunday school children are taught attach to Christian folk? They are grim:
"They each supported Hitler openly, enthusiastically, and with little restraint." In fact, they deemed it the Christian thing to do. They "saw themselves and were seen by others as genuine Christians acting upon genuine Christian impulses." Furthermore, all three tended "to see God's hand in the elevation of Hitler to power." Hirsch was a member of the Nazi party and of the SS. The Nazi state, he said, should be accepted and supported by Christians as a tool of God's grace. To Althaus, Hitler's coming to power was "a gift and miracle of God." He taught that "we Christians know ourselves bound by God's will to the promotion of National Socialism."
Kittel and a group of twelve leading theologians and pastors issued a proclamation that Nazism is "a call of God," and they thanked God for Adolf Hitler.
Clearly, Hitler was considered by theologens of the day to be quite christian in his beliefs and actions, be they Protestant theologens (as cited above) or Catholic theologens (as cited in numerous other writings).
OK, I've looked at the Cornwell book and it in no way supports the claim that Hitler was a Christian.
Your bias in showing. Hitler was clearly raised Catholic, was a practicing Catholic, and was in good standing with the Church through his death in 1945. By any definition this makes him Catholic, and as Catholicism is generally regarded as Christian by all except the most fringe of protestant sects (indeed, the Catholic church is the original "christian" sect from which all others are derived), this makes him Christian by definition.
Now, if one wishes to redefine "being christian" (as so many splinter sects do), or argue as to whether or not he was a "devout" Catholic or a "good Christian" then that is another arguement, and one that is entirely subjective and dependent on one's definitions of what constitutes 'devout' and what 'good Christian' is defined as. But as to 'Christian' (with no such ajective attached) it is clearly supported by all the literature cited that Hitler was, in fact, Christian.
If you look at the end of chapter 3 of Mein Kampf, you'll see that this section blames the failure of the pan-German movement in Austria on its anti-Catholicism, from which Hitler draws the lesson that such a struggle pointlessly alienates potential supports. And it is from this section that many of those cherrypicked quotes come from.
I just waded through that unpleasant read (in the original German), and I find your characterization to be a bit disingenuous. Yes, Hitler does blame earlier failures of the pan-German movement in Austria on its anti-Cathlocism, but he does so in the context of proclaiming himself devoutly Christian. The quotes are hardly "cherry-picked", they are scattered through the document. The original reads more along the lines of (shamelessly paraphrased) "I am devoutly Christian, and the movement is Christian. The reason the movement failed in the past is because earlier leaders of the movement didn't understand this, and unnecessarilly alienated the Church as a result." It did not read as you seem to imply "we are going to need the Catholic Church's support, so we'll let them into the club."
Historians may argue as to how much of this is cynical manipulation, and how much was actual belief. But the fact that he was Christian is beyond dispute, and there is enough evidence to suggest he was, at least early on, quite strong in those beliefs that historians still argue the point despite his clearly cynical political ploys and agenda later on. It should also be noted that Hitler was not a well adjusted person, so it is unsurprising if his views on the subject, like his views on so many things, didn't shift radically from one extreme to another (and back again, perhaps multiple times).
> Your ethics and the ethics of the Chinese are not the same. Just because you > think its good that news is not filtered it does not automagically follow that > this is the correct way for every society to organize itself. > > It is precisely this sort of "we know best for everyone" thinking that starts > wars. Your country is your business, and other peoples countries are their > businesses respectively.
Oh, I get it - there's no right and wrong, and that's why it was immoral of Germans to hide Jews in the 1930's and 40's. After all, they were breaking the law. And the ANC, weren't they terrorists? I mean, the lives of white people were more important than the need of blacks there to emancipate themselves from the system of apartheid, so in killing people the ANC were evil, and anyone contributing to the ANC was aiding and abetting a criminal act, right?
Here is the crux of the problem, and why the damage George W. Bush has done to this country, and the world through his obscene preemtive war in Iraq, will take generations to repair (if ever).
America has lost the moral highground on these issues, perhaps perminantly.
You are both right, to a degree. Our country is our business, and other peoples countries are their business... to a point. Kosovo became everyone's business when the Serbs decided to start committing genocide (and the Europeans stood by, wringing their hands and doing nothing, until Bill Clinton stepped up to the plate). If Germany should start rounding up Jews and killing them again, Germany would become everyones business and their "sovereignty" would quickly become irrelevant (and rightly so... some things you simply shouldn't stand idly by and allow to happen).
Dafur is another example... one which will likely receive little attention and no action, because thanks to what Dubya has done in Iraq, no one in their right mind is going to embrace any foreign policy objective of the United States as stated by Bush, Cheney, et.al., and frankly I as an American can't blame them. Our current government is untrustworthy, dangerous, unreliable, and incompetent. Worst of all, it is clearly amoral, and as such cannot ralley anyone around a moral cause, even one as clear cut as the genocide in Dafur.
I suspect if Germany reopened Auschwitz America would have trouble rallying the world... that is how low our esteem in the world has sunk, thanks to one incompetent man (Bush) and his profoundly evil handlers (Cheney et. al.).
Now, clearly, china's suppression of political dissent and freedom of speech isn't genocide, and so falls somewhere in the vast gray area between absolutes, but it is a very reasonable argument that western companies which aid and abet totalitarian regimes in their suppression of what the west regards as basic human rights, are themselves committing a degree of treason against those values and those societies.
However, as the Almightly Dollar and Our Holy and Sacred Free Market Ueber Alles Humane are involved, no action will be taken, either by governments in the west, or the sheeple who follow them, crying "free market/profit motive makes it good and appropriate" irrespective of basic human values.
Google started the process of going public what? A few months ago. I wonder how closely that correlates to their decision to quietly censor their search results. I am beginning to suspect that no company, no matter how ethical it may be in the beginning, can survive being a publicly traded company without selling out any and all ethics beyond the persuit of the Almighty Dollar.
And there are those who will blindly argue that this is a good thing, their worship of free markets above all else knowing no boundries. But for those of us who are still concerned with values such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. (an admittedly shrinking portion of the population here in America at
Clearly historians are divided on whether or not Hitler was a devout catholic, and this discussion is going to degenerate into semantic arguments over what 'devout' really means.
Hitler was clearly devout in his ramblings when he wrote his manifesto Mein Kampf, which, as with nearly every manifesto ever written, was written with a particular point of view in mind, to promote a particular philosophy, and without any real concern for political correctness (in contemporary terms) or expediency. It is believed by many (most?) historians that his writings were a reasonably sincere representation of his (admittedly twisted) beliefs, and those included belief in his religion.
It is also clear that he had political differences with the church (despite their close collaboration with the holocaust), and that he privately wished to subordinate the church beneath the state, or even replace it with a "purer" faith of his own devising. It is also clear that this notion came later in life, after he had ascended to power.
He was raised catholic.
He was a practicing catholic.
When he wrote his manifesto, he clearly believed in his religion quite strongly.
Whether his later belief faded and became political expediency, or remained, is openly debated.
By many people's definition of 'devout', he clearly falls within that categore early in life, and arguably until is death in 1945. By others he did not.
What is certain is that he was religious (the only argument among historians is to what degree), that his religion was Catholic, that the Catholic church actively supported and assisted in the holocaust, and that a great many people are doing their damndest to brush these facts under the rug, not least of them modern day Catholic apologists who are trying to spin Pope Pious as "secretly against hitler" (even though he actively gave financial and logistical support to the Nazis) and protestants who flat out lie, claiming Hitler was an athiest (whether or not he was 'devout', he was certainly not an athiest, nor was the Nazi party as a whole).
References supporting the belief that Hitler was in fact quite devout (by many lay folks' definition of the word) in his Christianity include:
Hitler's Christianity: by James Walker
Hitler Was Not An Atheist: by John P. Murphy Religion and the Holocaust: by Richard E. Smith
itler: Christian, Atheist, or Neither?: by Dean Mischewski
Was Hitler an Atheist or a Theist? More Importantly, Who Cares?: by Mark Vuletic
Copin' with Copan: The Defense of Zacharias that Fails: by Doug Krueger
Hitler Aims Blow at 'Godless' Move: Lansing State Journal
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII: by John Cornwell
Oh contraire. Hitler was a devout Catholic, praised by the pope of the day, revisionist historymongering by those uncomfortable with those facts notwithstanding.
Just a few of the plethora of references available on the subject:
Selected Quotes from Mein Kampf underscoring his religiosity
You aren't doing yourself, the Catholic church, or the world any favors by trying to gloss over an unpleasant aspect of world history, merely because you find it distasteful.
It is America's ignorance of Hitler's religious fanatacism and the dangers it incorporates that has helped to allow a modern day religious fanatic to usurp the nation's highest office... and quite possibly get elected legitimately this autumn, the consiquences of which don't bear thinking about. The last thing in the world anyone should be doing is glossing this over.
Members of his administration might have helped engineer the attacks see Crossing the Rubicon. If even 10% of what ruppert talks about is true the implications are overwhelming.
I don't buy it.
Now granted, I am dismissing the possibility out of hand. Indeed, the premise seems so absurd to me that I can't even bring myself to read the guy's arguments, which is as much or more of an emotional response than a rational one I suppose.
Which means if it, by some bizarr twisted turn of fate, is (or contains) truth, the act is so obscene, so unthinkable, that they'll get away with it completely.
Analogous to how no one believed Germany was murdering millions of people, despite all the information and evidence available to the world at that time.
If, ten or twenty years from now, this is vindicated, then I will concede that comparing Bush/Cheney to Hitler is more appropriate than to Milosevic.
But really, I find the allegations being made in that book to be unbelievable in the extreme, to the point of absurdity.
Isn't it a bit odd that these libraries are failing on both Windows and Linux?
I wonder of someone has been stealing source code?
While it is possible Microsoft may have violated the licenses of open source and free software projects, it is doubtful. It is virtually certain that the opposite is not the case, unless Microsoft lackeys are deliberately trying to poison the well, in which case a court would find the Microsoft willfully released the code into the wild, effectively licensing it. That isn't very likely either.
What we do know is that C and C++ have vulnerabilities in how the language is used with respect to buffers, that can get even experienced programmers into trouble. We also know that algorithms for reading and drawing images are widely known, widely published, and quite standard, so any two (or more implimentations) are likely to run afoul of similiar mistakes in programming and weaknesses in the language (C/C++) used.
Why moderators find it "insightful" or "interesting" to make the extremely unlikely insinuation that someone is probably be violating copyright in order for similar issues to arise out of code doing similar tasks using similar programming languages and similar libraries, accessing similar open standard graphical formats, bespeaks an agenda and ax to grind (either against Microsoft or Free Software), not an understanding of the underlying coding issues.
I loathe and despise Microsoft as much as anyone, and for good reason, but lets try to limit our lambasting of that destructive and dangerous entity to issues which have a grounding in fact, and not unlikely scenerios like this. There are a plethora of real, documented activities by that company that can provide more than enough fodder for criticism, without insinuating the very unlikely in defiance of occams razer and all real sense.
And if the jab was meant for Free Software, then replace the word "unlikely" above with "absurd beyond any rational measure."
I'm an athiest, yet I don't need a set of rules written down in a book to know what is right and wrong. My morals are consistent also.
I've heard this argument before, but I just don't get it. Do you honestly feel that an athiest is some kind of wild-man who runs around in a totally sociopathic way?
As an agnostic (with admittedly athiestic leanings) whose immediate family has been enamoured with christianity for a number of decades, I can tell you that most religious people simply cannot imagine people having ethics and morals without a big, threatening God standing over them, bullwhip in hand and using the threat of eternal immolation to ensure adherance.
They balk at the notion that we can ponder and come up with ethical systems based upon what is best for civilization and human kind (treating one another with respect and kindness) without living in abject fear of their God.
Which says a lot more about the ethical and moral grounding of most religious zealots (requiring threats of a particularly horrific kind to do what is right by others) than it does about the ethics and morality of athiest (which have historically been quite decent when compared to the behavior of the world's great religions, notable imperfections notwithstanding.
I will not have my response censored while right-wing jerks moderate the above troll into the stratosphere.
Bye! Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out, you spineless worm. If you don't like something in your country, take a stand and try to change it.
I can't speak for the guy going to Vancouver (I'm actually going there on vacation next month, and may even get a summer home there if I like it enough), but I've been fighting the pendulum swing to the right since I first started voting in '84. Twenty years later, and the nonsense I keep hearing about "the pendulum will swing back eventually" rings truly hollow. It may be true in the very long term, but it sounds more like the Jews telling themselves "this too shall pass" (it did, but not until after most of those telling themselves that had been murdered). [cue the usual Godwin's law trolls]
I'm tired of fighting a losing battle against mindlessly nationalistic, irrationally religious idealogues, and other right wing zealots like yourself.
I'm tired of contributing to a society whose international agenda can only be described as toxic and deeply irresponsible.
I'm tired of living among people whose politics and philosophies I have learned over the years and decades to despise.
I'm sick of seeing a country I love destroy itself from within so profoundly and so completely.
I'm sick of a culture that has chosen, systematically, and with ever more zeal, to sell out its basic ideals (freedom, human rights, free expression, and so on) in exchange for short term profits and greed.
Indeed, I'm sick of being a part of a culture that has deified greed and disregarded basic human cooperation and caring, having forgotten that it is cooperation, not competition, that is the foundation of civilization.
In short, I'm sick and tired of being a part of an ever less civilized society, and I am deeply ashamed of what idealogues such as yourself, and the complacent and cowardly fools who follow you, have made America into.
I'm not planning to emigrate anytime soon (I have a job I like and work with good people... an island of sanity in a nation consumed with neurosis), but I fully empathize with the poster who has had enough and is leaving, and feel nothing but the deepest contempt and disgust for the toxic politics and philosophies of people like yourself that have made it necessary.
And should I lose my job like so many millions of others have (most of whome conviniently no longer appear in the unemployment statistic now that their benefits have expired) I probably will emigrate, assuming any country on the planet will have anything to do with displaced citizens of a toxic, militaristic, and irresponsible superpower as it fades from prominence, probably with similiar results but none of the grace, of Russia.
Hitler was most definitely a devout catholic. His devotion to his own ego is not inconsistent with that. The holocaust was committed with the knowledge and cooperation of the Catholic church (which has since apologized to Israel for its involvement). The holocaust was a christian holocaust against the jews... one of many throughout the centuries (though definitely the most dramatic).
Religious people, and Catholics in particular, will often go to great lengths to revise this particular tidbit of history, often trying to frame the Nazi phenomenon as an "athiestic" one (although almost none of the party leadership, and certainly not Hitler himself, were athiests, nor was their idealogy which was steeped in religious, germanic, and aryan myth).
Hilter had no devotion to anything but his own ego.
Okay, you've found one similarity between Bush and Hitler (his devotion to his ego). There are undoubtably others (such as their both being quite religious, but here I would argue that a) their religions differ and b) Bush is even more zealous in that respect than Hitler was). The similarity of rampent egotism also exists between Bush and Milosevic, and I still maintain that a comparison of Bush to Milosevic is more accurate and more illuminating of the consiquences of Bush's actions for America in the years to come, and more apropos in terms of scale and behavior.
In addition, Hitler appears to have been significantly more intelligent than Bush is. Milosevic may have been as well, but I believe the jury would arguably be out on that one, making the Bush/Milosevic comparison even more accurate, and the Bush/Hitler one less so.
Lets look at some of the Business he [Bush]'s Administrated, shall we?
i) Arbusto Energy / Spectrum 7 (CEO, 1977-1986): Formed 1977, declared bankrupt, 1986. ii) Harken Energy (director, 1986-1990) : GWB implicated for insider trading and accounting practices. 1992 SEC investigation still sealed. Made loss of over $20million. iii) Texas Rangers baseball club (owner/managing partner, 1990-1994) : 383-379, for an entirely average.502 winning percentage.
iv) The United States of America : GWB and his party, controlling all branches of government, took the treasury from record surpluses to record deficits in just two years, said deficits exceeding earlier records as they grew in the years following, while successfully outsourcing the bulk of the middle class economy and, according to census reports released a month early (prior to the republican convention) in order to be swept away from the public eye well before election time, creating an environment of a significantly shrunk middle class, record poverty, and unprecedented numbers of Americans with absolutely no health coverage whatsoever.
Looks to me like he's doing about average on his latest venture. It is a pity that this time the results affect us all, very detrimentally.
So, that's two unmitigated financial disasters and a ballclub that defines "league average". If that's a model Harvard MBA student, perhaps they should consider tightening their syllabus up a little bit.
Bye! Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out, you spineless worm. If you don't like something in your country, take a stand and try to change it.
I can't speak for the guy going to Vancouver (I'm actually going there on vacation next month, and may even get a summer home there if I like it enough), but I've been fighting the pendulum swing to the right since I first started voting in '84. Twenty years later, and the nonsense I keep hearing about "the pendulum will swing back eventually" rings truly hollow. It may be true in the very long term, but it sounds more like the Jews telling themselves "this too shall pass" (it did, but not until after most of those telling themselves that had been murdered). [cue the usual Godwin's law trolls]
I'm tired of fighting a losing battle against mindlessly nationalistic, irrationally religious idealogues, and other right wing zealots like yourself.
I'm tired of contributing to a society whose international agenda can only be described as toxic and deeply irresponsible.
I'm tired of living among people whose politics and philosophies I have learned over the years and decades to despise.
I'm sick of seeing a country I love destroy itself from within so profoundly and so completely.
I'm sick of a culture that has chosen, systematically, and with ever more zeal, to sell out its basic ideals (freedom, human rights, free expression, and so on) in exchange for short term profits and greed.
Indeed, I'm sick of being a part of a culture that has deified greed and disregarded basic human cooperation and caring, having forgotten that it is cooperation, not competition, that is the foundation of civilization.
In short, I'm sick and tired of being a part of an ever less civilized society, and I am deeply ashamed of what idealogues such as yourself, and the complacent and cowardly fools who follow you, have made America into.
I'm not planning to emigrate anytime soon (I have a job I like and work with good people... an island of sanity in a nation consumed with neurosis), but I fully empathize with the poster who has had enough and is leaving, and feel nothing but the deepest contempt and disgust for the toxic politics and philosophies of people like yourself that have made it necessary.
And should I lose my job like so many millions of others have (most of whome conviniently no longer appear in the unemployment statistic now that their benefits have expired) I probably will emigrate, assuming any country on the planet will have anything to do with displaced citizens of a toxic, militaristic, and irresponsible superpower as it fades from prominence, probably with similiar results but none of the grace, of Russia.
So there are very good reasons why people outside the US have a very low opinion of Bush. Calling him a modern Hitler is hyperbole, but such low opinion of him is not unfounded.
Calling Bush Hitler is not only Hyperbole, it is also a disservice. Differences between Bush and Hitler abound, including but not limited to Hitlers legitimate election vs. Bush's coup d'etat of 2000, Hitler's staging of a terrorist attack vs. Bush's exploitation of a real attack, Hitlers murder of millions vs. Bush's murder of tens of thousands, Hitlers antisemetism vs. Bush's uncritical support of Sharon, and Hitlers devout Catholocism vs. Bush's devout Methodist(ism).
Bush is far more comparable to Milosevic. A toxic leader, with a toxic idealogy and a toxic agenda, who has no compunction about starting wars in smaller countries he ultimately cannot win, perpetuating atrocities on a relatively minor scale (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo), disregarding international law and norms to the point of alienating an ever dwindling number of friends and allies, stripping his own people of what civil rights and priveleges they once had in the name of "defending against [insert threat here]", leaving his own soldiers to die by the hundreds (or thousands) for no other purpose than to delay the inevitable defeat a timely amount (say, until after the November elections, or in Milosevic's case, until the end of negotiations), and ultimately leaving his country destitute and discredited in the world, to the point where its own citizens become reluctant to admit to their citizenship while travelling abroad.
Bush Junior isn't a Hitler. He is a Milosevic couched in a slightly different rhetoric, and he is in the process of teaching complacent Americans the same ugly lessons that Milosevic taught the Serbs a decade ago.
What is really depressing is how the Bush's and the Republicans have maneuvered themselves into a win-win situation with respect to the fiasco in Iraq through their delaying tactics in keeping Americans unaware of the ugly fact that we have already lost the war. [Yes, I know you folks in most of the rest of the world already know this, but keep in mind that our media is actively downplaying the fact that we're losing the war: most people here aren't even aware that most of Iraq, including most of its major cities, are in insurgent hands, and our troups virtually holed up in their bases under siege. One has to go to the German, French, Russian (thank you babelfish!), and other foreign media to get any inkling as to what is really going on over there... or listen to off-the-record commentary by friends and acquaintances stationed there (none of the folks I know actively serving in the miliarty... admittedly the several I do know are not a statistical universe, but nevertheless... will be voting for Bush)].
Delay Americans' realization that Bush started a war he lost until after the November elections. If Bush wins, they win the presidency and can withdraw, with four years to get the American people to forget about what he has done (probably by starting a whole new mess we'll be concerned about instead). If he loses, he leaves Kerry with an untenable situation, Kerry pulls out, and the Republicans can spin it as "weak Democrats who didn't see it through."
The only cost are a few hundred American lives, and a few thousand Iraqis... a price the Bush's and the Republicans are only too happy to pay.
I would weep for the future of this country, if there were one. I fear it resembles that of Yugoslavia only too closely.
As one in the GA community who "will turn red and rant for hours when one goes and mentions Meigs or Daley" (Never Forgive, Never Forget), I agree with all of your points save one.
There ware about 15 planes stranded at the field. It costs a LOT of money to have a $250,000 Piper disassembled, shipped, re-assembled and then have the airframe re-certified.
As one of the planes stranded at Meigs following Daley's illegal vandalism of public property (I was the 3rd to last plane to depart the airport), to my knowledge none of the planes had to be disassembled and trucked out. Certainly my stance was that, if the FAA had not made a special exception to allow us to depart the taxiway and my plane had been disassembled, the city would have bought the plane (either willingly, or as an offshot of a lawsuit I was fully prepared to bring). Once the wings have been cut off and reassembled, the aircraft will never be quite the same again.
However, I (and the twelve or so planes that took off before me) took off on the taxiway. It was a bit exciting (the taxiway was bumpy, cracked, and had the occasional... well, not pothole per se, but large imperfection)... but easily treated as a soft-field departure (get the plane into ground effect, and accellerate on the cushion of air to rotation speed before climbing out). I believe the two planes that remained after I departed were both flown out... one several days later, as the owner had been from out of town and had to get back home, only to return on the weekend IIRC.
"Murderer" is a good description of the third-world two-bit mobster/political thug running Chicago (wanna bet a Casino ends up replacing the airport, not his wife's pet park project he claims to have destroyed it for). Just ask anyone trying to fly organs into any of Chicago's hospitals. Now they go via Midway, O'Hare, or Palwaukee, then via helecopter... resulting is significant delays over what Meigs once offered. Every patient who dies as a result of their replacement organs taking a few minutes too long to arrive has Mayor Daley to personally thank.
And of course there are the failed rescues you refer to, where boaters who in the past would have been rescued successfully from Meigs drowned in the time it took the aircraft to get downtown from the outlying airports where they are now stationed.
Finally, one should mention how much less safe the airspace over downtown Chicago is (including the Loop and its biggest target, the Sears Tower). Less safe from accidents, and less safe from those hypothetical terrorists we are all so well trained to cower in fear of now. When Meigs was in operation, the airspace was Class D controlled airspace. You had to have permission to fly into it, which meant you had to have permission from (and be in contact with) ATC before you could fly an aircraft anywhere near any of downtown Chicago's big buildings.
Not anymore. With Meigs shut down, the airspace over downtown Chicago is completely uncontrolled. I can (and do) fly my airplane around the loop whenever I please, without permission and without talking to a single controller. Depart VFR from Schaumburg, fly the Eisenhower into the city (staying clear of O'Hare B airspace and Midway's C airspace), and circle the buildings to my hearts content without using the two-way radio once.
Which I do every so often, to show friends the spectacular skyline from close and, and sometimes just to piss of the arrogant little prick who illegally tore up my favorite airport.
Out of interest, where there any hoops you had to jump through to get XOrg to compile on the AMD64 platform?
I run Gentoo at home on an Athlon XP, dual Athlon MP, powerbook 17", and an AMD64 box, as well as at work on everything from old Pentium 2/400s to dual Opteron 246s. Xorg is now the default xserver on all those platforms. No special hoops required: 'emerge xorg-x11' is all that is required. With my Nvidia card I use nvidia's 64bit binary-only drivers, with the others, I use the free ATI drivers and dri (I have older ATI 9100 cards).
I haven't yet tried to emerge xorg 6.8.0 (still awaiting the ebuild to do so), but I suspect all that will be required is adding 'x11-base/xorg-x11 ~amd64' to my/etc/portage/package.keywords file (the ~amd64 means it is marked experimental... when it is deemed 'stable' it will become amd64, sans the tilde) and running the exact same command (emerge xorg-x11).
My experience with installing difficult software, such as cinelerra, transcode, etc. is that, in all the distributions I've used over the years (and I've used most of the big ones), gentoo's portage makes installation by far the easiest. Of course, the downside is the installation time... compilation takes time, especially on slower boxes. However, current 64bit architectures are fast enough that it doesn't matter, and in a couple of years, compilation will probably be comparable to binary installation speeds of today.
Usually, it is best to just let your enemies kill each other with their own resources.
I'm sorry, but I must disagree. Anyone remember in the Lord of the Rings (the books) when Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas meet Gandalf in Fangorn forest and they are talking about the betrayals of Saruman?
You've got to be kidding.
While entertaining, Lord of the Rings is hardly material to be cited as evidence in favor of one strategic geopolitical stance vs. another.
Having one's enemies kill each other while one stands on the sidelines is a tried and true methodology for defeating both parties. It worked for the Portugese, Spaniards, English, and French when they turned competing American tribes against each other in their conquest of the Americas, it worked for the Romans on several occasions, the Egyptions employed such a strategy successfully on numerous occasions in their conquests, and so on.
Indeed, one could argue that cold war Europe was trivially conquered by both the United States (west) and Russia (east) in the same manner... by picking up the pieces after the Germans & Italians killed most of their neighbors and their neighbors killed them. Of course, WW2 was significantly more complex than that, and both the US and Russia were intimately involved (indeed, Russia suffered terribly, losing 20 million people), but the point remains.
Allowing one's enemies to kill each other while one stands on the sidelines has a pretty good track record historically (if one can stomach the collatoral damage), irrespective of what Tolkien as Gandalf the Grey might have said.
Now, allowing two nuclear-armed enemies to kill each other in a closed environmental system might not be such a bright idea...
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
[...]
Now, the suggestion to Slashdot coders: Why not create a special section called "Ignore shitty articles by Michael?" After all, it's not that I want to exclude stories as much as I don't like my time wasted by a jackass like him.
BEGIN Translation [Neocon Doublespeak->English]:
Slashdot ran a story linking to information that is damning to my candidate of choice and my own toxic political philosophy. I resent being forced to face facts I find uncomfortable, and doubly resent doing so on slashdot where I expected to read technical articles and keep my political head firmly encased in sand.
Slashdot has a feature to allow me and others to do this, which I am touting here lest other conservatives be exposed to unpleasant facts and possibly vote against My Chosen Candidate(tm).
But this feature isn't sufficiently insulting to those who have exposed me to these uncomfortable truths, so I think the people who code this free site I don't pay for should create a new option that does exactly the same thing existing options already do, but does so in a manner as insulting as possible to those who dared post a story that points out facts which undermine my own ever more fragile filtered view of the world.
END Translation
Let's just remember (let me ephasize these words) most ex-members who persecute the church tend to be those who have themselves violated the covenants they agreed to live by in the church and were cast out for not repenting and obeying the covenants they agreed to live by (others may call thse people hypocrite), I just see these people as angry and ashamed of themselves, so they blame someone else for their problems.
/. "relationship" will see we've marked each other as foes, so we obviously don't see eye to eye on much.)
... until the civil war forced the US government to recall the troups for more pressing issues) managed to get free of Mormonism and raise their kids in a secular manner. They remained quite positive toward the church's social stances (a mistake IMHO, but they came from a conservative generation), while quite dismissive of its theocracy (well founded, as it turned, out, particularly now that genetic science has disproven the fundamental premis of the Book of Mormon, a bit of scientific reality check Mormon professors at BYU dismiss as "unscientific" and "irrelevant" without any cause beyond their desire not to accept the facts on the ground, and to obfuscate their own inability to rebut the factual data).
.. of having been suckered so completely, and been made an ass of for so many years. They are angry not because they don't "measure up" to some cult's silly notion of what people should be (don't drink that coffee sinner!), but because a religious cult has robbed them of so much of their life, and so much of the joy life has to offer, and left them struggling to overcome the painfule emotional aftermath that any abusive relationship leaves behind ... and don't kid yourself, there is no other kind of relationship between a human mind and a cult such as the LDS church, and it is a rare mind indeed that can free itself from the clutches of such organized indoctrination. I am very grateful my grandparents succeeded, and my defia
I suspect this is the only post I will have made to slashdot that will be in agreement with the grandfather post (anyone examining our
Your characterization of ex-Mormons may be true of a few particularly dysfunctional refugees from that particular cult, but it is hardly representative of the majority of people who manage to free themselves from the LDS church's clutches.
My grandparents (descendents of Aaron Johnson, the man who designed many of the roads and bridges in Utah, who had extensive dealings and correspondence with Brigham Young, and who was a polygamist with 12 wives and hid in the hills during the 1850s as the US calvary was hunting said polygamists
Unfortunately, my mother and my sister converted back to that cult, and the results have been absolutely detrimental to their lives. Aside from the 10% income loss that they can ill afford, my sister's talents go unused as she struggles to raise the 7 children she and her Mormon husband had, despite the fact that they had no income to raise them with and are now subsisting in poverty in a small town with no economic options, and no funds to get out. Other examples in their lives abound, such as the toxic relationships they have had with abusive Mormon men (granted, not a statistical universe, but a decent sized anectdotal sample with thus far 100% failure rate). Whereas I, and all of my cousins whose parents were fortunately not coaxed back into the snare have had very successful lives and excelled beyond anyone's expectations, my sister (who started out with the same resources, more talent, and similar intelligence, but lacked the critical defiance necessary to assert one's autonomy in the face of institutional repression) has boxed herself into a deplorable situation through the beliefs and familial "duties" foisted upon her by her religion.
People who get out of Mormonism aren't ashamed of getting out. They're ashamed of having been in
In Bush's America, Laws Break You!
[/would be funny if it weren't true]
He's upset that you are right and he is wrong.
I suspect he is even more upset that Russian law can actually apply to purchases in the United States. Most Americans are used to exporting their own laws and imposing them on the rest of the world (up to and including abducting non-Americans abroad and bringing them to the United States for having violated American law outside of America). We are not used to having the treaties we've shoved down other nations' throats come back and bite us
Personally, I rather enjoy this turnabout
The answer of course as to why the RIAA hasn't made an issue of allofmp3.com is that they recognize it as legal and know better: the last thing in the world they would want to do is draw attention to a legal download service as fine as allofmp3.com by raising a fuss
More people protested bush then any other person in the history of mankind. GW may very well be the most hated person in the world right now. I seriously doubt that our nation's reputation can be saved as long as he is office. If he is re-elected then the world will just presume that Americans support his vision of a world living under our domination.
And they will be correct. Approximately 50% of Americans do support that toxic agenda. Approximately 50% are vehemently opposed. Unfortunately, the 50% who are vehemently opposed will be lumped together with the 50% that support our imperialism, consider Rush Limbaugh to be inciteful, believe O'Reilly to be "spin-free", and actually think Fox News is anything close to "Fair and Balanced" should Bush Junior actually be elected to office legitimately.
In that event, after these terrible policies run their coarse, we will (at best) be like the Germans were for three generations: apologizing for the terrible behavior of our government, the terrible behavior of our people in supporting it, and frankly emberressed by our own nationality. Depending on how far Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush Junior are able to persue their agenda before something, be it foreign pressure or domestic revolt, puts an end to it, our grandchildren may still be apologizing to the rest of the world.
This is the most important election of our lives. Every American reading this, on whatever side, had better be registered to vote, and be excersizing that right.
Yikers! Me too. Shame on me, a pathetic paddy, for suggesting that what's good for the goose is also good for the gander. Jesus, I'll never bother pointing flaws in the system out to my American friends again. Apparently, election systems in western Europe are fair game, but to suggest that anything dodgy could happen here is just... un-American! (but I'm not American!)
;-)
... and that so many of us are shocked to find it isn't the first time we venture outside of our borders. We are spoonfed appallingly manipulative and patently untrue propoganda, while being kept uninformed of events in the rest of the world, to such a degree that my non-American friends who visit are shocked when they see the (lack of) information we get.
Damn unamerican foreigners!
Our Democracy (tm) is the Best in the World (tm). The System Works (tm), and as the Leader of the Free World (tm), Our President (tm) is Staying the Course (tm) in important matters such as Family Values (tm), a Womans Right Not to Choose (tm), the War on Terror (tm), the March of Democracy in Iraq (tm), and other Pro Life (tm) measures.
I know we have the best democracy. I was told so in grammar school, numerous times, for the first 18 years of my life. Plus the TV says so.
Who are you to question such irrefutable facts, you damn foreigner!
Alas, the above should be funny, but aside from the gratuitious trademark symbols, it is appallingly close to exactly what happens here in America. I remember being spoon fed Amercan political myth, particularly about the founding of the country, until I was ready to vomit it up, year after year after year after year. "Social Studies" in America is one big propoganda fest, with history taught from around 1776 through the civil war -- if you have a smart class that can move through the material quickly -- and the next year you start all over again, back at 1776.
We are told by the media we are the best in everything, all the time. Is it any wonder anyone who hasn't been outside of the country believes this nonsense to be true
American people by and large aren't bad folks, and are generally well meaning (Republican nationalist swagger and Bush's unconscionable warmongering nothwithstanding). But we are all indoctrinated every day with large amounts appallingly bad data, and I'm afraind in the tatters of our democracy you really are still stuck with the Garbabe In, Garbage Out truism, which is why this election is neck and neck despite the behavior of the incumbant government over the past four years.
Senator Kerry, several witnesses place you at a VVAW meeting in Kansas City in 1971, where you reportedly voted against a plan to assassinate US Senators. To your credit, you reportedly resigned immediately thereafter. Did you report the plot to the appropriate law enforcement authorities? If not, why not?
And a followup question, Senator Kerry.
Have you stopped beating your wife? If not, why not?
"reportedly voted against a plane to assassinate US Senators"? Who did the reporting? The much-debunked, lying Swiftboat Veterans for (un)Truth?
In Soviet Russia, the government questions YOU!!!
In Bush's America, the government questions YOU.
What concerns me though is: if we do away with patents what will replace them?
/.ers seen or thought of a solution to this problem?
... if they did, you would probably be broke.
... a type of non-transferable copyright with manditory licensing attached, where the author is entitled to some percentage of any money made on their work (or derivative works), but cannot restrict how their work (or any derivative works) are used, with anti-plagerism statues requiring citation in perpetuity. Others have suggested shortening the length of copyrights back to their original 12 or 24 years. Reform is needed, and many have suggested all kinds of innovative approaches to replace or at least weaken the current monopoly entitlement schemes ... it is a subject that has b
You start off with a false premise: that something must replace patents (else there will be little or no innovation)
Patents do not need to be replaced with anything. The software world experienced much more innovation without them, and continued innovation in the United States only exists because they go largely unenforced.
Have any
There is no such problem. Your assumption is false.
I'm all for making software as "free" as possible, but I'm also of the mind that there would have to be some kind of IP structure in place.
I am assuming you are new to the software industry (apologies if this is not the case, but your statement indicates that you are unfamiliar with how the software economy worked in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s prior to software patents, and prior to their being widespread). Having said that, you have some interesting thoughts despite the false premise from which you begin (you very correctly identify and express unease with the monopoly entitlement the government is granting on so many basic ideas and software implimentations, and the catastrophic consiquences to a robust and free market that follow).
Software has always enjoyed the protection of copyright, which has always been enough protection for companies large and small (c.f. Apple Computers, Microsoft & Joe's consulting) to make excellent profits. Patents are in fact antithetical to this, as they lock down basic ideas. Patents only came along much later (in the 1980s IIRC) If you write software in the United States, you violate patents. You can thank your lucky stars no one has decided to enforce them against you
Has anyone run into an IP scheme that would balance the creator/user relationship? Our present system is skewed and prone to monopolism, and a total absence of ownership would entail its own set of problems.
It depends on what you mean by "IP". If you're talking about trade secrets, the current laws work reasonably well. If you're talking about trademarks, the current scheme works pretty well modulo people abusing trademark law to silence critics using their name (this seems to get sorted out reasonably by the courts most of the time).
If you're talking about patents, the best reform is to eliminate patents. Government entitlement monopolies have been shown historically to not only NOT encourage innovation, but to actively stifle it. As an example, read up on the history of the airplane, the Wright Brother's patents, and America's desperation to catch up to advanced European (non-patent-encumbered) aviation technology during world war I. For those to lazy or uninterested to look it up, the short answer is that the US Government, in a tacit admission that the Wright Brother's patent on airplanes stifled innovation and improvements, effectively seized their patent (nationalized it), paid them a flat 1% royalty, and threw the technology open to all comers and competitors to develop modern airplanes. The amount of innovation that followed was truly phenominal.
If you are talking about copyrights, some have suggested a form of non-monopoly "authorright" as an alternative
This, in most peoples reckoning, would make him a Catholic, which in turn makes him a Christian.
There is no evidence that he was non-Christian, beyond a few references to cynical back-room dealings in which he planned to supplant or subjegate the church to the state, which is clearly a political move and does not provide any real indication as to his underlying Christian belief (or lack thereof).
quoting various sources, trivially accessible via google, one finds (chosen more or less randomly out of several hundred references):
Clearly, Hitler was considered by theologens of the day to be quite christian in his beliefs and actions, be they Protestant theologens (as cited above) or Catholic theologens (as cited in numerous other writings).
OK, I've looked at the Cornwell book and it in no way supports the claim that Hitler was a Christian.
Your bias in showing. Hitler was clearly raised Catholic, was a practicing Catholic, and was in good standing with the Church through his death in 1945. By any definition this makes him Catholic, and as Catholicism is generally regarded as Christian by all except the most fringe of protestant sects (indeed, the Catholic church is the original "christian" sect from which all others are derived), this makes him Christian by definition.
Now, if one wishes to redefine "being christian" (as so many splinter sects do), or argue as to whether or not he was a "devout" Catholic or a "good Christian" then that is another arguement, and one that is entirely subjective and dependent on one's definitions of what constitutes 'devout' and what 'good Christian' is defined as. But as to 'Christian' (with no such ajective attached) it is clearly supported by all the literature cited that Hitler was, in fact, Christian.
If you look at the end of chapter 3 of Mein Kampf, you'll see that this section blames the failure of the pan-German movement in Austria on its anti-Catholicism, from which Hitler draws the lesson that such a struggle pointlessly alienates potential supports. And it is from this section that many of those cherrypicked quotes come from.
I just waded through that unpleasant read (in the original German), and I find your characterization to be a bit disingenuous. Yes, Hitler does blame earlier failures of the pan-German movement in Austria on its anti-Cathlocism, but he does so in the context of proclaiming himself devoutly Christian. The quotes are hardly "cherry-picked", they are scattered through the document. The original reads more along the lines of (shamelessly paraphrased) "I am devoutly Christian, and the movement is Christian. The reason the movement failed in the past is because earlier leaders of the movement didn't understand this, and unnecessarilly alienated the Church as a result." It did not read as you seem to imply "we are going to need the Catholic Church's support, so we'll let them into the club."
Historians may argue as to how much of this is cynical manipulation, and how much was actual belief. But the fact that he was Christian is beyond dispute, and there is enough evidence to suggest he was, at least early on, quite strong in those beliefs that historians still argue the point despite his clearly cynical political ploys and agenda later on. It should also be noted that Hitler was not a well adjusted person, so it is unsurprising if his views on the subject, like his views on so many things, didn't shift radically from one extreme to another (and back again, perhaps multiple times).
> Your ethics and the ethics of the Chinese are not the same. Just because you
... to a point. Kosovo became everyone's business when the Serbs decided to start committing genocide (and the Europeans stood by, wringing their hands and doing nothing, until Bill Clinton stepped up to the plate). If Germany should start rounding up Jews and killing them again, Germany would become everyones business and their "sovereignty" would quickly become irrelevant (and rightly so ... some things you simply shouldn't stand idly by and allow to happen).
... one which will likely receive little attention and no action, because thanks to what Dubya has done in Iraq, no one in their right mind is going to embrace any foreign policy objective of the United States as stated by Bush, Cheney, et.al., and frankly I as an American can't blame them. Our current government is untrustworthy, dangerous, unreliable, and incompetent. Worst of all, it is clearly amoral, and as such cannot ralley anyone around a moral cause, even one as clear cut as the genocide in Dafur.
... that is how low our esteem in the world has sunk, thanks to one incompetent man (Bush) and his profoundly evil handlers (Cheney et. al.).
> think its good that news is not filtered it does not automagically follow that
> this is the correct way for every society to organize itself.
>
> It is precisely this sort of "we know best for everyone" thinking that starts
> wars. Your country is your business, and other peoples countries are their
> businesses respectively.
Oh, I get it - there's no right and wrong, and that's why it was immoral of Germans to hide Jews in the 1930's and 40's. After all, they were breaking the law. And the ANC, weren't they terrorists? I mean, the lives of white people were more important than the need of blacks there to emancipate themselves from the system of apartheid, so in killing people the ANC were evil, and anyone contributing to the ANC was aiding and abetting a criminal act, right?
Here is the crux of the problem, and why the damage George W. Bush has done to this country, and the world through his obscene preemtive war in Iraq, will take generations to repair (if ever).
America has lost the moral highground on these issues, perhaps perminantly.
You are both right, to a degree. Our country is our business, and other peoples countries are their business
Dafur is another example
I suspect if Germany reopened Auschwitz America would have trouble rallying the world
Now, clearly, china's suppression of political dissent and freedom of speech isn't genocide, and so falls somewhere in the vast gray area between absolutes, but it is a very reasonable argument that western companies which aid and abet totalitarian regimes in their suppression of what the west regards as basic human rights, are themselves committing a degree of treason against those values and those societies.
However, as the Almightly Dollar and Our Holy and Sacred Free Market Ueber Alles Humane are involved, no action will be taken, either by governments in the west, or the sheeple who follow them, crying "free market/profit motive makes it good and appropriate" irrespective of basic human values.
Google started the process of going public what? A few months ago. I wonder how closely that correlates to their decision to quietly censor their search results. I am beginning to suspect that no company, no matter how ethical it may be in the beginning, can survive being a publicly traded company without selling out any and all ethics beyond the persuit of the Almighty Dollar.
And there are those who will blindly argue that this is a good thing, their worship of free markets above all else knowing no boundries. But for those of us who are still concerned with values such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. (an admittedly shrinking portion of the population here in America at
Hitler was clearly devout in his ramblings when he wrote his manifesto Mein Kampf, which, as with nearly every manifesto ever written, was written with a particular point of view in mind, to promote a particular philosophy, and without any real concern for political correctness (in contemporary terms) or expediency. It is believed by many (most?) historians that his writings were a reasonably sincere representation of his (admittedly twisted) beliefs, and those included belief in his religion.
It is also clear that he had political differences with the church (despite their close collaboration with the holocaust), and that he privately wished to subordinate the church beneath the state, or even replace it with a "purer" faith of his own devising. It is also clear that this notion came later in life, after he had ascended to power.
He was raised catholic.
He was a practicing catholic.
When he wrote his manifesto, he clearly believed in his religion quite strongly.
Whether his later belief faded and became political expediency, or remained, is openly debated.
By many people's definition of 'devout', he clearly falls within that categore early in life, and arguably until is death in 1945. By others he did not.
What is certain is that he was religious (the only argument among historians is to what degree), that his religion was Catholic, that the Catholic church actively supported and assisted in the holocaust, and that a great many people are doing their damndest to brush these facts under the rug, not least of them modern day Catholic apologists who are trying to spin Pope Pious as "secretly against hitler" (even though he actively gave financial and logistical support to the Nazis) and protestants who flat out lie, claiming Hitler was an athiest (whether or not he was 'devout', he was certainly not an athiest, nor was the Nazi party as a whole).
References supporting the belief that Hitler was in fact quite devout (by many lay folks' definition of the word) in his Christianity include:
Religion and the Holocaust: by Richard E. Smith
(Bibliography cribged from: Religious Views of Adolf Hitler)
Oh contraire. Hitler was a devout Catholic, praised by the pope of the day, revisionist historymongering by those uncomfortable with those facts notwithstanding.
Just a few of the plethora of references available on the subject:
You aren't doing yourself, the Catholic church, or the world any favors by trying to gloss over an unpleasant aspect of world history, merely because you find it distasteful.
It is America's ignorance of Hitler's religious fanatacism and the dangers it incorporates that has helped to allow a modern day religious fanatic to usurp the nation's highest office
Members of his administration might have helped engineer the attacks see Crossing the Rubicon. If even 10% of what ruppert talks about is true the implications are overwhelming.
I don't buy it.
Now granted, I am dismissing the possibility out of hand. Indeed, the premise seems so absurd to me that I can't even bring myself to read the guy's arguments, which is as much or more of an emotional response than a rational one I suppose.
Which means if it, by some bizarr twisted turn of fate, is (or contains) truth, the act is so obscene, so unthinkable, that they'll get away with it completely.
Analogous to how no one believed Germany was murdering millions of people, despite all the information and evidence available to the world at that time.
If, ten or twenty years from now, this is vindicated, then I will concede that comparing Bush/Cheney to Hitler is more appropriate than to Milosevic.
But really, I find the allegations being made in that book to be unbelievable in the extreme, to the point of absurdity.
Isn't it a bit odd that these libraries are failing on both Windows and Linux?
I wonder of someone has been stealing source code?
While it is possible Microsoft may have violated the licenses of open source and free software projects, it is doubtful. It is virtually certain that the opposite is not the case, unless Microsoft lackeys are deliberately trying to poison the well, in which case a court would find the Microsoft willfully released the code into the wild, effectively licensing it. That isn't very likely either.
What we do know is that C and C++ have vulnerabilities in how the language is used with respect to buffers, that can get even experienced programmers into trouble. We also know that algorithms for reading and drawing images are widely known, widely published, and quite standard, so any two (or more implimentations) are likely to run afoul of similiar mistakes in programming and weaknesses in the language (C/C++) used.
Why moderators find it "insightful" or "interesting" to make the extremely unlikely insinuation that someone is probably be violating copyright in order for similar issues to arise out of code doing similar tasks using similar programming languages and similar libraries, accessing similar open standard graphical formats, bespeaks an agenda and ax to grind (either against Microsoft or Free Software), not an understanding of the underlying coding issues.
I loathe and despise Microsoft as much as anyone, and for good reason, but lets try to limit our lambasting of that destructive and dangerous entity to issues which have a grounding in fact, and not unlikely scenerios like this. There are a plethora of real, documented activities by that company that can provide more than enough fodder for criticism, without insinuating the very unlikely in defiance of occams razer and all real sense.
And if the jab was meant for Free Software, then replace the word "unlikely" above with "absurd beyond any rational measure."
I'm an athiest, yet I don't need a set of rules written down in a book to know what is right and wrong. My morals are consistent also.
I've heard this argument before, but I just don't get it. Do you honestly feel that an athiest is some kind of wild-man who runs around in a totally sociopathic way?
As an agnostic (with admittedly athiestic leanings) whose immediate family has been enamoured with christianity for a number of decades, I can tell you that most religious people simply cannot imagine people having ethics and morals without a big, threatening God standing over them, bullwhip in hand and using the threat of eternal immolation to ensure adherance.
They balk at the notion that we can ponder and come up with ethical systems based upon what is best for civilization and human kind (treating one another with respect and kindness) without living in abject fear of their God.
Which says a lot more about the ethical and moral grounding of most religious zealots (requiring threats of a particularly horrific kind to do what is right by others) than it does about the ethics and morality of athiest (which have historically been quite decent when compared to the behavior of the world's great religions, notable imperfections notwithstanding.
I will not have my response censored while right-wing jerks moderate the above troll into the stratosphere.
... an island of sanity in a nation consumed with neurosis), but I fully empathize with the poster who has had enough and is leaving, and feel nothing but the deepest contempt and disgust for the toxic politics and philosophies of people like yourself that have made it necessary.
Bye! Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out, you spineless worm. If you don't like something in your country, take a stand and try to change it.
I can't speak for the guy going to Vancouver (I'm actually going there on vacation next month, and may even get a summer home there if I like it enough), but I've been fighting the pendulum swing to the right since I first started voting in '84. Twenty years later, and the nonsense I keep hearing about "the pendulum will swing back eventually" rings truly hollow. It may be true in the very long term, but it sounds more like the Jews telling themselves "this too shall pass" (it did, but not until after most of those telling themselves that had been murdered). [cue the usual Godwin's law trolls]
I'm tired of fighting a losing battle against mindlessly nationalistic, irrationally religious idealogues, and other right wing zealots like yourself.
I'm tired of contributing to a society whose international agenda can only be described as toxic and deeply irresponsible.
I'm tired of living among people whose politics and philosophies I have learned over the years and decades to despise.
I'm sick of seeing a country I love destroy itself from within so profoundly and so completely.
I'm sick of a culture that has chosen, systematically, and with ever more zeal, to sell out its basic ideals (freedom, human rights, free expression, and so on) in exchange for short term profits and greed.
Indeed, I'm sick of being a part of a culture that has deified greed and disregarded basic human cooperation and caring, having forgotten that it is cooperation, not competition, that is the foundation of civilization.
In short, I'm sick and tired of being a part of an ever less civilized society, and I am deeply ashamed of what idealogues such as yourself, and the complacent and cowardly fools who follow you, have made America into.
I'm not planning to emigrate anytime soon (I have a job I like and work with good people
And should I lose my job like so many millions of others have (most of whome conviniently no longer appear in the unemployment statistic now that their benefits have expired) I probably will emigrate, assuming any country on the planet will have anything to do with displaced citizens of a toxic, militaristic, and irresponsible superpower as it fades from prominence, probably with similiar results but none of the grace, of Russia.
Hitler was most definitely a devout catholic. His devotion to his own ego is not inconsistent with that. The holocaust was committed with the knowledge and cooperation of the Catholic church (which has since apologized to Israel for its involvement). The holocaust was a christian holocaust against the jews ... one of many throughout the centuries (though definitely the most dramatic).
Religious people, and Catholics in particular, will often go to great lengths to revise this particular tidbit of history, often trying to frame the Nazi phenomenon as an "athiestic" one (although almost none of the party leadership, and certainly not Hitler himself, were athiests, nor was their idealogy which was steeped in religious, germanic, and aryan myth).
Hilter had no devotion to anything but his own ego.
Okay, you've found one similarity between Bush and Hitler (his devotion to his ego). There are undoubtably others (such as their both being quite religious, but here I would argue that a) their religions differ and b) Bush is even more zealous in that respect than Hitler was). The similarity of rampent egotism also exists between Bush and Milosevic, and I still maintain that a comparison of Bush to Milosevic is more accurate and more illuminating of the consiquences of Bush's actions for America in the years to come, and more apropos in terms of scale and behavior.
In addition, Hitler appears to have been significantly more intelligent than Bush is. Milosevic may have been as well, but I believe the jury would arguably be out on that one, making the Bush/Milosevic comparison even more accurate, and the Bush/Hitler one less so.
Lets look at some of the Business he [Bush]'s Administrated, shall we?
.502 winning percentage.
i) Arbusto Energy / Spectrum 7 (CEO, 1977-1986): Formed 1977, declared bankrupt, 1986.
ii) Harken Energy (director, 1986-1990) : GWB implicated for insider trading and accounting practices. 1992 SEC investigation still sealed. Made loss of over $20million.
iii) Texas Rangers baseball club (owner/managing partner, 1990-1994) : 383-379, for an entirely average
iv) The United States of America : GWB and his party, controlling all branches of government, took the treasury from record surpluses to record deficits in just two years, said deficits exceeding earlier records as they grew in the years following, while successfully outsourcing the bulk of the middle class economy and, according to census reports released a month early (prior to the republican convention) in order to be swept away from the public eye well before election time, creating an environment of a significantly shrunk middle class, record poverty, and unprecedented numbers of Americans with absolutely no health coverage whatsoever.
Looks to me like he's doing about average on his latest venture. It is a pity that this time the results affect us all, very detrimentally.
So, that's two unmitigated financial disasters and a ballclub that defines "league average". If that's a model Harvard MBA student, perhaps they should consider tightening their syllabus up a little bit.
Not to mention their admission standards.
Bye! Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out, you spineless worm. If you don't like something in your country, take a stand and try to change it.
... an island of sanity in a nation consumed with neurosis), but I fully empathize with the poster who has had enough and is leaving, and feel nothing but the deepest contempt and disgust for the toxic politics and philosophies of people like yourself that have made it necessary.
I can't speak for the guy going to Vancouver (I'm actually going there on vacation next month, and may even get a summer home there if I like it enough), but I've been fighting the pendulum swing to the right since I first started voting in '84. Twenty years later, and the nonsense I keep hearing about "the pendulum will swing back eventually" rings truly hollow. It may be true in the very long term, but it sounds more like the Jews telling themselves "this too shall pass" (it did, but not until after most of those telling themselves that had been murdered). [cue the usual Godwin's law trolls]
I'm tired of fighting a losing battle against mindlessly nationalistic, irrationally religious idealogues, and other right wing zealots like yourself.
I'm tired of contributing to a society whose international agenda can only be described as toxic and deeply irresponsible.
I'm tired of living among people whose politics and philosophies I have learned over the years and decades to despise.
I'm sick of seeing a country I love destroy itself from within so profoundly and so completely.
I'm sick of a culture that has chosen, systematically, and with ever more zeal, to sell out its basic ideals (freedom, human rights, free expression, and so on) in exchange for short term profits and greed.
Indeed, I'm sick of being a part of a culture that has deified greed and disregarded basic human cooperation and caring, having forgotten that it is cooperation, not competition, that is the foundation of civilization.
In short, I'm sick and tired of being a part of an ever less civilized society, and I am deeply ashamed of what idealogues such as yourself, and the complacent and cowardly fools who follow you, have made America into.
I'm not planning to emigrate anytime soon (I have a job I like and work with good people
And should I lose my job like so many millions of others have (most of whome conviniently no longer appear in the unemployment statistic now that their benefits have expired) I probably will emigrate, assuming any country on the planet will have anything to do with displaced citizens of a toxic, militaristic, and irresponsible superpower as it fades from prominence, probably with similiar results but none of the grace, of Russia.
So there are very good reasons why people outside the US have a very low opinion of Bush. Calling him a modern Hitler is hyperbole, but such low opinion of him is not unfounded.
... or listen to off-the-record commentary by friends and acquaintances stationed there (none of the folks I know actively serving in the miliarty ... admittedly the several I do know are not a statistical universe, but nevertheless ... will be voting for Bush)].
... a price the Bush's and the Republicans are only too happy to pay.
Calling Bush Hitler is not only Hyperbole, it is also a disservice. Differences between Bush and Hitler abound, including but not limited to Hitlers legitimate election vs. Bush's coup d'etat of 2000, Hitler's staging of a terrorist attack vs. Bush's exploitation of a real attack, Hitlers murder of millions vs. Bush's murder of tens of thousands, Hitlers antisemetism vs. Bush's uncritical support of Sharon, and Hitlers devout Catholocism vs. Bush's devout Methodist(ism).
Bush is far more comparable to Milosevic. A toxic leader, with a toxic idealogy and a toxic agenda, who has no compunction about starting wars in smaller countries he ultimately cannot win, perpetuating atrocities on a relatively minor scale (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo), disregarding international law and norms to the point of alienating an ever dwindling number of friends and allies, stripping his own people of what civil rights and priveleges they once had in the name of "defending against [insert threat here]", leaving his own soldiers to die by the hundreds (or thousands) for no other purpose than to delay the inevitable defeat a timely amount (say, until after the November elections, or in Milosevic's case, until the end of negotiations), and ultimately leaving his country destitute and discredited in the world, to the point where its own citizens become reluctant to admit to their citizenship while travelling abroad.
Bush Junior isn't a Hitler. He is a Milosevic couched in a slightly different rhetoric, and he is in the process of teaching complacent Americans the same ugly lessons that Milosevic taught the Serbs a decade ago.
What is really depressing is how the Bush's and the Republicans have maneuvered themselves into a win-win situation with respect to the fiasco in Iraq through their delaying tactics in keeping Americans unaware of the ugly fact that we have already lost the war. [Yes, I know you folks in most of the rest of the world already know this, but keep in mind that our media is actively downplaying the fact that we're losing the war: most people here aren't even aware that most of Iraq, including most of its major cities, are in insurgent hands, and our troups virtually holed up in their bases under siege. One has to go to the German, French, Russian (thank you babelfish!), and other foreign media to get any inkling as to what is really going on over there
Delay Americans' realization that Bush started a war he lost until after the November elections. If Bush wins, they win the presidency and can withdraw, with four years to get the American people to forget about what he has done (probably by starting a whole new mess we'll be concerned about instead). If he loses, he leaves Kerry with an untenable situation, Kerry pulls out, and the Republicans can spin it as "weak Democrats who didn't see it through."
The only cost are a few hundred American lives, and a few thousand Iraqis
I would weep for the future of this country, if there were one. I fear it resembles that of Yugoslavia only too closely.
As one in the GA community who "will turn red and rant for hours when one goes and mentions Meigs or Daley" (Never Forgive, Never Forget), I agree with all of your points save one.
... well, not pothole per se, but large imperfection) ... but easily treated as a soft-field departure (get the plane into ground effect, and accellerate on the cushion of air to rotation speed before climbing out). I believe the two planes that remained after I departed were both flown out ... one several days later, as the owner had been from out of town and had to get back home, only to return on the weekend IIRC.
... resulting is significant delays over what Meigs once offered. Every patient who dies as a result of their replacement organs taking a few minutes too long to arrive has Mayor Daley to personally thank.
There ware about 15 planes stranded at the field. It costs a LOT of money to have a $250,000 Piper disassembled, shipped, re-assembled and then have the airframe re-certified.
As one of the planes stranded at Meigs following Daley's illegal vandalism of public property (I was the 3rd to last plane to depart the airport), to my knowledge none of the planes had to be disassembled and trucked out. Certainly my stance was that, if the FAA had not made a special exception to allow us to depart the taxiway and my plane had been disassembled, the city would have bought the plane (either willingly, or as an offshot of a lawsuit I was fully prepared to bring). Once the wings have been cut off and reassembled, the aircraft will never be quite the same again.
However, I (and the twelve or so planes that took off before me) took off on the taxiway. It was a bit exciting (the taxiway was bumpy, cracked, and had the occasional
"Murderer" is a good description of the third-world two-bit mobster/political thug running Chicago (wanna bet a Casino ends up replacing the airport, not his wife's pet park project he claims to have destroyed it for). Just ask anyone trying to fly organs into any of Chicago's hospitals. Now they go via Midway, O'Hare, or Palwaukee, then via helecopter
And of course there are the failed rescues you refer to, where boaters who in the past would have been rescued successfully from Meigs drowned in the time it took the aircraft to get downtown from the outlying airports where they are now stationed.
Finally, one should mention how much less safe the airspace over downtown Chicago is (including the Loop and its biggest target, the Sears Tower). Less safe from accidents, and less safe from those hypothetical terrorists we are all so well trained to cower in fear of now. When Meigs was in operation, the airspace was Class D controlled airspace. You had to have permission to fly into it, which meant you had to have permission from (and be in contact with) ATC before you could fly an aircraft anywhere near any of downtown Chicago's big buildings.
Not anymore. With Meigs shut down, the airspace over downtown Chicago is completely uncontrolled. I can (and do) fly my airplane around the loop whenever I please, without permission and without talking to a single controller. Depart VFR from Schaumburg, fly the Eisenhower into the city (staying clear of O'Hare B airspace and Midway's C airspace), and circle the buildings to my hearts content without using the two-way radio once.
Which I do every so often, to show friends the spectacular skyline from close and, and sometimes just to piss of the arrogant little prick who illegally tore up my favorite airport.
Out of interest, where there any hoops you had to jump through to get XOrg to compile on the AMD64 platform?
/etc/portage/package.keywords file (the ~amd64 means it is marked experimental ... when it is deemed 'stable' it will become amd64, sans the tilde) and running the exact same command (emerge xorg-x11).
... compilation takes time, especially on slower boxes. However, current 64bit architectures are fast enough that it doesn't matter, and in a couple of years, compilation will probably be comparable to binary installation speeds of today.
I run Gentoo at home on an Athlon XP, dual Athlon MP, powerbook 17", and an AMD64 box, as well as at work on everything from old Pentium 2/400s to dual Opteron 246s. Xorg is now the default xserver on all those platforms. No special hoops required: 'emerge xorg-x11' is all that is required. With my Nvidia card I use nvidia's 64bit binary-only drivers, with the others, I use the free ATI drivers and dri (I have older ATI 9100 cards).
I haven't yet tried to emerge xorg 6.8.0 (still awaiting the ebuild to do so), but I suspect all that will be required is adding 'x11-base/xorg-x11 ~amd64' to my
My experience with installing difficult software, such as cinelerra, transcode, etc. is that, in all the distributions I've used over the years (and I've used most of the big ones), gentoo's portage makes installation by far the easiest. Of course, the downside is the installation time
Usually, it is best to just let your enemies kill each other with their own resources.
I'm sorry, but I must disagree. Anyone remember in the Lord of the Rings (the books) when Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas meet Gandalf in Fangorn forest and they are talking about the betrayals of Saruman?
You've got to be kidding.
While entertaining, Lord of the Rings is hardly material to be cited as evidence in favor of one strategic geopolitical stance vs. another.
Having one's enemies kill each other while one stands on the sidelines is a tried and true methodology for defeating both parties. It worked for the Portugese, Spaniards, English, and French when they turned competing American tribes against each other in their conquest of the Americas, it worked for the Romans on several occasions, the Egyptions employed such a strategy successfully on numerous occasions in their conquests, and so on.
Indeed, one could argue that cold war Europe was trivially conquered by both the United States (west) and Russia (east) in the same manner
Allowing one's enemies to kill each other while one stands on the sidelines has a pretty good track record historically (if one can stomach the collatoral damage), irrespective of what Tolkien as Gandalf the Grey might have said.
Now, allowing two nuclear-armed enemies to kill each other in a closed environmental system might not be such a bright idea