People (even kids are people!) make mistakes. Watching them constantly in some kind of attempt to "catch" theses mistakes seems insane and maddening.
But to occasionally test and give rewards or training (based on the outcome), as this father did, seems very natural and healthy.
Sexual and social experimentation are very important parts of becoming a well-adjusted person. Making mistakes is part of that...and having a plan and methodology to deal with the more serious mistakes is what makes the difference between a father and a sperm donor.
Re:Guys, relax. Here's the dope on "3 Strikes"
on
The Worst Jobs in Science
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I rarely log in anymore, but an old friend I haven't seen in twenty years is in on 3 strikes. I thought it worthwhile to login to pull this out of the noise.
His offenses were stacked and escalated as described in the LA Times article.
One attempted robbery at 17, 25 years ago.
One knifing during a drug deal gone bad (a couple ounces of pot he was "buying" when the "dealer" pulled a knife on him. The "dealer" ended up with the knife *in* him). About 20 years ago.
Two escapes from fire camps/low risk inmate carcerations. About 25 and 17 years ago. He spent a few years in prison for that at each occurance.
One attempt to flee prosecution by crossing state lines. about 20 years ago.
And the one that nailed him: Attempting to cash a stolen check, two-party signed to him from a customer to his place of business (independent tatoo artist). About 6 years ago.
Six years in prison and his first parole hearing will be in 2012.
Okay, he's not exactly the greatest guy. He uses people. He tends to want his way or get very pissed. If you are on his bad side, he will attempt to dominate you psychologically, and if you try fighting him he will dominate you physically.
OTOH, he is a skilled artist, and would never, ever let down (or not be there for) a friend in need.
What's right, what's wrong? I think he will get out early. He suspected the check he was paid with was bad (stolen) but went ahead with trying to cash it. He should not have to spend 15 years in prison for that.
He is in isolation after successfully beating a would-be rapist to a pulp. He is marked for death by the rape gangs should he be released back into the general prison population.
The prison intends to keep him in his private cell until 2012, I think he gets 1 hour outdoors a day.
All the major *nix players need to get together and kill SCO. IBM, HP, RedHat, SGI, Apple, Mandrake, Debian, FSF...all have been threatened, all need to pull together and end this.
Something like what the "Liberty Alliance" did to Microsoft's passport/hailstorm scheme...there needs to be a group effort to end this nonsense.
It's a shame that the United Linux vendors are hiding behind their alliance and basically rubber stamping SCO's activities. Suse and Sun Microsystems are in bed with some serious scumbags and that strategy could really turn around and bite them.
...when the article clearly states the subcontractor, Orbital Sciences Corporation, was deficient in a number of engineering and technical disciplines?
bonobos deserve strong mention
on
The Red Queen
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Bonobos are very bisexual, have sex frequently (VERY frequently--several times a day) mostly just for pleasure, females run the show, female-female sex is very common, and men must beg or earn sexual pleasure from the females.
They are the closest animals to humans (genetically speaking) walk upright fairly often, similar size, etc.
Once you've studied bonobos for awhile, you start to get the feeling that about 99% of our sexual taboos are strictly cultural, developed over time as a function of the need for societal control, either to limit disease propagation or to assert power hierarchies, probably to keep a large pool of females available for the wealthy patriarchs.
Many small neighborhood libraries only have one or two computers, which makes your idea unworkable.
I used to live in downtown San Diego, circa 1997. The public library had (still has?) a row of computers in the techology section that can't be seen by the librarians. They put cardboard hoods on them because the homeless people would surf porn all day back there.
Not as bad as their struggles with street prostitutes using the bathrooms upstairs for servicing the customers...that was in the early to mid nineties. A huge increase in security stopped that.
So I guess that's the future of the USA...more security, less rights. I don't think the burden should be on adults to have to ask anyone for anything...innocent until proven guilty.
Someone else mentioned using the library card to sign in to the computer...and looking at the age to set the security level. Interesting, but it opens up a very ugly ball of worms (government tracking of computer use, etc).
As I recall, we had to show ID and sign in to use the computers, so I suppose they could track someone anyway if they really wanted to.
actually what the USA will probably do is simply poison everyone at birth, and an antidote will be doled out over you lifespan based on the quality of your citizenship and/or the volume of your consumer purchases.
So what do we know?
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
If I'm recalling things right:
a) IBM contracted a german team to do some work on Linux to get it running on 390s;
b) Someone there copied code from IBM's AIX code base into the Linux code base;
c) There is a 60 line function in the scheduler that appears to be copied verbatim from the AIX code base;
d) A memory management routine appears to be copied verbatim from the AIX code base.
Where's Sherlock when we need him? This should be enough info to locate the two nastiest infringment complaints SCO has.
Once code is under the GPL, that's it. It's GPL'd. Fire the employee who did it, jail them, etc.--tough tittie. Be more careful next time...if that's really what happened.
I suspect they planned this all along. Suppose the RIAA/MPAA decide to sue AOL for producing this code...AOL's lawyers stand in front of the judge and say "Look! it was an illegal release! It was just an internal research project, and research is legal, isn't it? Hell, we pulled it off the net as soon as we found out! The employee has been scolded mercilessly!"
A breath of freedom in a world owned by Microsoft.
If this goes through I'm going on vacation to Munich later this summer...maybe rent a nice bike (BMW F650?) and bask in the freedom. Sounds like fun.
Great job, Munich. I know OpenOffice has it's share of problems (it really isn't all that compatible with Word documents), and there will be some hiccups, but just seeing a government stand up for freedom is a breathtaking thing in these sad times.
They have called the linux developers liars and theives, plain and simple.
They claim the "Enterprise Features" mentioned in ESR's work did not exist before IBM's involvement.
I'm suprised a variety of lawsuits haven't been filed against SCO by now. In particular, a class action law suit by the developers of all the enterprise features.
Of course, SCO has been planning this (probably with Microsoft) for many months, it might take time to get all the ducks in line for a major counter suit.
This could be a violation of their terms with the DOJ as well. DOJ should be subpoenaing all notes/conversations/etc between Microsoft and SCO for the last year or so...find that smoking gun and turn it right back that Microsoft.
IMHO, NASA management went through the exact same stages of denial that they went through with the Challenger orings--with regard to both the foam issues and in the investigation of the foam impact in the days following the launch.
NASA management knew the orings were charing before Challenger, and they knew falling foam was causing damage to the surface integrity before Columbia.
The killing off of NASA's failure analysis group in California is also a problem. NASA saved lots of money killing that shop, but in return they got a horribly botched analysis from the inexperienced replacement group in Texas--an analysis that was exactly what management wanted to hear--"There is no problem".
Accepting that analysis, management then decided no photos were necessary. How convenient. The risk appears low, so stop gathering data. That's some piss poor management. Hear no evil, speak no evil. If you close your eyes, it will all just go away.
The engineers still have the spirit. In the emails they predicted everything almost exactly as it unfolded. If not for the bumbling management, I have no doubt they could have transformed this from a tragedy to a epic story of rescue.
There are continuing, endemic, structural, non-trivial management failures at NASA. The US government continues to ignore them at their peril.
Kernel developers and FSF file lawsuit against SCO
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Why not? Isn't SCO's action libelous against the core developers of Linux? There appear to be several derisive comments about Linux in the SCO complaint.
The kernel developers have carefully crafted Linux over many years. It seems to me they would be willing to protect *their* image and *their* product from these kind of attacks.
Especially the people who developed the capabilities that SCO claims did not exist in Linux until IBMs intervention. The SCO action claims these developers are lying, that they never did the work!
If EFF files a lawsuit on behalf of named developers of the Linux kernel, I'd pledge $100 over paypal to such an effort.
I have a small network of RHAT workstations and admin them, all I do is ssh -X into them remotely and run up2date...depending on what gets updated they are fully up2date at the next reboot.
I bought one boxed set and have a free basic subscription to rhn. I could also have bought a "cheapbytes" cd and done the same thing, or downloaded ISOs. Toggling the rhn entitlements for each machine is kind of a PITA but there is no way I'm paying $12 x 6 x 12 per year for Linux.
Granted I'm only doing admin on these six machines
NFS server and NIS, migrating from 7.2 to 8.0 was almost trivial, just did a couple machines at a time.
I suspect you will be getting your wish soon. As RedHat and Linux stabilize, the releases will probably stretch out over longer periods of time.
As long as we're wishing, I wish redhat would let people run their own up2date servers. I don't know of a way to do that. I would much prefer to keep a local repository of updates and let my machines log into that with the up2date stuff.
Apparently SUSE has a means to allow this, but I'm not sure.
>> 2) Can I write a closed source program in KDE >> without having to pay QT 1500 USD? NOT LIKELY....
> So you insist that Trolltech must offer their > product to you for free so you could write closed > & proprietary software with it?
The original poster "insisted" no such thing. S/he is just making a point of fact that, if you wish to keep something private permanently, or just for several months, Gnome can do nothing about your effort, while TrollTech could potentially cause you legal problems, unless you pay them $1500 per developer seat.
It's important to note that this is more expensive than buying VC++ Pro and Windows2000 pro...together.
Well, it seems to me that they knew about the orings before challenger, and they knew about the foam before columbia.
After challenger, it was supposed to be made easier to stop things and review what was happening when something wasn't right. It doesn't appear to be working.
I don't think the same agency should design, build and operate/manage projects like this. Don't tell me about USA--that's still the fox guarding the henhouse.
NASA should be more like DARPA, creating the new stuff and farming out the mundane. Idustry should implement it, and some external agency, possibly the USAF, should do operations.
Where should they go next? Read this first:
Now it's clear that goals are needed. It seems fine to me that NASA be funded to create a shuttle replacement. The shuttle just does not do the job properly. Heavier payloads to higher orbits is needed, and the system that does it needs to be more easily turned around between launches.
Finally, the whole "public relations" mandate of Columbia (and Challenger, for that matter) needs to be reevaluated. Look at the list of projects they were carrying...ant farms, bean sprouts, silk worms...all for various schools around the world. I'm all for public service, but this seems kind of ridiculous.
NASA should be tasked to design the next generation shuttle. They should NOT be allowed to test or operate it. They were warned about orings on challenger, they were warned about the external tank foam. They tried to fix the foam, but it's been getting worse over the last few flights and they did nothing. They forgot about the lessons of Challenger.
"Insightful". Yeah, right. Note carefully that I never, in any way, said that all four companies were destroyed by Microsoft, only that *the industry* and *innovation* has been destroyed by Microsoft. Call me a fanatic, but you, sir, are illiterate.
Example: all four companies referenced are either a shadow of their former self or strugging to survive. Stac and Novell are dead. IBM and Sun are struggling. IBM has their teeth in a lot of different industries, so they are not in as bad of a position as Sun. Sun, on the other hand, has been a far greater innovator than Microsoft, and has also given their Java platform away *free* for eight years, but is not only in deep trouble now but also has to face what is essentially a "Java Clone" being unleashed by Microsoft. Microsoft is not a competitor, they are a thief.
Standards are good? Yes, but to what extent and in what form do they take? In your fanatical world, everyone uses MS products because you have decided that's the best choice. Maybe everyone should drive a model T because Ford likes that choice? Who the hell are you to choose what everyone uses, then label the person who insists on choice "a fanatic?"
I have a friend who refuses to buy GM vehicles...another corporation that has committed many crimes over the years...does that make him "a fanatic"? No, because there is a wide choice in cars, so no one really cares what you buy. At least carmakers have to produce vehicles that all drive on the same roads. I can't imagine what a "Microsoft Car" would be like....only runs on MS gas, MS oil, only MS certified shops can work on it, they charge you by the year, by the mile, etc...after all, they are "the choice".
Back to fanaticism though. You think everything is great with a single choice, and that I'm a fanatic for beleiving a rational market will not be restored until 30% of PCs sold have zero Microsoft products used on them. 30% seems a good target. I think that's reasonable...after all, in the Soviet Union, Microsoft Chooses You! Which is the whole point...when a corporation breaks the law, repeatedly, and dominates you, can you speak out without being labeled a fanatic? I guess not, at least not around you. You appear to be entitled to your opinions, though.
Finally, it is extremely doubtful that your last statement is true. It's always a bad idea to justify criminal behavior by saying "the same thing would have happened anyway". Maybe you live that way, but I hope most people do not.
No one will ever know what would have happened if Microsoft diid not steal the Stacker code when they needed compression...or novell code when they needed networking...or made other products break when they wanted to stop their growth.
How correct is it to refer to federal criminals as "competition"? Would you refer to a drug dealer down the street as "competition" to your children's educators?
Let's not forget what Microsoft has done to a once-thriving and innovative industry...they destroyed it by violating federal law on repeated occasions. Stac, IBM, Novell, Sun...this was not "Competition"...this was hardcore felony behavior. Do a web search.
Linux only runs on a small fraction of PCs. Until about 30% of computers sold have zero Microsoft products running on them, then as far as I'm concerned, the damage will not have been undone.
This IBM dude certainly has a point. MS should not be at Linux shows, just like the local drug gansters shouldn't be at PTA meetings. The people at Linux shows are trying to correct a terrible wrong done to the market, not via the courts or the law, but via freedom. They deserve a chance.
the scientist debunking the photo says it's overexposure of a planet, not a UFO, and that such things happen frequently with this instrument.
great, by every measure you've posted an excellent link to provide a reasonable explanation for the image.
note that it should be a trivial matter for a reasonably competent scientist look at the date/time the pic was taken, the direction it was pointing, and identify the exact planet beyond any doubt.
when the required info comes out, this will surely happen, exposing the UFO site as a fraud, or not, as the case may be.
Slashdot Mirror
But my swamp cooler keeps the house cool and saves me a lot of money over my A/C cooled neighbors.
Evaporative coolers use electricity only to spin the fan vs. compressing freon or whatnot, which takes a lot more energy.
This is one of the better post from my POV.
People (even kids are people!) make mistakes. Watching them constantly in some kind of attempt to "catch" theses mistakes seems insane and maddening.
But to occasionally test and give rewards or training (based on the outcome), as this father did, seems very natural and healthy.
Sexual and social experimentation are very important parts of becoming a well-adjusted person. Making mistakes is part of that...and having a plan and methodology to deal with the more serious mistakes is what makes the difference between a father and a sperm donor.
I rarely log in anymore, but an old friend I haven't seen in twenty years is in on 3 strikes. I thought it worthwhile to login to pull this out of the noise.
His offenses were stacked and escalated as described in the LA Times article.
One attempted robbery at 17, 25 years ago.
One knifing during a drug deal gone bad (a couple ounces of pot he was "buying" when the "dealer" pulled a knife on him. The "dealer" ended up with the knife *in* him). About 20 years ago.
Two escapes from fire camps/low risk inmate carcerations. About 25 and 17 years ago. He spent a few years in prison for that at each occurance.
One attempt to flee prosecution by crossing state lines. about 20 years ago.
And the one that nailed him: Attempting to cash a stolen check, two-party signed to him from a customer to his place of business (independent tatoo artist). About 6 years ago.
Six years in prison and his first parole hearing will be in 2012.
Okay, he's not exactly the greatest guy. He uses people. He tends to want his way or get very pissed. If you are on his bad side, he will attempt to dominate you psychologically, and if you try fighting him he will dominate you physically.
OTOH, he is a skilled artist, and would never, ever let down (or not be there for) a friend in need.
What's right, what's wrong? I think he will get out early. He suspected the check he was paid with was bad (stolen) but went ahead with trying to cash it. He should not have to spend 15 years in prison for that.
He is in isolation after successfully beating a would-be rapist to a pulp. He is marked for death by the rape gangs should he be released back into the general prison population.
The prison intends to keep him in his private cell until 2012, I think he gets 1 hour outdoors a day.
Actually go take a look at the United Linux developer archives.
Developer's can't get access to service packs needed to get Oracle 9i working unless they pay SUSE a hefty sum.
These are posts and responses as of 7/21/2003.
It's true...people are underestimating SCO's tactics.
Here is the most informative article about the players in the SCO suit, who they are, their history, and how they make money:
"The Players"
All the major *nix players need to get together and kill SCO. IBM, HP, RedHat, SGI, Apple, Mandrake, Debian, FSF...all have been threatened, all need to pull together and end this.
Something like what the "Liberty Alliance" did to Microsoft's passport/hailstorm scheme...there needs to be a group effort to end this nonsense.
It's a shame that the United Linux vendors are hiding behind their alliance and basically rubber stamping SCO's activities. Suse and Sun Microsystems are in bed with some serious scumbags and that strategy could really turn around and bite them.
...when the article clearly states the subcontractor, Orbital Sciences Corporation, was deficient in a number of engineering and technical disciplines?
Bonobos are very bisexual, have sex frequently (VERY frequently--several times a day) mostly just for pleasure, females run the show, female-female sex is very common, and men must beg or earn sexual pleasure from the females.
They are the closest animals to humans (genetically speaking) walk upright fairly often, similar size, etc.
Once you've studied bonobos for awhile, you start to get the feeling that about 99% of our sexual taboos are strictly cultural, developed over time as a function of the need for societal control, either to limit disease propagation or to assert power hierarchies, probably to keep a large pool of females available for the wealthy patriarchs.
Many small neighborhood libraries only have one or two computers, which makes your idea unworkable.
I used to live in downtown San Diego, circa 1997. The public library had (still has?) a row of computers in the techology section that can't be seen by the librarians. They put cardboard hoods on them because the homeless people would surf porn all day back there.
Not as bad as their struggles with street prostitutes using the bathrooms upstairs for servicing the customers...that was in the early to mid nineties. A huge increase in security stopped that.
So I guess that's the future of the USA...more security, less rights. I don't think the burden should be on adults to have to ask anyone for anything...innocent until proven guilty.
Someone else mentioned using the library card to sign in to the computer...and looking at the age to set the security level. Interesting, but it opens up a very ugly ball of worms (government tracking of computer use, etc).
As I recall, we had to show ID and sign in to use the computers, so I suppose they could track someone anyway if they really wanted to.
actually what the USA will probably do is simply poison everyone at birth, and an antidote will be doled out over you lifespan based on the quality of your citizenship and/or the volume of your consumer purchases.
If I'm recalling things right:
a) IBM contracted a german team to do some work on Linux to get it running on 390s;
b) Someone there copied code from IBM's AIX code base into the Linux code base;
c) There is a 60 line function in the scheduler that appears to be copied verbatim from the AIX code base;
d) A memory management routine appears to be copied verbatim from the AIX code base.
Where's Sherlock when we need him? This should be enough info to locate the two nastiest infringment complaints SCO has.
"...the physical relationship with the President included oral sex, but not sexual intercourse."
Once code is under the GPL, that's it. It's GPL'd. Fire the employee who did it, jail them, etc.--tough tittie. Be more careful next time...if that's really what happened.
I suspect they planned this all along. Suppose the RIAA/MPAA decide to sue AOL for producing this code...AOL's lawyers stand in front of the judge and say "Look! it was an illegal release! It was just an internal research project, and research is legal, isn't it? Hell, we pulled it off the net as soon as we found out! The employee has been scolded mercilessly!"
A breath of freedom in a world owned by Microsoft.
If this goes through I'm going on vacation to Munich later this summer...maybe rent a nice bike (BMW F650?) and bask in the freedom. Sounds like fun.
Great job, Munich. I know OpenOffice has it's share of problems (it really isn't all that compatible with Word documents), and there will be some hiccups, but just seeing a government stand up for freedom is a breathtaking thing in these sad times.
They have called the linux developers liars and theives, plain and simple.
They claim the "Enterprise Features" mentioned in ESR's work did not exist before IBM's involvement.
I'm suprised a variety of lawsuits haven't been filed against SCO by now. In particular, a class action law suit by the developers of all the enterprise features.
Of course, SCO has been planning this (probably with Microsoft) for many months, it might take time to get all the ducks in line for a major counter suit.
This could be a violation of their terms with the DOJ as well. DOJ should be subpoenaing all notes/conversations/etc between Microsoft and SCO for the last year or so...find that smoking gun and turn it right back that Microsoft.
IMHO, NASA management went through the exact same stages of denial that they went through with the Challenger orings--with regard to both the foam issues and in the investigation of the foam impact in the days following the launch.
NASA management knew the orings were charing before Challenger, and they knew falling foam was causing damage to the surface integrity before Columbia.
The killing off of NASA's failure analysis group in California is also a problem. NASA saved lots of money killing that shop, but in return they got a horribly botched analysis from the inexperienced replacement group in Texas--an analysis that was exactly what management wanted to hear--"There is no problem".
Accepting that analysis, management then decided no photos were necessary. How convenient. The risk appears low, so stop gathering data. That's some piss poor management. Hear no evil, speak no evil. If you close your eyes, it will all just go away.
The engineers still have the spirit. In the emails they predicted everything almost exactly as it unfolded. If not for the bumbling management, I have no doubt they could have transformed this from a tragedy to a epic story of rescue.
There are continuing, endemic, structural, non-trivial management failures at NASA. The US government continues to ignore them at their peril.
Why not? Isn't SCO's action libelous against the core developers of Linux? There appear to be several derisive comments about Linux in the SCO complaint.
The kernel developers have carefully crafted Linux over many years. It seems to me they would be willing to protect *their* image and *their* product from these kind of attacks.
Especially the people who developed the capabilities that SCO claims did not exist in Linux until IBMs intervention. The SCO action claims these developers are lying, that they never did the work!
If EFF files a lawsuit on behalf of named developers of the Linux kernel, I'd pledge $100 over paypal to such an effort.
Why not a community lawsuit against SCO...clearly they have defamed many people in the linux community. EFF, PayPal...etc.
I clicked the "buy" button and you can order RedHat 8.0 personal edition for $39.95
RedHat Store
I have a small network of RHAT workstations and admin them, all I do is ssh -X into them remotely and run up2date...depending on what gets updated they are fully up2date at the next reboot.
I bought one boxed set and have a free basic subscription to rhn. I could also have bought a "cheapbytes" cd and done the same thing, or downloaded ISOs. Toggling the rhn entitlements for each machine is kind of a PITA but there is no way I'm paying $12 x 6 x 12 per year for Linux.
Granted I'm only doing admin on these six machines
NFS server and NIS, migrating from 7.2 to 8.0 was almost trivial, just did a couple machines at a time.
I suspect you will be getting your wish soon. As RedHat and Linux stabilize, the releases will probably stretch out over longer periods of time.
As long as we're wishing, I wish redhat would let people run their own up2date servers. I don't know of a way to do that. I would much prefer to keep a local repository of updates and let my machines log into that with the up2date stuff.
Apparently SUSE has a means to allow this, but I'm not sure.
>> 2) Can I write a closed source program in KDE
>> without having to pay QT 1500 USD? NOT LIKELY....
> So you insist that Trolltech must offer their
> product to you for free so you could write closed
> & proprietary software with it?
The original poster "insisted" no such thing. S/he is just making a point of fact that, if you wish to keep something private permanently, or just for several months, Gnome can do nothing about your effort, while TrollTech could potentially cause you legal problems, unless you pay them $1500 per developer seat.
It's important to note that this is more expensive than buying VC++ Pro and Windows2000 pro...together.
Well, it seems to me that they knew about the orings before challenger, and they knew about the foam before columbia.
:
After challenger, it was supposed to be made easier to stop things and review what was happening when something wasn't right. It doesn't appear to be working.
I don't think the same agency should design, build and operate/manage projects like this. Don't tell me about USA--that's still the fox guarding the henhouse.
NASA should be more like DARPA, creating the new stuff and farming out the mundane. Idustry should implement it, and some external agency, possibly the USAF, should do operations. Where should they go next? Read this first
scathing rebuke of NASA
Now it's clear that goals are needed. It seems fine to me that NASA be funded to create a shuttle replacement. The shuttle just does not do the job properly. Heavier payloads to higher orbits is needed, and the system that does it needs to be more easily turned around between launches.
Finally, the whole "public relations" mandate of Columbia (and Challenger, for that matter) needs to be reevaluated. Look at the list of projects they were carrying...ant farms, bean sprouts, silk worms...all for various schools around the world. I'm all for public service, but this seems kind of ridiculous.
NASA should be tasked to design the next generation shuttle. They should NOT be allowed to test or operate it. They were warned about orings on challenger, they were warned about the external tank foam. They tried to fix the foam, but it's been getting worse over the last few flights and they did nothing. They forgot about the lessons of Challenger.
"Insightful". Yeah, right. Note carefully that I never, in any way, said that all four companies were destroyed by Microsoft, only that *the industry* and *innovation* has been destroyed by Microsoft. Call me a fanatic, but you, sir, are illiterate.
Example: all four companies referenced are either a shadow of their former self or strugging to survive. Stac and Novell are dead. IBM and Sun are struggling. IBM has their teeth in a lot of different industries, so they are not in as bad of a position as Sun. Sun, on the other hand, has been a far greater innovator than Microsoft, and has also given their Java platform away *free* for eight years, but is not only in deep trouble now but also has to face what is essentially a "Java Clone" being unleashed by Microsoft. Microsoft is not a competitor, they are a thief.
Standards are good? Yes, but to what extent and in what form do they take? In your fanatical world, everyone uses MS products because you have decided that's the best choice. Maybe everyone should drive a model T because Ford likes that choice? Who the hell are you to choose what everyone uses, then label the person who insists on choice "a fanatic?"
I have a friend who refuses to buy GM vehicles...another corporation that has committed many crimes over the years...does that make him "a fanatic"? No, because there is a wide choice in cars, so no one really cares what you buy. At least carmakers have to produce vehicles that all drive on the same roads. I can't imagine what a "Microsoft Car" would be like....only runs on MS gas, MS oil, only MS certified shops can work on it, they charge you by the year, by the mile, etc...after all, they are "the choice".
Back to fanaticism though. You think everything is great with a single choice, and that I'm a fanatic for beleiving a rational market will not be restored until 30% of PCs sold have zero Microsoft products used on them. 30% seems a good target. I think that's reasonable...after all, in the Soviet Union, Microsoft Chooses You! Which is the whole point...when a corporation breaks the law, repeatedly, and dominates you, can you speak out without being labeled a fanatic? I guess not, at least not around you. You appear to be entitled to your opinions, though.
Finally, it is extremely doubtful that your last statement is true. It's always a bad idea to justify criminal behavior by saying "the same thing would have happened anyway". Maybe you live that way, but I hope most people do not.
No one will ever know what would have happened if Microsoft diid not steal the Stacker code when they needed compression...or novell code when they needed networking...or made other products break when they wanted to stop their growth.
Only a fanatic would suggest otherwise.
How correct is it to refer to federal criminals as "competition"? Would you refer to a drug dealer down the street as "competition" to your children's educators?
Let's not forget what Microsoft has done to a once-thriving and innovative industry...they destroyed it by violating federal law on repeated occasions. Stac, IBM, Novell, Sun...this was not "Competition"...this was hardcore felony behavior. Do a web search.
Linux only runs on a small fraction of PCs. Until about 30% of computers sold have zero Microsoft products running on them, then as far as I'm concerned, the damage will not have been undone.
This IBM dude certainly has a point. MS should not be at Linux shows, just like the local drug gansters shouldn't be at PTA meetings. The people at Linux shows are trying to correct a terrible wrong done to the market, not via the courts or the law, but via freedom. They deserve a chance.
the scientist debunking the photo says it's overexposure of a planet, not a UFO, and that such things happen frequently with this instrument.
great, by every measure you've posted an excellent link to provide a reasonable explanation for the image.
note that it should be a trivial matter for a reasonably competent scientist look at the date/time the pic was taken, the direction it was pointing, and identify the exact planet beyond any doubt.
when the required info comes out, this will surely happen, exposing the UFO site as a fraud, or not, as the case may be.
And how does someone who uses the word "BOOM" to make a point get modded up as "Insightful"?