You know, there's a difference between a socialist government and a communist economy.
Canada and France are two examples of countries that have had socialist governments on and off for years. But these are not Communist countries. There's a big difference.
And how about Cuba - sure, not much for freedom...
Please re-read that sentence. Then read it again. Repeat as necessary until what you just said sinks in.
While this is changing sometime in the near future, IIRC one of the prerequisites for obtaining a.ca domain is that you be an organization with offices in more than one province.
The.ca domain has not yet been deregulated like the.com,.net, and.org TLDs have. Therefore, a.ca domain would be a pretty good indicator that the site is in fact based in Canada. Of course, there are exceptions, like www.yahoo.ca
IANAL, but AFAIK, to win a libel suit, you have to show that the defendant clearly caused you the loss of your livelihood or a potential livelihood.
For instance, suppose I was Tony Blair. I could say that Prince Charles is the biggest fucking dick in the world and that he is incompetent of representing England as her Head of State.
However, since these statements (while inflammatory) do not in any way ruin Chuck's chances of being King, he has no case against me.
Turn it around however, if Charlie said the same of Tony, the Rt.Hon. Mr. Blair would indeed have a very serious chance of success in a libel suit against the Prince (assuming that there isn't some royal exemption or something). The reason here is that Prince Charles' comments bear weight in the eyes of the public and they influence opinion. That opinion is later a factor in determining whether or not Mr. Blair gets to be PM or not.
So, in a nutshell, unless you can prove that the DVD-CCA's comments are specifically targeted at you, unfounded and have caused irreparable harm to your career, then you'll have to continue sailing about in your rubber dinghy. =)
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Re:Who said I am at war with the grocery stores?
on
Focusing Audio
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· Score: 2
I love that phrase "Class War".
What a perfect way to conjure up feelings of fear and hatred while issuing a call to arms for anyone that's ever felt knocked down a notch in our society.
It's such a clever use of words, but it belies the duplicitousness of the people who use it.
By conjouring up the image of an invisible barrier that keeps individuals from accomplishing their goals, you provide them with a convenient scapegoat on which to relieve all their frustrations. Hence the use of that dirty word "class". You have no control over what "class" you belong to, because it is forged into your being the day you are born by the evil powers that be. It also quietly discredits the notion that you have control over your own life and determine your own destiny.
Then there's the use of "War". Wow. There is no more powerful imagery than that of horrific destruction and the senseless slaughter of precious human lives. And by portraying entrepeneurs as cold-hearted, armageddon-bent demon-spawn, you make it that much easier for your flock to forget that their "oppressors" are human too and that they too suffer and die.
It might not even be such a bad lie, if this rallying cry for the envious wasn't such a dead end. By repeating it, over and over, you start to believe that it really exists and then you are trapped. Trapped believing that there really IS nothing you can do to help yourself. That everywhere you turn, there is some invisible force, plotting to keep you down.
The reality is, nobody cares about you. Nobody is willing to expend the significant effort to defeat you at every turn because you simply aren't worth the trouble. The only person that really has any vested interest in keeping you down is you, yourself.
If you're so insecure about your sexuality that you need a big black laptop to compensate for your inadequacies - get a G3 Powerbook (or hell, the graphite iBook).
The rest of us are quite happy to use quality hardware that doesn't double as a hot plate.
Nevermind, IMHO Transmeta needs to make these chips available yesterday. Right now, it's vapourware. Sure, they've demonstrated a few prototypes, but if they keep lolly-gagging along like this Intel and AMD are going to blow right by them.
x86 compatibility is only necessary when everybody else is using x86 processors. However, with Intel clearly stating that their next-gen processors are doing away with that giant albatross, Crusoe just doesn't look all that appealing as a mass-market alternative anymore.
Moreover, with more and more producers promising VLIW processing, Crusoe becomes just another fringe player.
I like Transmeta and I like Crusoe. But they need to have it out there, now. Otherwise, they're going to join Nextstep, Amiga and OS/2 in the Whatever Happened To? Hall of Fame.
I thought AMD was already using Motorola's fab facilities for the Athlons. AFAIK, Motorola's digs are no slouches either (although it's possible they're a step behind IBM's)...
Look, the point I'm trying to make is that Microsoft has this habit of making all their products work great.
... with each other. They lock you in.
Perhaps you didn't notice my mention of VBScript. You laughed at my inclusion of ActiveX. Rightly so. Maybe I should have pointed out how FrontPage loves to make pages that only work on servers that include the notorious FrontPage extensions. Who needs forms and scripts when you've got WebBots? Yay!
Oh yeah, and have you noticed how FrontPage is now bundled with Office? How convenient. Before that, they GAVE it away. Just like Outlook.
If MS had their way, every browser in the world today would support VBScript and ActiveX and every server would be using Exchange and IIS with FP extensions (and yes, I know Apache has an FP module, don't get me started).
You're not seriously asking this question are you?
LOL.
Without IE, how does Microsoft sell zillions of copies of NT and IIS with their SQL Server backends serving VBScript-laden ASP pages and ActiveX controls to... IE users.
Nevermind that IE is heavily integrated into the latest versions of Windows and might as well be considered a part of the OS.
IE is for Microsoft, what magazine ads are to tobacco companies. You sometimes need to spend money, to make money.
It's not about supporting a competing platform (Office is not an OS). It's about finding another market for one of their bigget moneymakers - Office.
Do you think a Linux Office would significantly decrease the sales of Windows? Honestly. It might make a dent, no more.
However, do you think that the existence of Linux Office might entice business users of Linux (by that I mean, people who use Linux as a desktop OS in the workplace) to keep from switching to StarOffice or KOffice? Quite possibly. Compatibility is important when a lot of your co-workers and clients are using Word and Excel.
Why is this such a foreign concept? Why are so many/.-ers looking for an ulterior motive? It's right there, in front of your faces.
Office is one of Microsoft's BIGGEST money-makers. And it's not available in any way on a platform that many industry surveys show is gaining acceptance in the business world.
Do you think they're going to sit idly by while their cashcow runs out of pasture?
You know, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), has the rights to broadcast the Olympics in Canada and, in the past, they've done a wonderful job of covering events evenly. Of course, this might be because they're a Crown corporation with little incentive to turn a profit (other than public outrage) and thus can afford to dedicate 14 hours of the broadcast day to the Olympics. =)
Notwithstanding, in the past I have seen plentiful coverage of boxing, rowing, equestrian, taekwondo, fencing, weightlifting, swimming, diving, marathons, cycling and pretty much all the cool sports that hardly get a mention on NBC.
I think it stems from the fact that Canada doesn't really dominate any given event at the Summer Olympics. But it's nice to see that champion athletes like Sergei Bubka or Haile Gebreselasse do exist, even when they aren't in direct competition with Pete Johnson from Boston and Joe Smith from Atlanta.
I've found NBC's "coverage" of the games to be, at best, simply repulsive. I live in Windsor, so we pick up Detroit's NBC affiliate, and it is unbelievable how skewed the angle is on NBC.
Every time I watch their coverage, I'm reminded of the old SNL skit where Jason Priestly is the American entry at the World Figure Skating Championships. He keeps falling over and messing up, but the commentators keep talking about his medal shot.
The IOC has long made a mockery of the ideals it pretends to preach.
For the 1992 Games in Barcelona, the IOC decreed that athletes from the breakaway nations of the former USSR were not in fact entitled to be recognized as such. They were forced to play for the "Commonwealth of Independent States". Just another throwback to the glorious days of Soviet domination and a slap in the face to athletes who were robbed of the opportunity to represent their native countries.
For the link impaired, here is just a brief summary of the article:
NBC has paid $3 570 000 000 for rights to the Games through to 2008
Juan Antonio Samaranch
Joined the Youth Fascists in Spain during his teenage years
Later went on to become a member of Franco's rubber-stamp government
While the IOC's 106 members have only 7 women among their ranks, they do manage to find room for:
a former operative of Korea's brutal intelligence service
a onetime ally of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin
an Italian businessman who presided over medal rigging at the 1987 track and field world championships in Rome, and
a reputed arms dealer
the IOC is in no way accountable to the athletes or to national Olympic committees worldwide for how it disposes of the $2 billion in receipts it pulls in every four years
These are the people who proclaim to represent the ideal of amateur sport: of fair play and of the innocence of honest competition.
These back-stabbing, power-hungry bastards.
Considering this, that the IOC is making another power grab and shutting out the Internet, is not surprising in the least.
Reading through the install instructions, I'm struck by the fact that they say several "Linux libraries" are required... Further investigation of the build instructions doesn't reveal any Linux-only libraries, just a few Gnome libraries like libghttp. Is this just a misnomer? Is it a constraint on the preview release?
Considering that they're offering a source tarball as well, I would think you should be able to build it on any system.
I've been following the news on Nautilus and it looks pretty exciting to me. However, I only use FreeBSD and Solaris. It doesn't make much sense to me to limit Nautilus to Linux only, when Gnome holds so much promise for any system that runs X.
Point the third: your post was as nearly content-free as possible. Do a little brain work next time.
You know, before you berate others for posting brain-dead posts, you might first ensure that yours is on target too.
You first link points to RMS' views on the Netscape NPL. While he does briefly mention the MPL, most of the article refers to the NPL. This might be confusing to someone who isn't aware of the distinction.
MainWin is recognized as the premiere choice for creating UNIX versions of Windows applications. How do we know that? MainWin has been used to create the UNIX versions of some of Microsoft's most popular applications. These include Microsoft's Internet Explorer for UNIX, Microsoft's Outlook Express for UNIX, and Microsoft is using MainWin to provide DCOM on UNIX. Among the hundreds of Mainsoft customers who rely on MainWin for their cross-platform development and Computer Associates chose MainWin to rehost its next-generation enterprise and information management solutions on UNIX.
So from what I can gather, these are the geniuses that brought us Unix IE. Yup. Just look at the explosion of IE users on Unix. If they do just as good a job on Office, then MS better watch out or their OS market will disappear overnight!
My favourite part is how they say their software isn't a Windows emulator. They just build every single DLL that you'll ever need into a Unix library. And probably a registry too, for good measure.
And you thought administrating Windows was bad enough on a Windows box...
Replace "generator" with "GUI-front end". Either the GUI tool has to know ALL the possibilities of ALL the various flavors of the config files, or it'll run into a case where it's going to cream hand-corrected settings. Which would happen in a heartbeat when the "newbie" asks a "nerd" to help him tweak his system, and the "nerd" is unaware of the helpful.
Is this necessarily true? I mean, with good programming, the GUI could be smart enough to recognize changes it hasn't made itself and then ask for input on how to proceed (ie, should I incorporate these changes into my own record?)
That's the key, with good programming and maintenance, it doesn't have to be a nuisance to the casual tinkerer.
Nobody is saying that, please don't inspire a flame war - we have too many already.
With all due respect, I think that's exactly what's being implied in the original post. But you're right, it's not worth the flames. On to the real discussion.
A GUI configuration utility, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.
Thank you. =)
The problem arises when you MUST use the GUI to configure your system. I'll use Linuxconf as an example. It does lots of non-standard things. Heck, it even starts up every time my computer does. I have to use Linuxconf in order to avoid breaking my system.
Using Linuxconf as an example of GUI config helpers is, quite frankly, just plain wrong. You're right, it does non-standard things, it locks you in and it's basically a very poor way of doing things. That doesn't invalidate all GUI config tools, just Linuxconf. =)
I firmly believe that computer users need to know more about the computer they're using. Education is never a bad thing, and the best education is hands-on education. In this case, reading manuals and editing config files.
You're missing the point. Not everybody is an academic. You and I may feel the need to understand how every tool works and how it is configured. I, personally, like to tweak every single tool on my system. I'm just anal that way. But that's just me. And I'm quite convinced that I, and others like me, are becoming the minority in the computer using world.
A computer is a tool to most people. You should not, EVER, be forced to learn how the computer works in order to accomplish what it is you want to do.
Should you know what an IP address is? Yes. Should you be concerned with how your OS interprets configuration files to determine its IP address? Hell no.
Keep in mind, I'm not talking about sysadmins here - sysadmins are professionals who should understand the systems in their care - I'm talking about Joan Q. Public who just wants to use her computer for simple, everyday tasks.
You're right, it shouldn't be a chore. But sometimes configuration GUIs make it too easy to kill your computer.
...
and having that horrible, confusing "Reformat your hard-drive - don't worry, this won't do anything bad!" option is a bad thing.
Come on now, have you EVER seen an option that says "here, go ahead, format your HD, it'll be fine"? That's ridiculous. With that kind of logic, we should outlaw root access and any kind of CLI. It is far, FAR easier to really mess up your system with a CLI.
#rm -rf/vsr/tm^H^H^H^H^H^H<CR>
A slip of the pinky there is much less forgiving than a GUI config tool that only allows you to do a specific task and clearly spells out the dangers associated with it.
The problem you're describing is poor software design, not uninformed users. Well, maybe a mix of both. I say the onus should be on the developer to make sure the consequences of every click are clear to the user - not on the user to anticipate what the software wants you to do.
Right, and god forbid that "clueless people" should be able to manage the free OS they install when seeking an alternative to Windows. Better they stick to Windows and leave Linux to the enlightened such as yourself.
Why is having a GUI front-end to your configuration files such a horrible thing? They aren't "dumbing" anything down. They're making it easier for newbies to do things that normally require navigating confusing tools or editing conf files by hand. For someone that's only looking to connect a simple box to the net so they can do their email and web-browsing, why should it be a bewildering chore to configure an IP the first time around?
Not everybody likes to get their hands dirty working with the innards of their OS. A lot of the computing public is genuinely frightened of changing anything on their computer.
I say kudos to anyone that wants to make it that much easier to install and keep a Linux/BSD/nix box running.
Slashdot Mirror
Canada and France are two examples of countries that have had socialist governments on and off for years. But these are not Communist countries. There's a big difference.
Please re-read that sentence. Then read it again. Repeat as necessary until what you just said sinks in.
--
The fact that you don't perceive this to reflect something fundamentally wrong with Communism is just a little amusing to me.
Doesn't this tell you something? That maybe people, given the choice, would really rather do without Communism?
Trying to use Vietnam as an example of Communism that "would've worked" is ridiculous. Vietnam was the Cold War writ small, not some Communist Eden.
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The .ca domain has not yet been deregulated like the .com, .net, and .org TLDs have. Therefore, a .ca domain would be a pretty good indicator that the site is in fact based in Canada. Of course, there are exceptions, like www.yahoo.ca
--
For instance, suppose I was Tony Blair. I could say that Prince Charles is the biggest fucking dick in the world and that he is incompetent of representing England as her Head of State.
However, since these statements (while inflammatory) do not in any way ruin Chuck's chances of being King, he has no case against me.
Turn it around however, if Charlie said the same of Tony, the Rt.Hon. Mr. Blair would indeed have a very serious chance of success in a libel suit against the Prince (assuming that there isn't some royal exemption or something). The reason here is that Prince Charles' comments bear weight in the eyes of the public and they influence opinion. That opinion is later a factor in determining whether or not Mr. Blair gets to be PM or not.
So, in a nutshell, unless you can prove that the DVD-CCA's comments are specifically targeted at you, unfounded and have caused irreparable harm to your career, then you'll have to continue sailing about in your rubber dinghy. =)
--
What a perfect way to conjure up feelings of fear and hatred while issuing a call to arms for anyone that's ever felt knocked down a notch in our society.
It's such a clever use of words, but it belies the duplicitousness of the people who use it.
By conjouring up the image of an invisible barrier that keeps individuals from accomplishing their goals, you provide them with a convenient scapegoat on which to relieve all their frustrations. Hence the use of that dirty word "class". You have no control over what "class" you belong to, because it is forged into your being the day you are born by the evil powers that be. It also quietly discredits the notion that you have control over your own life and determine your own destiny.
Then there's the use of "War". Wow. There is no more powerful imagery than that of horrific destruction and the senseless slaughter of precious human lives. And by portraying entrepeneurs as cold-hearted, armageddon-bent demon-spawn, you make it that much easier for your flock to forget that their "oppressors" are human too and that they too suffer and die.
It might not even be such a bad lie, if this rallying cry for the envious wasn't such a dead end. By repeating it, over and over, you start to believe that it really exists and then you are trapped. Trapped believing that there really IS nothing you can do to help yourself. That everywhere you turn, there is some invisible force, plotting to keep you down.
The reality is, nobody cares about you. Nobody is willing to expend the significant effort to defeat you at every turn because you simply aren't worth the trouble. The only person that really has any vested interest in keeping you down is you, yourself.
--
I'll believe it when I see it. =)
Transmeta's been making a lot of noise lately. It's time for them to put up or shut up.
--
The rest of us are quite happy to use quality hardware that doesn't double as a hot plate.
--
Never.
That's why that law is such a joke.
--
Nevermind, IMHO Transmeta needs to make these chips available yesterday. Right now, it's vapourware. Sure, they've demonstrated a few prototypes, but if they keep lolly-gagging along like this Intel and AMD are going to blow right by them.
x86 compatibility is only necessary when everybody else is using x86 processors. However, with Intel clearly stating that their next-gen processors are doing away with that giant albatross, Crusoe just doesn't look all that appealing as a mass-market alternative anymore.
Moreover, with more and more producers promising VLIW processing, Crusoe becomes just another fringe player.
I like Transmeta and I like Crusoe. But they need to have it out there, now. Otherwise, they're going to join Nextstep, Amiga and OS/2 in the Whatever Happened To? Hall of Fame.
--
What about the G3? Show me an iBook with a CPU fan in it. I dare you. For that matter, show me an iMac with a CPU fan.
--
Global Warming is in fact a secret Canadian undertaking - designed to make our vast expenses of frozen wasteland habitable again.
I can't wait to buy my cottage up on the cozy northern shore of Ellesmere Island.
=)
--
--
... with each other. They lock you in.
Perhaps you didn't notice my mention of VBScript. You laughed at my inclusion of ActiveX. Rightly so. Maybe I should have pointed out how FrontPage loves to make pages that only work on servers that include the notorious FrontPage extensions. Who needs forms and scripts when you've got WebBots? Yay!
Oh yeah, and have you noticed how FrontPage is now bundled with Office? How convenient. Before that, they GAVE it away. Just like Outlook.
If MS had their way, every browser in the world today would support VBScript and ActiveX and every server would be using Exchange and IIS with FP extensions (and yes, I know Apache has an FP module, don't get me started).
--
LOL.
Without IE, how does Microsoft sell zillions of copies of NT and IIS with their SQL Server backends serving VBScript-laden ASP pages and ActiveX controls to ... IE users.
Nevermind that IE is heavily integrated into the latest versions of Windows and might as well be considered a part of the OS.
IE is for Microsoft, what magazine ads are to tobacco companies. You sometimes need to spend money, to make money.
--
Do you think a Linux Office would significantly decrease the sales of Windows? Honestly. It might make a dent, no more.
However, do you think that the existence of Linux Office might entice business users of Linux (by that I mean, people who use Linux as a desktop OS in the workplace) to keep from switching to StarOffice or KOffice? Quite possibly. Compatibility is important when a lot of your co-workers and clients are using Word and Excel.
--
Microsoft is in business to make money.
Why is this such a foreign concept? Why are so many /.-ers looking for an ulterior motive? It's right there, in front of your faces.
Office is one of Microsoft's BIGGEST money-makers. And it's not available in any way on a platform that many industry surveys show is gaining acceptance in the business world.
Do you think they're going to sit idly by while their cashcow runs out of pasture?
--
Notwithstanding, in the past I have seen plentiful coverage of boxing, rowing, equestrian, taekwondo, fencing, weightlifting, swimming, diving, marathons, cycling and pretty much all the cool sports that hardly get a mention on NBC.
I think it stems from the fact that Canada doesn't really dominate any given event at the Summer Olympics. But it's nice to see that champion athletes like Sergei Bubka or Haile Gebreselasse do exist, even when they aren't in direct competition with Pete Johnson from Boston and Joe Smith from Atlanta.
I've found NBC's "coverage" of the games to be, at best, simply repulsive. I live in Windsor, so we pick up Detroit's NBC affiliate, and it is unbelievable how skewed the angle is on NBC.
Every time I watch their coverage, I'm reminded of the old SNL skit where Jason Priestly is the American entry at the World Figure Skating Championships. He keeps falling over and messing up, but the commentators keep talking about his medal shot.
--
For the 1992 Games in Barcelona, the IOC decreed that athletes from the breakaway nations of the former USSR were not in fact entitled to be recognized as such. They were forced to play for the "Commonwealth of Independent States". Just another throwback to the glorious days of Soviet domination and a slap in the face to athletes who were robbed of the opportunity to represent their native countries.
Why was this permitted to happen? Because the IOC is the epitome of a greedy, self-serving, multinational corporation.
For the link impaired, here is just a brief summary of the article:
These are the people who proclaim to represent the ideal of amateur sport: of fair play and of the innocence of honest competition.
These back-stabbing, power-hungry bastards.
Considering this, that the IOC is making another power grab and shutting out the Internet, is not surprising in the least.
--
Considering that they're offering a source tarball as well, I would think you should be able to build it on any system.
I've been following the news on Nautilus and it looks pretty exciting to me. However, I only use FreeBSD and Solaris. It doesn't make much sense to me to limit Nautilus to Linux only, when Gnome holds so much promise for any system that runs X.
Hoping it's just a semantic error...
--
You know, before you berate others for posting brain-dead posts, you might first ensure that yours is on target too.
You first link points to RMS' views on the Netscape NPL. While he does briefly mention the MPL, most of the article refers to the NPL. This might be confusing to someone who isn't aware of the distinction.
--
So from what I can gather, these are the geniuses that brought us Unix IE. Yup. Just look at the explosion of IE users on Unix. If they do just as good a job on Office, then MS better watch out or their OS market will disappear overnight!
My favourite part is how they say their software isn't a Windows emulator. They just build every single DLL that you'll ever need into a Unix library. And probably a registry too, for good measure.
And you thought administrating Windows was bad enough on a Windows box...
--
If you go any smaller, your waves become X-rays and that significantly complicates matters.
--
Is this necessarily true? I mean, with good programming, the GUI could be smart enough to recognize changes it hasn't made itself and then ask for input on how to proceed (ie, should I incorporate these changes into my own record?)
That's the key, with good programming and maintenance, it doesn't have to be a nuisance to the casual tinkerer.
--
With all due respect, I think that's exactly what's being implied in the original post. But you're right, it's not worth the flames. On to the real discussion.
Thank you. =)
Using Linuxconf as an example of GUI config helpers is, quite frankly, just plain wrong. You're right, it does non-standard things, it locks you in and it's basically a very poor way of doing things. That doesn't invalidate all GUI config tools, just Linuxconf. =)
You're missing the point. Not everybody is an academic. You and I may feel the need to understand how every tool works and how it is configured. I, personally, like to tweak every single tool on my system. I'm just anal that way. But that's just me. And I'm quite convinced that I, and others like me, are becoming the minority in the computer using world.
A computer is a tool to most people. You should not, EVER, be forced to learn how the computer works in order to accomplish what it is you want to do.
Should you know what an IP address is? Yes. Should you be concerned with how your OS interprets configuration files to determine its IP address? Hell no.
Keep in mind, I'm not talking about sysadmins here - sysadmins are professionals who should understand the systems in their care - I'm talking about Joan Q. Public who just wants to use her computer for simple, everyday tasks.
Come on now, have you EVER seen an option that says "here, go ahead, format your HD, it'll be fine"? That's ridiculous. With that kind of logic, we should outlaw root access and any kind of CLI. It is far, FAR easier to really mess up your system with a CLI.
A slip of the pinky there is much less forgiving than a GUI config tool that only allows you to do a specific task and clearly spells out the dangers associated with it.
The problem you're describing is poor software design, not uninformed users. Well, maybe a mix of both. I say the onus should be on the developer to make sure the consequences of every click are clear to the user - not on the user to anticipate what the software wants you to do.
--
Why is having a GUI front-end to your configuration files such a horrible thing? They aren't "dumbing" anything down. They're making it easier for newbies to do things that normally require navigating confusing tools or editing conf files by hand. For someone that's only looking to connect a simple box to the net so they can do their email and web-browsing, why should it be a bewildering chore to configure an IP the first time around?
Not everybody likes to get their hands dirty working with the innards of their OS. A lot of the computing public is genuinely frightened of changing anything on their computer.
I say kudos to anyone that wants to make it that much easier to install and keep a Linux/BSD/nix box running.
--