Re:I must be missing something
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Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 2
Don't lable this funny, it couldnt be closer to the truth. I spend whatever time I'm not behind a computer in the so called "punk" scene of WI and it makes me want to cry.
Many of us miss the early days of punk and the hard core, in-your-face rebellion and rejection of conformity it represented, but lets be honest. When we were 16 (or 20, or whatever) and in that scene the thirty-somethings were remeniscing about their rebellious rock'n'roll days in just the same fashion, and were writing off both punk and rock as "fashion."
I too miss punk the way it was, but its unfair to label all of today's youth (including those whose taste in music resembles our own) as conformist. Many of them are as ernest about their rebellion (and nonconformity) as we were, and probably aren't looking any more pathetic or foolish to us than we did to others at that age. In the end the spirit of rage and discontent is in the heart, hormones, and (to some degree) youthfulness more than the music, the clothing, or the slang. And lets not forget that, even in its hay-day, punk had conformity within its own borders to some degree, even if such was defined more in terms of what it was not (not conforming to the lame world outside) than what it was. Such is true of any social group greater than two, but it does not make the need, desire, or ideal of rejecting cultural conformity any less legitimate... just more difficult to achieve than one thinks at first glance, which is true of most every ideal.
Doubly so when an industrial cartel like the RIAA incorporates said ideals into their own marketing drivel, something the punks (and the rappers that came after them, and the goths that came after them, ad infinatum) could do little about.
Wasn't that the beauty of the Internet? To give each and every person a place to express their opinions and ideas, regardless of just how silly it is?
Yes, and another part of the Internet's beauty is our ability, and opportunity, to openly mock their silliness. I find the people rampantly flaming slashdot for presenting this amusing tidbit (and face it, it is amusing to see self-righteous people in a tizzy) just as pathetic as the flaming of those individuals who, as others have quite rightly pointed out, are simply excersizing their own discretion and (at least for the moment) are not trying to enforce their views on the rest of us (yet).
Why did I add the comments in (parenthesis)? Because groups like this often start out as self-help organizations, then quickly grow into political forces which do try to impose their views on the rest of us. MADD comes to mind (Mother Against Drunk Driving, no relation to DAMM, or Drunks Against Mad Mothers[1]) as an example. Being against drunk driving is one thing, seeking more stringent punishments and more conservative definitions of being drunk another, and successfully lobbying for a drinking age of 21 years (even though our youung people can vote and serve in the military at 18) another still. They are a group who went far beyond mutual comfort and support, and then beyond simply lobbying against drunken driving, and have successfully lobbied to increase the drinking age to IMHO an absurdly high age (making it the most disregarded law in America I suspect). Many of them wanted to take it a step further (and have, at the local level), making entire communities and regions "dry." Talk about imposing one's word view on everyone else, willing or otherwise.
For these reasons, among others, I do find open mockery, resistence, and rebuttals to the views of any self-righteous group (even those I happen to agree with) to be both healthy and important. Even flames, if that is the only way an opponent is able to express theirself, much as I find flamage to be generaly unaesthetic. If only there had been similiar rebuttals presented against MADD before they single handed criminalized alcohol consumption for every adult in America between the ages of 18 and 21.[2]
[1]DAMM is a joke, AFAIK there is no such organization in reality
[2]Excluding military personnel, who can drink on base after enlistment (but not in civilian bars AFAIK).
And what code do you hack? I'm getting rather tired of self-important Slashdot posters who feel that these slackers should go back in the kitchen and bake some pie. We, the coders of various open source and/or free software applications write the code for our own reasons. If you don't like the code or don't feel that it's up to your standards/schedules, then don't use it. We'll be just as happy either way.
Thank you.
As one who uses debian (testing + some unstable packages compiled from source) at both work and home extensively I, for one, appreciate all that the debian developers do, and the fact that they are so precise (some might say pedantic) about software and documentation licenses. In this way I, as a system administrator, have a very easy time keeping my employer compliant to any and all licenses. Come audit time, that is a very nice feeling indeed.
So yes, we who work in the real world with Free Software, Open Source, and commercial products in fact benefit very directly and very immediately from such vigilence, and I for one appreciate it greatly.
Yes, catching this faux pas earlier in the release cycle would have been nice, but for whatever reason that did not happen. Oh well. So the packages move from main to non-free. They're still available if they're really needed, but for those of us in commercial environments using GNU/Linux for something other than hobbiest tinkering such distinctions are well founded and important, and having that explicit division between free (as in freedom) and non-free (as in restricted in some significant fashion) is immensly helpful, even critical.
Re:We've always been out listening
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Windows XP Embedded
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Most of us have always been like me: when we comment, we acknowledge our association with MS,
ahem. Some of you acknowledge your bias, however many, many of you do not. So much so, and on so many occasions, that Microsoft astroturfing has become a cliche on slashdot, kuro5hin, and numerous other forums.
We need to protect that orderly flow of information.
Which underscores Microsoft's philosophy (and to be fair, others. Let's not forget Disney's cosponsorship... excuse me, cosupport, of a bill that would have banned most free software, not to mention other activities by the RIAA and MPAA as well) of why they are trying to hijack the internet and sqelch the "unorderly" information that has abounded since the formation of the Internet and in particular the world wide web, empowering anyone to speak out and share their opinion and whatever information they may have in a very organic and most unorderly fashion.
Please, spare us the insult to our intelligence by trying to rewrite Microsoft's most recent history in its interaction with this site, the free software community, and the internet at large. Such flimsy attempts to mislead the public are only amusing for so long and I, for one, grow weary of such nonsense.
An aircraft piston engine typically needs to completely overhauled every 20,000 hours of operation to ensure reliability.
Very interesting post, but your decimal point is one off. My Lycombing O-360 (180 hp) engine has a TBO of 2000 hours, though I wish it were 20,000.:-) Airframes typically outlast multiple engines if they're well cared for, particularly if they're hangared (which mine is).
When it comes time to overhaul or replace my engine I'd love to replace it with a hydrogen fuel cell system (which is far less explosive than 60 gallons of 100LL), assuming I could get comparable performance from it. Not likely, of course, but one can dream.
Al Barakaat's founder, Shaykh Ahme Nur Jimale, is closely linked to Usama bin Laden.
If we believe this, we're right to take action. But direct action.
Which we undoubtably will. But lets finish with Afghanistan first. Folks, get over yourself. America is at war, really at war, not just scratching an itch. For the first time since 1945. Bitch and moan all you like, but places like Afghanistan and Somalia, which btw is also know for having numerous Al Qaida camps, will be taken down and the terrorists killed. Wail and moan all you like, it will change nothing. We're through kowtowing to every wannabe critic for being the sole superpower and not magically creating the perfect world according to 6 billion different definitions of the above. We were attacked, and we will exterminate our attackers, wherever they hide, wherever they are given sanctuary. And if you are giving them sanctuary, then you too shall suffer. Get over it, and be glad that, for now, all we've stopped are wire transfers.
And I say this as a liberal, generally very harsh critic of our government. Imagine how the moderates and the conservatives feel, right now. We are relentless, and when angered we are ruthless in ferretting out and killing the enemy. Since the events on 9/11 we are very, very angry, and countries like Somalia and Afghanistan, that harbor terrorists, are going down. One after another, like dominos, until we have accomplished our task.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled, anti-American bashing, bitching, and moaning, brought to you by the First Amendment coupled with a large dose of absolute cluelessness and knee-jerk "I'm politically informed yes I am" wannabe parrots.
Someone switches off the landing lights via the computer systems.
As a pilot who has experienced this sort of thing (through other causes) I can say with certainty that any competent pilot can either switch the runway lights back on or go missed (or both if their not comfortable with the situation). Most airports, even the large ones, have pilot controlled lighting (key the mike n times on the CTAF/Tower Frequency). If the pilot is already in the flair then s/he can already see the runway with the plane's landing/taxi lights, and unless visibility is really, really bad (in which case they can go missed) they can land at that point without the runway lights being on at all.
If there really aren't options (like a blackout due to thunderstorm, terrorist bomb, or luser system cracker), then the pilot can do a missed approach and enter a holding pattern (if on instruments) until the situation is resolved or s/he is diverted to another airport, or if flying VFR simply go around and either try the approach again or find an alternate airport. Even in the worst case scenerio turning off the runway lights, even on short final, is hardly life threatening. Hell, its happened to me simply because the lights had been turned on 15 minutes earlier by another landing pilot and the timer shut the lights off with the threshold about fifty feet away from my descending aircraft. Seven quick clicks on the mike and I completed the landing without even a raise in pulse. This sort of thing happens all the time in non-computerized systems, and I will repeat again, it is not life threatening. Adding a computer to the situation doesn't change that, in the least.
So are you suggesting that the guy who registered vivendiuniversalsucks.com was planning to start a multi-national media conglomerate?
No, the person to whome you replied is merely shilling for WIPO and/or Vivendi Universal (who does suck, greatly). Perhaps they have even been paid to, as well known Microsoft astroturfers here and on K5 have been observed doing, or perhaps this person (or a close friend) have a vested interest in either this case in particular or the corrupt process in general.
Or perhaps that person really is as stupid as they appear, as your sarcastic response amply demonstrates their argument to be.
I run both (slack-8/2.4.14 and FBSD 4.4) on my workstation. I find FreeBSD way easier to manage and generally have better performance, more pleasant to administer.
I use both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux (debian testing with some packages from unstable), and have used Redhat, Mandrake, and Suse in the past. All are excellent systems, with their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Your reference to the maintainability of FreeBSD is right on point, it is excellent, and the/ports section is IMHO one of the most elegant approaches to software packaging ("make compiling and installing from source as easy as installing a binary-only package under any other os would be").
Mandrake has the smoothest, easiest install, but is often plagued with bugs early on, and really isn't upgradable without reinstalling (I've tried... painfully). Redhat is comparable, with other tradeoffs not really worth detailing here. Ditto for Suse.
Debian, on the other hand, has a very dated install that is quite demanding, requiring the user to have a fairly high level of competence and familiarity with their hardware prior to installation. Nowhere near as easy as setting up any of the other three GNU/Linux distros mentioned, nor as easy as FreeBSD. However, it is amazingly simple to maintain and upgrade. I have literally installed ancient versions of the distro because those were the disks I had handy, pointed apt to a (much) newer testing or unstable release by editing two lines in one file (/etc/apt/sources.list for the curious), then running two commands at the command line, namely "apt-get update" (update the list of available packages) followed by "apt-get dist-upgrade."
This is like upgrading from Mandrake 7.0 to 7.2 or 8.0, or upgrading FreeBSD from 3.4 to 4.0 or 4.1. In two painless commands, which grab the latest packages from one of the numerous debian package servers and installs them. Never again installing from scratch, even for major upgrades. Security patches? While they make it into testing last of all (a really critical machine such as a firewall should really be running the staid but rock solid "stable" release, for which security patches come out within 24-48 hours, or better yet, some version of *BSD), pulling them down from unstable as source via "apt-get source [package] --compile" followed by a "dpkg -i [packagename].deb" of the.deb created is easy and painless for the impatient.
The point of all this rambling? FreeBSD is great. GNU/Linux comes in many flavors, all of which are generally compatible but each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. For maintainability, stability, and quality Debian is IMHO at the front and very comparable to FreeBSD (in some ways better, in some worse... which is why choice is so marvelous and why I use both).
Others value other aspects of their respectively favorite distributions of course, which again is what makes the freedom of choice we as Free Software users enjoy so marvelous. I toute my own favorite merely to point out that, if maintainability and managability are your primary concern (as they are mine), you may definitely wish to give Debian a gander. Install off the old "stable disks," point sources.list to testing or unstable (I typically point the deb lines at testing and the deb-src lines at unstable, but others have other strategies for finding their comfort zone vis a vis stability vs. bleeding edge fun), run a couple of commands and you're good to go.
That having been said, FreeBSD's source-based "ports" section is the only software distribution approach I've ever seen that in many ways I actually prefer to debian's approach (though the paradigms are in some ways apples and oranges to each other)... a compliment of the highest order to both approaches.
To put it short, Prosperity has mellowed that part of the people that is willing to fight for freedom. It's like 'Freedom for Money'.
Or like being "fattened up" for the slaughter. Cattle one week away from the slaughterhouse are amazingly well fed and (relative to their earlier existence) happy creatures... exactly what is needed for maximizing the production of consumable meat.
Which is exactly what we so-called consumers are to the multinationals clipping our wings and purchasing legislation designed to maximize their short term quarterly profits by stripping away our freedoms.
By the time we are hungary enough to want to exersize those freedoms they will have been long gone for quite some time, and we'll all be feeling like the cattle must, as they stand in their stalls awaiting their execution, the smell of blood and mass death of their kind wafting in the air as a forshadowing of what awaits them in the very near future.
Bin Laden (may his fanatacal, mad soul twitch in fear the short duration of his remaining life) managed to kill thousands. Lets not forget that it has been governments (Khmere Rouge, Taliban, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, etc.) and corporations (British Opium Oligarchs a couple of centuries ago, Bayer AG during the early 20th, etc.) that have enslaved and killed millions. How ironic that we flee in fear of the former, minor threat and in so doing grant unprecented powers, ripe for abuse, to entities bearing remarkable organizational similarities to the latter.
2.4 is viable for production but requires thought
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Linux 2.4.13
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· Score: 2
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I must say that I am getting a little bit leary about using the 2.4.x series in production.
I can't say that I blame you (although your reason of "fast releases" not inspiring confidence is IMHO misguided)... some of the 2.4.x kernels have not been good.
I do use 2.4 in production in several environments, but in order to assure you have a stable kernel you need to do more than just dowload the latest and greatest.
Don't run it on a production system day 1. Wait a few days to see if there are any widespread complaints (they come in quickly if they exist), then test it for a week or two on a development/test system before putting it into a production environment.
Use the -ac series rather than the Linus tree. I use both (some machines use xfs, which won't patch against -ac kernels and therefor requires the Linus tree, but everywhere else I stick to Alan Cox's fork), but have found Alan Cox's kernels to be more stable (and more feature rich) on the whole than the Linus tree. YMMV, and if you follow the procedure outlined above either should be adequate.
If it aint broke, don't fix it. Don't upgrade gratuitously just to have the current revision number displayed in your "uname -a" command.
If it is broke (ie security fixes, such as occurred in 2.4.9 and 2.4.13), then you should upgrade if possible. Of course, if you are unlucky enough to be using a Znyx 4 port (tulip) card like me, you'll be stuck running 2.4.3 until the bugs in the driver get fixed (maybe in 2.4.13?), so upgrading even for security purposes isn't always an option. This sort of cock-up is very rare, but, as in this case, it can happen with some drivers.
I too have been irritated with some of the overreaching changes in a kernel series that is supposed to be stable (2.0 and 2.2. were very solid, some 2.4 kernels can be used in critical environments, but others cannot), but have found the above mentioned precuations/practices sufficient to avoid getting burned by the unstable releases which have appeared from time to time (eg 2.4.11), and 2.4 does
have a number of features that make it very, very useful in many production situations.
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I work with Solaris (7.0, 8.0, etc.), FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux (debian, Mandrake 7.2, and DEC Alpha Red Hat) every day and can firmly attest that both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux are far, far nicer systems on the software side than Solaris for anything one would want to do on a desktop system, and for most things one would want to do on a server.
Fifteen large would probably mean for me a 50" plasma screen, a $4k Pioneer DVD
authoring system, and recycling my existing hardware (since I've just blown the
$15k budget on the other two items), but then that's me.:-)
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If news reports are to be believed, the U.S. mail has already proved to be viable way of spreading two different kinds of anthrax.
Actually, there are three kinds of anthrax (two of which have occurred in the United States, probably delivered by US Mail). However, all are caused by the same type of spores. The difference in only one of how the disease is contracted, i.e. through a cut or scratch in the skin vs. inhilation vs. consumption of diseased meat. Only one type of spore was delivered (though whether all the attacks were of the same strain or not remains to be determined).
You are absolutely correct about the viability of cantagious agents such as smallpox and plague, particularly given the fact that the terrorists are perfectly happy to die in the delivery of the product. Imagine bus boys sprinking a tasteless powder on meals in a restaurant. Several hundred people in a single city infected in a single night. Depending on the incubation period and period of contagion we could be looking at tens of thousands of infections, scattered around the country, before even a hint of the outbreak reaches the CDC.
We are, in many respects, lucky it was only anthrax, which is not contagious between people.
There is reason and evidence enough to be concerned. Panic stricken, no, but concerned, yes. Dismissing the notion of biological attack merely because the idea is unpleasant is silly -- attacks are possible, and delivery on a wide scale using unconventional means (infecting terrorists and having them move about through crowds, spraying infectious substances on doors or escalator handholds, dusting food in restaurants, etc.) are all eminently feasable and potentially deadly.
Some degree of reasonable vigilance and diligence is both constructive and warranted. Denial and blithe dismissal of the possibility are both foolish and unproductive.
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Aviation types (of which I, as a pilot, am one) have an unreasoning, almost supersticious fear of hydrogen dating back to the Hindenberg disaster. Unreasoning because it is uncritical... the hindenberg was painted with a metallic grey/silver compound which, it turns out, was basically rocket fuel. Yes, the derigable was painted with rocket fuel, which was ignited by a spark (probably a result of a static electrical discharg). The rocket fuel "exploded", while the hydrogen burned more slowly.
Indeed, your statement:
Hydrogen gas just doesn't pack as much punch, specatcular disasters caught on tape notwithstanding, as gasoline
catches a part of this truth, though more in passing, namely that a tank of hydrogen is less explosive than a tank of gasoline. Meaning, as you say, that there is less energy / volume in hydrogen gas than there is in petroleum liquid (gasoline). Two approaches to this problem are, as implied in this article and the designer's web page, a more effecient engine or, alternatively, an innovative use of chemistry to allow a hydrogen-rich compound to exist as a more dense liquid/solid at room temperature without binding the hydrogen so tightly as to make it useless as a source of energy.
Hydrogen is safer to store, transport, and use than gasoline, by virtue of the very fact that it packs less energy per unit than gasoline. Safety fears are really just that, fears, based on a widely debunked perception that dramatic explosions such as the hindenberg were a result of hydrogen, when in fact it was a result of painting the damn ship with a compound now used as rocket fuel, a compound much more combustible than hydrogen by orders of magnitude. That debunking aside, there remains the perception that hydrogen is this dangerously explosive gas, when in fact it burns too slowly to even explode with the same intensity that a 1972 Ford Pinto's gas tank would when rear-ended.
... but it was profoundly contiguous with the show and various movies.
1) Cochran was a womanizing drunk, and probably about as un-PC as you can get, who was a world hero despite these character flaws because of his tremendous technical contribution to humanity (inventing warp drive) as well as his social contribution (making first contact). It was a direct quote from his speech, which reflected his character (with all of its flaws).
2) Humans had done some backsliding, as a result of various wars and conflicts. Cochran may or may not have been representative of his time 50 years hence.
3) It is entirely possible that, in 150 years, language nazi's will have been the first against the wall when the revolution came (viva la revolution!)
4) It also provides continuity to the TOS phrase "where no man has gone before"
5) As another noted, it is more accurate ("man" in the generic sense, cf mankind, human, etc.), as they are going where no humans have gone before (but where just about every second rate species in the quadrant has been going for some time).
6) Human progress tends to come in fits and starts and not be uniform across all areas. It is entirely plausible that world peace has been achieved, yet gender neutrality in language (and perhaps even in custom) hasn't yet fully occurred for any number of reasons
(a) world peace includes peace with cultures much more "sexist" by western definitinos than our own, with their influence having perhaps held up perfect gender equality for longer than other forms of equality or justice (e.g. racial and ethnic equality)
(b) those involved in Star Fleet come from a subculture more akin to computer geeks or engineering geeks than MBAs or politicians, and even though the women in that subculture are equal, perhaps they detest PCedness more than most (having proven themselves in the technical field, they could see the use of gender-neutral linquistic contortions as downright insulting or patronizing, for example).
(c) perhaps local ethnicity/culture is playing a role (e.g. the mostly white cowboy "west" vs. the more cosmopolitan regions of the world -- Cochran was in Montana after all).
(7) As to the "white male" thing, perhaps wealth is not yet equally distributed throughout the world, so while peace and social equality have been achieved, economic equality is still being worked on and, in the meantime, the areas of the Earth most able to afford luxuries like a space program tend to be mostly white western nations such as the United States, Europe, or Australia.
(8) (And this is the most likely explanaition) they are trying to depict a more primitive, rough and tumble Federation and so have used audio and visual queues specific to our culture to do so (older, more dated words such as "man" for gender neutral pronouns, a mostly white crew reminiscent of TOS, etc.) It's called artistic license, and I think in this particular episode it worked very well -- I did have the feeling of seeing an early precursor to the UFP, one which still has numerous flaws to iron out before becoming the perfect ST:TNG utopia.
You get the idea. The use of the phrase is perhaps not PC-compliant language, but it is only offensive to a radical few who give the rest of us liberals a really bad name (now I can really relate to Muslim's feelings of frustration in having people like the Taliban being the most vocal examples of their culture/religion), a small cost gladly paid for the continuity it creates and the potential for some interesting cultural and social exploration within humanity, something generally lacking in the other Star Trek series.
What is next: people being offended because they still have the death penalty (the Federation of Kirk's time did, while that of Piccard's time did not, so it makes sense they will. Then there's the whole meat eating thing vs. replicated food in later centuries, etc. Shall we start spray-painting animal rights slogans on the Enterprise set?)
Yep, I know it sounds stupid (and means, for example, that online documentation has more restrictions than the exact same information printed on paper). But there are federal legal precedents for that interpretaiton.
You are, unfortunately, correct. However, one should seriously consider the implications of this relatively new, and terribly misguided, doctrine.
The human brain is essentially a biological computer. In order to comprehend a book, it must first be "read," i.e. the content of book must be copied into the person's brain before it can be interpreted ("understood"). So, essentially, by the logic of our modern justice system (which has its collective intellect buried so far up its own posterior as to make any rational decisions with anything but the most negative effects on real human beings' lives virtually impossible) anything that can be read or comprehended could be subject to such a EULA by an absurd legal loophole which accomplishes exactly the opposite of what the laws, particularly the doctrine of First Sale, intended.
Someone truly needs to bitchslap the people making, arguing, and interpreting our laws. Hard.
Let's see. Several "watershed" events have been mucked with and subtly (or not so subtly) altered by time travelling Feds.
Commander Cisco in the Mid 21st had to usurp the role of a historical figure after said figure was killed defending him in a random street brawl. While he got history back on track, clearly it wasn't perfectly back on track, something Star Fleet noticed (his picture in the history books) and had some pointed questions about.
Captain Piccard and the Borg mucked with humans' first contact with vulcans, and while they were able to get out of the way (for the most part) and let history take its course once the Borg were defeated, it is likely some residue of the battle(s) would have been noticed by the vulcans' science sensors. This could well have led to vulcans being more cautious in their dealings with humans, delaying our exuberant expansion into space and perhaps preventing some of the historical mistakes in the original timeline, such as the Romulan Wars and the botched Klingon first contact (and resulting war).
Of course, the new timeline would encounter all kinds of new mistakes not present in the original history.
An interesting subject for late-night beer-soaked conversation fodder is the resiliance of the timeline, that despite historical changes (some significant) the timeline restores itself in large part. But, like any natural chaotic system, there are points where minor changes can have radical, irrevocable changes that completely alter the timeline, while other areas exhibit more stability and even major changes have relatively little long term effect on the historical outcome.
Theories might include the futility of killing hitler because social inertia would have led to the holocaust in any event (perhaps even under a different historical figure named hitler, as the last name was very common in Germany at the time), versus the idea of bumping into hitler in a cafe in Vienna years earlier, causing him to miss a fateful confrontation with a Jewish merchant that would solidified his anti-semetic attitudes and preventing an entire world war through a simple change in timing.
Extreme stability ("fate") vs. extreme instability. Of course, I think the most interesting theories of time travel involve a combination of the two, reflective of other chaotic systems known in nature where, under the right conditions and at the right time, a butterfly's wings can effect distant weather but under other conditions or times no amount of effort can have any effect on the advance of a storm. Some moments in history are as fragile as a soap bubble, while others as resiliant as bungie cord.
Of course, the advantage of such a hybrid theory of temporal mechanics (semi-chaotic temporal systems) is that it gives radical poetic license to writers of shows like star trek, and allows numerous consistency errors to correct themselves.:-)
Perhaps it was a social/religious reaction to losing a war with humans... emulating the appearance of those who had bested them by a minority through plastic surgery or genetic manipulation. The majority of klingons would consider this a perversion of the highest order, but if that minority had been in a position of political power or influence that would explain their frequent contact with the federation during Kirk's tenure, only to be eradicated once more traditional klingons seized back control of the council at some later date.
This would be similar to a religious group of Kzin (Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, Throne of Ringworld, et al, by Larry Niven) who believed that humans were favored by the Gods, and so cloaked themselves in the skin of dead humans in an effort to decieve the Gods long enough to win a war and conquer earth. Said religion was of course ruthlessly suppressed by the establishment, but that didn't prevent some highly placed Kzin from practicing it and/or believing it at some deep level (e.g. Speaker-to-Animals, later Chmee).
Two hacker favorites -- USA Cable's Sci-Fi Channel, and UPN's hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- would be perfect places to air the spot
And in all seriousness, tonights premier of "Star Trek: Enterprise" would be the most suitable... probably more computer literate people will be watching that show than all of SciFi and Slayer together... at least for the first episode or two. Even then they will only be reaching a fraction of the hackers (in the traditional sense of the words) or network crackers (what they misguidedly call hackers), as geeks are at least as eclectic and diverse as any other group.
How else are the Taliban and Osama "I need a skycraper up my wontan ass" bin Laden going to deliver their Superplague to the masses of consuming westerners, without paper bills in which to embed the Spores?[1] As of yesterday cropdusters are out, you know.
Not to mention positive ATC control, which is what all of the "enhanced bravo" airspaces around our major cities have become now that VFR traffic is forbidden beneath, or above, the old class-b shelf. Barring a major faux pas by ATC (or severe pilot error that would probably result in the scrambling of a couple of F-16s anyway) no plane is going to come anywhere close to a balloon tether.
I've been using GNU/Linux since Linux Version 0.48. Yes, this was around six months after the release of 0.1 and yes, when RMS came it with his "you should rename Linux Lignux" I was as angry, and as vocal, as everyone else.
He has said that his reaction (a natural one, after all at the time he and his project had written almost all of the software we were using, outside of the kernel itself and the X Window System for those few lucky enough to have it working on their hardware at the time) was a mistake, and if he had it to do over again he would have handled it differently.
The FSF's stance on wanting the entire operating system to be called GNU/Linux rather than Linux is that they wish to emphesize the Freedom that the FSF philosophy tries to promote, and that recognition for their (by any measure massive) contribution to Linux, or GNU/Linux if you prefer, is very secondary to that goal.
I have tried to make a habit of refering to the entire collection of software as GNU/Linux not out of some misguided notion of political correctness or to appease RMS as such, but simply as a small courtesy in saying "thanks" to the guys whose software (GNU gcc, file-utils, lib-utils, etc.) and kernel (Linux) has vastly improved the quality of that portion of my life spent in front of a computer and has enabled me to make a very comfortable living. It seems a small request on their part, and the least I can do to give something back.
How is the ports system an improvement over Debian's apt-get system?
First, I am a real fan of Debian, apt-get, and am running debian both at work and at home..deb's and apt-get are IMHO as good as it gets when distributing, managing, and upgrading binary packages.
What the FreeBSD ports system does which is so cool is get rid of the idea of distributing binaries at all. Instead, you go into the subdirectory corresponding to the program you want and type "make install." Based on the skeleton files present the program source(s) and any patches are downloaded, applied, the program is then compiled against whatever libraries you have on your system (no more "this binary requires glibc version Y but you only have X"), and installs the compiled binary. Furthermore, doing so is as easy as installing a.deb or.rpm, meaning relatively inexperienced users can do this. Dependencies are simpler (you only need what is required to compile the program, and such dependencies are also automatically downloaded and compiled at the same time. You do not need particular software versions based on what the binary was compiled against.)
Basically, it combines "apt-get source --compile; dpkg -i [new-packages].deb" into "make install," and simplifies the package management/dependency management.
BSD ports is IMHO the only software management system that in some ways exceeds even debian's approach, but keep in mind there are conceptual differences to the approach (all things source vs. precompiled binaries), so it isn't entirely an apples to apples comparison.
You (in general) don't know what might/might not have happened, and to tell you the truth all the 'Monday Morning Coaching' that's going on is slightly disgusting.
I agreed with all of your points until you said this. Monday Morning Quarterbacking is exactly what is needed now, to analyze and ponder where we made mistakes, what tradeoffs we need to make to thwart these sorts of murderous people in the future, and so on.
The argument that a plane full of well-armed passengers might have had better luck against an armed hijacker vs. a more stringent effort to keep arms off the plane is a valid one to make. I don't agree with it (everyone could have carried on 4" knives up until last Tuesday, and some passengers almost certainly did, at least in the form of a swiss army knife, yet the results were inconclusive). Everyone having a gun in a pressurized aircraft is more akin to everyone having an H-Bomb strapped to their back... the only real deterrence is that of mass destruction of the thing is fired while in flight, a deterrent which probably doesn't do a whole hell of a lot to stop a suicide terrorist.
The answers aren't easy or obvious, but decrying discussion as "disgusting" is IMHO not at all helpful.
They shouldn't do this for the same reason they shouldn't be installing cable tv services, or telephone services, cell phone networks, or movie theaters: these are non-essential services which the private sector is willing and able to provide, and which governments have little experience or expertise with.
Au contrair.
This is exactly the kind of thing government should provide. Your libertarian visions of utopia aside, the private sector isn't providing reliable broadband to end users. I and my employer have both lost DSL service, with no warning. A colleague of mine has lost his DSL service twice, from two different, unrelated providors going out of business, again with no warning.
Internet connectivity has arguably become as critical as having a telephone, perhaps even more so (somewhere between as critical as having a road to your house and having a telephone for many people, myself included).
Worse, the physical cable is an example of a so-called "natural monopoly," in which it is unfeasable and arguably counter-productive to have ten or fifteen competing cable/fibre trunks going to your house. Just as it is absurd to build ten expressways along the same corridor so they can "compete," or several canals along the same route of travel between lakes or rivers.
Whether or not government should provide full ISP services is I think an open question (there again, private ISPs are arbitrarilly disconnecting people based on allegations of wrongdoing with no due process, no standards of evidence much less proof, and no recourse... often putting small businesses out of business in the process, so the argument that private enterprise isn't living up to basic, acceptable standards carries some degree of weight), but as for providing physical infrastructure I think there is no question that the private, pseudo-monopoly and ad-hoc regulation is an abysmal failure. Following the demonstrated success of the highway system (as opposed to, say, the struggle and arguable failure of America's private railway system, which only serves some population centers and has, during tough times, left entire industries and regions completely out in the cold, without any sort of rail service whatsoever) for the infrastructure and "last mile" makes perfect sense.
Private ISPs could use the existing infrastructure to provide higher level services (email, DNS, web hosting, USENET news, etc.), with each competitor gaining access to the public infrastructure under the same, fair, competetive conditions. Far better than having Ameritech own the infrastructure and manipulate ever increasing, and ever more complex, regulatory systems and their accompanying loopholes to drive competitors, who do not own the underlying infrastructure, out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't lable this funny, it couldnt be closer to the truth. I spend whatever time I'm not behind a computer in the so called "punk" scene of WI and it makes me want to cry.
... just more difficult to achieve than one thinks at first glance, which is true of most every ideal.
Many of us miss the early days of punk and the hard core, in-your-face rebellion and rejection of conformity it represented, but lets be honest. When we were 16 (or 20, or whatever) and in that scene the thirty-somethings were remeniscing about their rebellious rock'n'roll days in just the same fashion, and were writing off both punk and rock as "fashion."
I too miss punk the way it was, but its unfair to label all of today's youth (including those whose taste in music resembles our own) as conformist. Many of them are as ernest about their rebellion (and nonconformity) as we were, and probably aren't looking any more pathetic or foolish to us than we did to others at that age. In the end the spirit of rage and discontent is in the heart, hormones, and (to some degree) youthfulness more than the music, the clothing, or the slang. And lets not forget that, even in its hay-day, punk had conformity within its own borders to some degree, even if such was defined more in terms of what it was not (not conforming to the lame world outside) than what it was. Such is true of any social group greater than two, but it does not make the need, desire, or ideal of rejecting cultural conformity any less legitimate
Doubly so when an industrial cartel like the RIAA incorporates said ideals into their own marketing drivel, something the punks (and the rappers that came after them, and the goths that came after them, ad infinatum) could do little about.
Wasn't that the beauty of the Internet? To give each and every person a place to express their opinions and ideas, regardless of just how silly it is?
Yes, and another part of the Internet's beauty is our ability, and opportunity, to openly mock their silliness. I find the people rampantly flaming slashdot for presenting this amusing tidbit (and face it, it is amusing to see self-righteous people in a tizzy) just as pathetic as the flaming of those individuals who, as others have quite rightly pointed out, are simply excersizing their own discretion and (at least for the moment) are not trying to enforce their views on the rest of us (yet).
Why did I add the comments in (parenthesis)? Because groups like this often start out as self-help organizations, then quickly grow into political forces which do try to impose their views on the rest of us. MADD comes to mind (Mother Against Drunk Driving, no relation to DAMM, or Drunks Against Mad Mothers[1]) as an example. Being against drunk driving is one thing, seeking more stringent punishments and more conservative definitions of being drunk another, and successfully lobbying for a drinking age of 21 years (even though our youung people can vote and serve in the military at 18) another still. They are a group who went far beyond mutual comfort and support, and then beyond simply lobbying against drunken driving, and have successfully lobbied to increase the drinking age to IMHO an absurdly high age (making it the most disregarded law in America I suspect). Many of them wanted to take it a step further (and have, at the local level), making entire communities and regions "dry." Talk about imposing one's word view on everyone else, willing or otherwise.
For these reasons, among others, I do find open mockery, resistence, and rebuttals to the views of any self-righteous group (even those I happen to agree with) to be both healthy and important. Even flames, if that is the only way an opponent is able to express theirself, much as I find flamage to be generaly unaesthetic. If only there had been similiar rebuttals presented against MADD before they single handed criminalized alcohol consumption for every adult in America between the ages of 18 and 21.[2]
[1]DAMM is a joke, AFAIK there is no such organization in reality
[2]Excluding military personnel, who can drink on base after enlistment (but not in civilian bars AFAIK).
And what code do you hack? I'm getting rather tired of self-important Slashdot posters who feel that these slackers should go back in the kitchen and bake some pie. We, the coders of various open source and/or free software applications write the code for our own reasons. If you don't like the code or don't feel that it's up to your standards/schedules, then don't use it. We'll be just as happy either way.
Thank you.
As one who uses debian (testing + some unstable packages compiled from source) at both work and home extensively I, for one, appreciate all that the debian developers do, and the fact that they are so precise (some might say pedantic) about software and documentation licenses. In this way I, as a system administrator, have a very easy time keeping my employer compliant to any and all licenses. Come audit time, that is a very nice feeling indeed.
So yes, we who work in the real world with Free Software, Open Source, and commercial products in fact benefit very directly and very immediately from such vigilence, and I for one appreciate it greatly.
Yes, catching this faux pas earlier in the release cycle would have been nice, but for whatever reason that did not happen. Oh well. So the packages move from main to non-free. They're still available if they're really needed, but for those of us in commercial environments using GNU/Linux for something other than hobbiest tinkering such distinctions are well founded and important, and having that explicit division between free (as in freedom) and non-free (as in restricted in some significant fashion) is immensly helpful, even critical.
Most of us have always been like me: when we comment, we acknowledge our association with MS,
... excuse me, cosupport, of a bill that would have banned most free software, not to mention other activities by the RIAA and MPAA as well) of why they are trying to hijack the internet and sqelch the "unorderly" information that has abounded since the formation of the Internet and in particular the world wide web, empowering anyone to speak out and share their opinion and whatever information they may have in a very organic and most unorderly fashion.
ahem. Some of you acknowledge your bias, however many, many of you do not. So much so, and on so many occasions, that Microsoft astroturfing has become a cliche on slashdot, kuro5hin, and numerous other forums.
We need to protect that orderly flow of information.
Which underscores Microsoft's philosophy (and to be fair, others. Let's not forget Disney's cosponsorship
Please, spare us the insult to our intelligence by trying to rewrite Microsoft's most recent history in its interaction with this site, the free software community, and the internet at large. Such flimsy attempts to mislead the public are only amusing for so long and I, for one, grow weary of such nonsense.
An aircraft piston engine typically needs to completely overhauled every 20,000 hours of operation to ensure reliability.
:-) Airframes typically outlast multiple engines if they're well cared for, particularly if they're hangared (which mine is).
Very interesting post, but your decimal point is one off. My Lycombing O-360 (180 hp) engine has a TBO of 2000 hours, though I wish it were 20,000.
When it comes time to overhaul or replace my engine I'd love to replace it with a hydrogen fuel cell system (which is far less explosive than 60 gallons of 100LL), assuming I could get comparable performance from it. Not likely, of course, but one can dream.
Al Barakaat's founder, Shaykh Ahme Nur Jimale, is closely linked to Usama bin Laden.
If we believe this, we're right to take action. But direct action.
Which we undoubtably will. But lets finish with Afghanistan first. Folks, get over yourself. America is at war, really at war, not just scratching an itch. For the first time since 1945. Bitch and moan all you like, but places like Afghanistan and Somalia, which btw is also know for having numerous Al Qaida camps, will be taken down and the terrorists killed. Wail and moan all you like, it will change nothing. We're through kowtowing to every wannabe critic for being the sole superpower and not magically creating the perfect world according to 6 billion different definitions of the above. We were attacked, and we will exterminate our attackers, wherever they hide, wherever they are given sanctuary. And if you are giving them sanctuary, then you too shall suffer. Get over it, and be glad that, for now, all we've stopped are wire transfers.
And I say this as a liberal, generally very harsh critic of our government. Imagine how the moderates and the conservatives feel, right now. We are relentless, and when angered we are ruthless in ferretting out and killing the enemy. Since the events on 9/11 we are very, very angry, and countries like Somalia and Afghanistan, that harbor terrorists, are going down. One after another, like dominos, until we have accomplished our task.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled, anti-American bashing, bitching, and moaning, brought to you by the First Amendment coupled with a large dose of absolute cluelessness and knee-jerk "I'm politically informed yes I am" wannabe parrots.
Someone switches off the landing lights via the computer systems.
As a pilot who has experienced this sort of thing (through other causes) I can say with certainty that any competent pilot can either switch the runway lights back on or go missed (or both if their not comfortable with the situation). Most airports, even the large ones, have pilot controlled lighting (key the mike n times on the CTAF/Tower Frequency). If the pilot is already in the flair then s/he can already see the runway with the plane's landing/taxi lights, and unless visibility is really, really bad (in which case they can go missed) they can land at that point without the runway lights being on at all.
If there really aren't options (like a blackout due to thunderstorm, terrorist bomb, or luser system cracker), then the pilot can do a missed approach and enter a holding pattern (if on instruments) until the situation is resolved or s/he is diverted to another airport, or if flying VFR simply go around and either try the approach again or find an alternate airport. Even in the worst case scenerio turning off the runway lights, even on short final, is hardly life threatening. Hell, its happened to me simply because the lights had been turned on 15 minutes earlier by another landing pilot and the timer shut the lights off with the threshold about fifty feet away from my descending aircraft. Seven quick clicks on the mike and I completed the landing without even a raise in pulse. This sort of thing happens all the time in non-computerized systems, and I will repeat again, it is not life threatening. Adding a computer to the situation doesn't change that, in the least.
So are you suggesting that the guy who registered vivendiuniversalsucks.com was planning to start a multi-national media conglomerate?
No, the person to whome you replied is merely shilling for WIPO and/or Vivendi Universal (who does suck, greatly). Perhaps they have even been paid to, as well known Microsoft astroturfers here and on K5 have been observed doing, or perhaps this person (or a close friend) have a vested interest in either this case in particular or the corrupt process in general.
Or perhaps that person really is as stupid as they appear, as your sarcastic response amply demonstrates their argument to be.
I run both (slack-8/2.4.14 and FBSD 4.4) on my workstation. I find FreeBSD way easier to manage and generally have better performance, more pleasant to administer.
/ports section is IMHO one of the most elegant approaches to software packaging ("make compiling and installing from source as easy as installing a binary-only package under any other os would be").
... painfully). Redhat is comparable, with other tradeoffs not really worth detailing here. Ditto for Suse.
.deb created is easy and painless for the impatient.
... which is why choice is so marvelous and why I use both).
... a compliment of the highest order to both approaches.
I use both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux (debian testing with some packages from unstable), and have used Redhat, Mandrake, and Suse in the past. All are excellent systems, with their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Your reference to the maintainability of FreeBSD is right on point, it is excellent, and the
Mandrake has the smoothest, easiest install, but is often plagued with bugs early on, and really isn't upgradable without reinstalling (I've tried
Debian, on the other hand, has a very dated install that is quite demanding, requiring the user to have a fairly high level of competence and familiarity with their hardware prior to installation. Nowhere near as easy as setting up any of the other three GNU/Linux distros mentioned, nor as easy as FreeBSD. However, it is amazingly simple to maintain and upgrade. I have literally installed ancient versions of the distro because those were the disks I had handy, pointed apt to a (much) newer testing or unstable release by editing two lines in one file (/etc/apt/sources.list for the curious), then running two commands at the command line, namely "apt-get update" (update the list of available packages) followed by "apt-get dist-upgrade."
This is like upgrading from Mandrake 7.0 to 7.2 or 8.0, or upgrading FreeBSD from 3.4 to 4.0 or 4.1. In two painless commands, which grab the latest packages from one of the numerous debian package servers and installs them. Never again installing from scratch, even for major upgrades. Security patches? While they make it into testing last of all (a really critical machine such as a firewall should really be running the staid but rock solid "stable" release, for which security patches come out within 24-48 hours, or better yet, some version of *BSD), pulling them down from unstable as source via "apt-get source [package] --compile" followed by a "dpkg -i [packagename].deb" of the
The point of all this rambling? FreeBSD is great. GNU/Linux comes in many flavors, all of which are generally compatible but each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. For maintainability, stability, and quality Debian is IMHO at the front and very comparable to FreeBSD (in some ways better, in some worse
Others value other aspects of their respectively favorite distributions of course, which again is what makes the freedom of choice we as Free Software users enjoy so marvelous. I toute my own favorite merely to point out that, if maintainability and managability are your primary concern (as they are mine), you may definitely wish to give Debian a gander. Install off the old "stable disks," point sources.list to testing or unstable (I typically point the deb lines at testing and the deb-src lines at unstable, but others have other strategies for finding their comfort zone vis a vis stability vs. bleeding edge fun), run a couple of commands and you're good to go.
That having been said, FreeBSD's source-based "ports" section is the only software distribution approach I've ever seen that in many ways I actually prefer to debian's approach (though the paradigms are in some ways apples and oranges to each other)
To put it short, Prosperity has mellowed that part of the people that is willing to fight for freedom. It's like 'Freedom for Money'.
... exactly what is needed for maximizing the production of consumable meat.
Or like being "fattened up" for the slaughter. Cattle one week away from the slaughterhouse are amazingly well fed and (relative to their earlier existence) happy creatures
Which is exactly what we so-called consumers are to the multinationals clipping our wings and purchasing legislation designed to maximize their short term quarterly profits by stripping away our freedoms.
By the time we are hungary enough to want to exersize those freedoms they will have been long gone for quite some time, and we'll all be feeling like the cattle must, as they stand in their stalls awaiting their execution, the smell of blood and mass death of their kind wafting in the air as a forshadowing of what awaits them in the very near future.
Bin Laden (may his fanatacal, mad soul twitch in fear the short duration of his remaining life) managed to kill thousands. Lets not forget that it has been governments (Khmere Rouge, Taliban, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, etc.) and corporations (British Opium Oligarchs a couple of centuries ago, Bayer AG during the early 20th, etc.) that have enslaved and killed millions. How ironic that we flee in fear of the former, minor threat and in so doing grant unprecented powers, ripe for abuse, to entities bearing remarkable organizational similarities to the latter.
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I must say that I am getting a little bit leary about using the 2.4.x series in production.
I can't say that I blame you (although your reason of "fast releases" not inspiring confidence is IMHO misguided)
I do use 2.4 in production in several environments, but in order to assure you have a stable kernel you need to do more than just dowload the latest and greatest.
I too have been irritated with some of the overreaching changes in a kernel series that is supposed to be stable (2.0 and 2.2. were very solid, some 2.4 kernels can be used in critical environments, but others cannot), but have found the above mentioned precuations/practices sufficient to avoid getting burned by the unstable releases which have appeared from time to time (eg 2.4.11), and 2.4 does
have a number of features that make it very, very useful in many production situations.
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I work with Solaris (7.0, 8.0, etc.), FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux (debian, Mandrake 7.2, and DEC Alpha Red Hat) every day and can firmly attest that both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux are far, far nicer systems on the software side than Solaris for anything one would want to do on a desktop system, and for most things one would want to do on a server.
Fifteen large would probably mean for me a 50" plasma screen, a $4k Pioneer DVD
authoring system, and recycling my existing hardware (since I've just blown the
$15k budget on the other two items), but then that's me.
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If news reports are to be believed, the U.S. mail has already proved to be viable way of spreading two different kinds of anthrax.
Actually, there are three kinds of anthrax (two of which have occurred in the United States, probably delivered by US Mail). However, all are caused by the same type of spores. The difference in only one of how the disease is contracted, i.e. through a cut or scratch in the skin vs. inhilation vs. consumption of diseased meat. Only one type of spore was delivered (though whether all the attacks were of the same strain or not remains to be determined).
You are absolutely correct about the viability of cantagious agents such as smallpox and plague, particularly given the fact that the terrorists are perfectly happy to die in the delivery of the product. Imagine bus boys sprinking a tasteless powder on meals in a restaurant. Several hundred people in a single city infected in a single night. Depending on the incubation period and period of contagion we could be looking at tens of thousands of infections, scattered around the country, before even a hint of the outbreak reaches the CDC.
We are, in many respects, lucky it was only anthrax, which is not contagious between people.
There is reason and evidence enough to be concerned. Panic stricken, no, but concerned, yes. Dismissing the notion of biological attack merely because the idea is unpleasant is silly -- attacks are possible, and delivery on a wide scale using unconventional means (infecting terrorists and having them move about through crowds, spraying infectious substances on doors or escalator handholds, dusting food in restaurants, etc.) are all eminently feasable and potentially deadly.
Some degree of reasonable vigilance and diligence is both constructive and warranted. Denial and blithe dismissal of the possibility are both foolish and unproductive.
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Aviation types (of which I, as a pilot, am one) have an unreasoning, almost supersticious fear of hydrogen dating back to the Hindenberg disaster. Unreasoning because it is uncritical ... the hindenberg was painted with a metallic grey/silver compound which, it turns out, was basically rocket fuel. Yes, the derigable was painted with rocket fuel, which was ignited by a spark (probably a result of a static electrical discharg). The rocket fuel "exploded", while the hydrogen burned more slowly.
Indeed, your statement:
Hydrogen gas just doesn't pack as much punch, specatcular disasters caught on tape notwithstanding, as gasoline
catches a part of this truth, though more in passing, namely that a tank of hydrogen is less explosive than a tank of gasoline. Meaning, as you say, that there is less energy / volume in hydrogen gas than there is in petroleum liquid (gasoline). Two approaches to this problem are, as implied in this article and the designer's web page, a more effecient engine or, alternatively, an innovative use of chemistry to allow a hydrogen-rich compound to exist as a more dense liquid/solid at room temperature without binding the hydrogen so tightly as to make it useless as a source of energy.
Hydrogen is safer to store, transport, and use than gasoline, by virtue of the very fact that it packs less energy per unit than gasoline. Safety fears are really just that, fears, based on a widely debunked perception that dramatic explosions such as the hindenberg were a result of hydrogen, when in fact it was a result of painting the damn ship with a compound now used as rocket fuel, a compound much more combustible than hydrogen by orders of magnitude. That debunking aside, there remains the perception that hydrogen is this dangerously explosive gas, when in fact it burns too slowly to even explode with the same intensity that a 1972 Ford Pinto's gas tank would when rear-ended.
... but it was profoundly contiguous with the show and various movies.
1) Cochran was a womanizing drunk, and probably about as un-PC as you can get, who was a world hero despite these character flaws because of his tremendous technical contribution to humanity (inventing warp drive) as well as his social contribution (making first contact). It was a direct quote from his speech, which reflected his character (with all of its flaws).
2) Humans had done some backsliding, as a result of various wars and conflicts. Cochran may or may not have been representative of his time 50 years hence.
3) It is entirely possible that, in 150 years, language nazi's will have been the first against the wall when the revolution came (viva la revolution!)
4) It also provides continuity to the TOS phrase "where no man has gone before"
5) As another noted, it is more accurate ("man" in the generic sense, cf mankind, human, etc.), as they are going where no humans have gone before (but where just about every second rate species in the quadrant has been going for some time).
6) Human progress tends to come in fits and starts and not be uniform across all areas. It is entirely plausible that world peace has been achieved, yet gender neutrality in language (and perhaps even in custom) hasn't yet fully occurred for any number of reasons
(a) world peace includes peace with cultures much more "sexist" by western definitinos than our own, with their influence having perhaps held up perfect gender equality for longer than other forms of equality or justice (e.g. racial and ethnic equality)
(b) those involved in Star Fleet come from a subculture more akin to computer geeks or engineering geeks than MBAs or politicians, and even though the women in that subculture are equal, perhaps they detest PCedness more than most (having proven themselves in the technical field, they could see the use of gender-neutral linquistic contortions as downright insulting or patronizing, for example).
(c) perhaps local ethnicity/culture is playing a role (e.g. the mostly white cowboy "west" vs. the more cosmopolitan regions of the world -- Cochran was in Montana after all).
(7) As to the "white male" thing, perhaps wealth is not yet equally distributed throughout the world, so while peace and social equality have been achieved, economic equality is still being worked on and, in the meantime, the areas of the Earth most able to afford luxuries like a space program tend to be mostly white western nations such as the United States, Europe, or Australia.
(8) (And this is the most likely explanaition) they are trying to depict a more primitive, rough and tumble Federation and so have used audio and visual queues specific to our culture to do so (older, more dated words such as "man" for gender neutral pronouns, a mostly white crew reminiscent of TOS, etc.) It's called artistic license, and I think in this particular episode it worked very well -- I did have the feeling of seeing an early precursor to the UFP, one which still has numerous flaws to iron out before becoming the perfect ST:TNG utopia.
You get the idea. The use of the phrase is perhaps not PC-compliant language, but it is only offensive to a radical few who give the rest of us liberals a really bad name (now I can really relate to Muslim's feelings of frustration in having people like the Taliban being the most vocal examples of their culture/religion), a small cost gladly paid for the continuity it creates and the potential for some interesting cultural and social exploration within humanity, something generally lacking in the other Star Trek series.
What is next: people being offended because they still have the death penalty (the Federation of Kirk's time did, while that of Piccard's time did not, so it makes sense they will. Then there's the whole meat eating thing vs. replicated food in later centuries, etc. Shall we start spray-painting animal rights slogans on the Enterprise set?)
Yep, I know it sounds stupid (and means, for example, that online documentation has more restrictions than the exact same information printed on paper). But there are federal legal precedents for that interpretaiton.
You are, unfortunately, correct. However, one should seriously consider the implications of this relatively new, and terribly misguided, doctrine.
The human brain is essentially a biological computer. In order to comprehend a book, it must first be "read," i.e. the content of book must be copied into the person's brain before it can be interpreted ("understood"). So, essentially, by the logic of our modern justice system (which has its collective intellect buried so far up its own posterior as to make any rational decisions with anything but the most negative effects on real human beings' lives virtually impossible) anything that can be read or comprehended could be subject to such a EULA by an absurd legal loophole which accomplishes exactly the opposite of what the laws, particularly the doctrine of First Sale, intended.
Someone truly needs to bitchslap the people making, arguing, and interpreting our laws. Hard.
Let's see. Several "watershed" events have been mucked with and subtly (or not so subtly) altered by time travelling Feds.
:-)
Commander Cisco in the Mid 21st had to usurp the role of a historical figure after said figure was killed defending him in a random street brawl. While he got history back on track, clearly it wasn't perfectly back on track, something Star Fleet noticed (his picture in the history books) and had some pointed questions about.
Captain Piccard and the Borg mucked with humans' first contact with vulcans, and while they were able to get out of the way (for the most part) and let history take its course once the Borg were defeated, it is likely some residue of the battle(s) would have been noticed by the vulcans' science sensors. This could well have led to vulcans being more cautious in their dealings with humans, delaying our exuberant expansion into space and perhaps preventing some of the historical mistakes in the original timeline, such as the Romulan Wars and the botched Klingon first contact (and resulting war).
Of course, the new timeline would encounter all kinds of new mistakes not present in the original history.
An interesting subject for late-night beer-soaked conversation fodder is the resiliance of the timeline, that despite historical changes (some significant) the timeline restores itself in large part. But, like any natural chaotic system, there are points where minor changes can have radical, irrevocable changes that completely alter the timeline, while other areas exhibit more stability and even major changes have relatively little long term effect on the historical outcome.
Theories might include the futility of killing hitler because social inertia would have led to the holocaust in any event (perhaps even under a different historical figure named hitler, as the last name was very common in Germany at the time), versus the idea of bumping into hitler in a cafe in Vienna years earlier, causing him to miss a fateful confrontation with a Jewish merchant that would solidified his anti-semetic attitudes and preventing an entire world war through a simple change in timing.
Extreme stability ("fate") vs. extreme instability. Of course, I think the most interesting theories of time travel involve a combination of the two, reflective of other chaotic systems known in nature where, under the right conditions and at the right time, a butterfly's wings can effect distant weather but under other conditions or times no amount of effort can have any effect on the advance of a storm. Some moments in history are as fragile as a soap bubble, while others as resiliant as bungie cord.
Of course, the advantage of such a hybrid theory of temporal mechanics (semi-chaotic temporal systems) is that it gives radical poetic license to writers of shows like star trek, and allows numerous consistency errors to correct themselves.
Interesting idea.
... emulating the appearance of those who had bested them by a minority through plastic surgery or genetic manipulation. The majority of klingons would consider this a perversion of the highest order, but if that minority had been in a position of political power or influence that would explain their frequent contact with the federation during Kirk's tenure, only to be eradicated once more traditional klingons seized back control of the council at some later date.
Perhaps it was a social/religious reaction to losing a war with humans
This would be similar to a religious group of Kzin (Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, Throne of Ringworld, et al, by Larry Niven) who believed that humans were favored by the Gods, and so cloaked themselves in the skin of dead humans in an effort to decieve the Gods long enough to win a war and conquer earth. Said religion was of course ruthlessly suppressed by the establishment, but that didn't prevent some highly placed Kzin from practicing it and/or believing it at some deep level (e.g. Speaker-to-Animals, later Chmee).
Two hacker favorites -- USA Cable's Sci-Fi Channel, and UPN's hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- would be perfect places to air the spot
... probably more computer literate people will be watching that show than all of SciFi and Slayer together ... at least for the first episode or two. Even then they will only be reaching a fraction of the hackers (in the traditional sense of the words) or network crackers (what they misguidedly call hackers), as geeks are at least as eclectic and diverse as any other group.
And in all seriousness, tonights premier of "Star Trek: Enterprise" would be the most suitable
We need paper money!
How else are the Taliban and Osama "I need a skycraper up my wontan ass" bin Laden going to deliver their Superplague to the masses of consuming westerners, without paper bills in which to embed the Spores?[1] As of yesterday cropdusters are out, you know.
[1]c.f. The White Plague, by Frank Herbert
A NOTAM advisory maybe?
Not to mention positive ATC control, which is what all of the "enhanced bravo" airspaces around our major cities have become now that VFR traffic is forbidden beneath, or above, the old class-b shelf. Barring a major faux pas by ATC (or severe pilot error that would probably result in the scrambling of a couple of F-16s anyway) no plane is going to come anywhere close to a balloon tether.
I've been using GNU/Linux since Linux Version 0.48. Yes, this was around six months after the release of 0.1 and yes, when RMS came it with his "you should rename Linux Lignux" I was as angry, and as vocal, as everyone else.
He has said that his reaction (a natural one, after all at the time he and his project had written almost all of the software we were using, outside of the kernel itself and the X Window System for those few lucky enough to have it working on their hardware at the time) was a mistake, and if he had it to do over again he would have handled it differently.
The FSF's stance on wanting the entire operating system to be called GNU/Linux rather than Linux is that they wish to emphesize the Freedom that the FSF philosophy tries to promote, and that recognition for their (by any measure massive) contribution to Linux, or GNU/Linux if you prefer, is very secondary to that goal.
I have tried to make a habit of refering to the entire collection of software as GNU/Linux not out of some misguided notion of political correctness or to appease RMS as such, but simply as a small courtesy in saying "thanks" to the guys whose software (GNU gcc, file-utils, lib-utils, etc.) and kernel (Linux) has vastly improved the quality of that portion of my life spent in front of a computer and has enabled me to make a very comfortable living. It seems a small request on their part, and the least I can do to give something back.
How is the ports system an improvement over Debian's apt-get system?
.deb's and apt-get are IMHO as good as it gets when distributing, managing, and upgrading binary packages.
.deb or .rpm, meaning relatively inexperienced users can do this. Dependencies are simpler (you only need what is required to compile the program, and such dependencies are also automatically downloaded and compiled at the same time. You do not need particular software versions based on what the binary was compiled against.)
First, I am a real fan of Debian, apt-get, and am running debian both at work and at home.
What the FreeBSD ports system does which is so cool is get rid of the idea of distributing binaries at all. Instead, you go into the subdirectory corresponding to the program you want and type "make install." Based on the skeleton files present the program source(s) and any patches are downloaded, applied, the program is then compiled against whatever libraries you have on your system (no more "this binary requires glibc version Y but you only have X"), and installs the compiled binary. Furthermore, doing so is as easy as installing a
Basically, it combines "apt-get source --compile; dpkg -i [new-packages].deb" into "make install," and simplifies the package management/dependency management.
BSD ports is IMHO the only software management system that in some ways exceeds even debian's approach, but keep in mind there are conceptual differences to the approach (all things source vs. precompiled binaries), so it isn't entirely an apples to apples comparison.
You (in general) don't know what might/might not have happened, and to tell you the truth all the 'Monday Morning Coaching' that's going on is slightly disgusting.
... the only real deterrence is that of mass destruction of the thing is fired while in flight, a deterrent which probably doesn't do a whole hell of a lot to stop a suicide terrorist.
I agreed with all of your points until you said this. Monday Morning Quarterbacking is exactly what is needed now, to analyze and ponder where we made mistakes, what tradeoffs we need to make to thwart these sorts of murderous people in the future, and so on.
The argument that a plane full of well-armed passengers might have had better luck against an armed hijacker vs. a more stringent effort to keep arms off the plane is a valid one to make. I don't agree with it (everyone could have carried on 4" knives up until last Tuesday, and some passengers almost certainly did, at least in the form of a swiss army knife, yet the results were inconclusive). Everyone having a gun in a pressurized aircraft is more akin to everyone having an H-Bomb strapped to their back
The answers aren't easy or obvious, but decrying discussion as "disgusting" is IMHO not at all helpful.
They shouldn't do this for the same reason they shouldn't be installing cable tv services, or telephone services, cell phone networks, or movie theaters: these are non-essential services which the private sector is willing and able to provide, and which governments have little experience or expertise with.
... often putting small businesses out of business in the process, so the argument that private enterprise isn't living up to basic, acceptable standards carries some degree of weight), but as for providing physical infrastructure I think there is no question that the private, pseudo-monopoly and ad-hoc regulation is an abysmal failure. Following the demonstrated success of the highway system (as opposed to, say, the struggle and arguable failure of America's private railway system, which only serves some population centers and has, during tough times, left entire industries and regions completely out in the cold, without any sort of rail service whatsoever) for the infrastructure and "last mile" makes perfect sense.
Au contrair.
This is exactly the kind of thing government should provide. Your libertarian visions of utopia aside, the private sector isn't providing reliable broadband to end users. I and my employer have both lost DSL service, with no warning. A colleague of mine has lost his DSL service twice, from two different, unrelated providors going out of business, again with no warning.
Internet connectivity has arguably become as critical as having a telephone, perhaps even more so (somewhere between as critical as having a road to your house and having a telephone for many people, myself included).
Worse, the physical cable is an example of a so-called "natural monopoly," in which it is unfeasable and arguably counter-productive to have ten or fifteen competing cable/fibre trunks going to your house. Just as it is absurd to build ten expressways along the same corridor so they can "compete," or several canals along the same route of travel between lakes or rivers.
Whether or not government should provide full ISP services is I think an open question (there again, private ISPs are arbitrarilly disconnecting people based on allegations of wrongdoing with no due process, no standards of evidence much less proof, and no recourse
Private ISPs could use the existing infrastructure to provide higher level services (email, DNS, web hosting, USENET news, etc.), with each competitor gaining access to the public infrastructure under the same, fair, competetive conditions. Far better than having Ameritech own the infrastructure and manipulate ever increasing, and ever more complex, regulatory systems and their accompanying loopholes to drive competitors, who do not own the underlying infrastructure, out of business.