It's a part of the Brit's psychology. For as long as there has been an England they've been governed by the whim of the Royalty.
In fact I'm rather surprised that Christianity even took hold there, due to their undying loyalty to authority the typical Brit response to the story of Christ should have been "Well, if he was executed, he must have been a criminal."
Every country seems to have it's own psychological traits. Here in the US, the "Cowboy mentality" seems to be very common. In Japan the culture can be traced back to their feudal past. These traits can often be carried with a people no matter where they live. For example, around the globe Jewish people seem to be very concerned with remembering the hardships that they faced in the past so that they can be strong in the future. This seems to be common from the American Jews to the Seraphim that have been scattered through Europe.
I'd like to make a point before I get on to my main one. Hopefully the peripheral point doesn't get me moderated down.
1. Isn't it ironic that it took a Republican to introduce this legislation? With ALGORE being the father of the internet don't you think his people should have been fighting for this first? Now I can't wait to hear the conspiracy theories about how since McCain is a Republican he has some racist/sexist/homophobic agenda behind this.
2. It's not possible for ANYTHING to be permanent in the US, the congress has the power to do anything when they agree to it. Every constitutional amdendment can be repealed, just as any law can be overturned. If people had been pissed off enough the Ex Post Facto clause and the "Double Jeopardy" clause could have been removed just to make sure OJ Simpson went to jail. If we get enough "Pro Tax" folks in congress this legislation can be overturned in a heartbeat.
2.1 This is wonderful, this will give a chance for Online only joints to flourish. Just because there is no "internet tax" doesn't mean that States won't get their money somehow. In my state there is a "Usage" tax, anything that we get mailorder is supposed to have a 6% "Usage" tax paid on it. Virtually nobody ever pays, but if more and more sales become electronic internet sales my state and several others would start enforcing these taxes to get our money.
Linux (and *BSD et all) is also great for power users. I do not consider myself a *NIX geek. I know a little. I can administer my linux box and a couple at work, but other than that I'm no guru.
I am however a power user. I can fiddly with C++, I can fiddle with BASIC, I can fiddle with HTML, but I'm not going to write anything which changes the world any time soon. I like linux because of it's power and flexibility. If I want more speed, I can turn off services, rather easily. Explain to the average newbie how to stop an app from running in the background on a windoze box. Explain to Joe Schmoe what the system tray is and what it is for.
For those clueless assholes who don't want to learn, I say screw them. Let them use a buggy crashprone OS on closed proprietary hardware, if you refuse to educate yourself you deserve whatever you get.
It's like having a car and all you know is how to open the doors, fasten the seatbelts, start it up and drive. Even though you may choose not to you should know how to change your oil and fill your gas tank. Hopefully you'll never need to but you should know how to change a flat tire. If grandma can't re-install her printer driver when it fails to print, maybe she shouldn't own a printer.
I don't know crap about amateur radio. I therefore don't go out and buy a CB radio and act like a horse's ass with it. If I were interested I'd buy a book, and possible get a no code class license and get myself a HAM. But that's not my thing. Computers and technology are. I spend my time away from work learning about the things that interest me.
This "plug me in and let me go" mentality of the clueless dimwits is invading every segment of our daily lives. From the dolts who still have "12:00" flashing on their VCRs, to the idiots who need automatic seatbelts in their cars so they don't go flying through the winshields.
HG Wells had a great point my friends, in a million years we will be the morlocks. We'll do all of the legwork for our beautiful, moronic fodder.
In my life I've made more mistakes and stupid decisions than I can count(many of them in off the cuff posts that I've made here on/.), but I try to learn from them. I don't fault anyone for not knowing, but gleefully displaying and basking in one's own ignorance is intolerable to me.
This was perfectly acceptable. I have on occasion told about many things that I've done related to work. I never give names, dates or places.
I love telling the story about how I helped expose the activivies of a cheating wife. She thought that deleting the AOL shortcut from her Win3.1 box would delete all of the AOL related files. Oooooops!
Or I could talk about how stingy and unreasonable a certain professional Hockey player was when we dealt with him.
As long as name, date, and place (when applicable) are not given, there is nothing unprofessional, unethical or in poor taste about telling the tale. Not all of us work for the FBI, NSA or military you know...
>>Of course, this isn't the only answer, but the argument about having guns for protection simply doesn't hold:
Sure it does, look at history. In Nazi ocupied Europe the germans did whatever they wanted to to the mostly unarmed Jewish population. Until they hit the Warsaw ghetto. The Jews there had 10 handguns (cheap handguns) and they were ablt to hold the German military at bay for nearly two weeks. The Germans had to burn that ghetto to the ground to get those people out.
The Swiss are and have been a heavily armed society. Isn't it just convienent how the Nazis managed to "forget" to bother them. The Swiss have few natural resources, BUT their watchmaking skills could have been easily used for weapon development. If the Germans had been able to get them under their control they would have been a valuable asset to the Nazi war machine.
>>But a lot fewer will get in a situation where they die because someone else have a gun.
Since the begininning of this century at least 100 million people died because they did not have access to firearms, or at least suitable firearms. From Ottoman Turkey, to the Khemer Rouge it's a historically proven fact that when people are disarmed genocide can occur.
>>The same holds true for restrictive gun laws (provided they're enforced properly): There may be cases where someone would save their life without those laws, but there's more cases where having them will save people.
Another lie. There is no way in hell that you or anyone else will be able to prove that "gun control" has saved more lives this century than it has cost. What gun control laws have saved over 100 million people? NONE. Gun control kills people. Gun control serves only to disarm the peaceable and make them prey for violent lawbreakers.
A couple of years back, right here in the US a school shooting was stopped before it hit Colombine proportions by the principal who ran out to his vehicle and and came back into the school with his own firearm.
>>One of problems in the US is a society that seems to worship violence, and with high poverty rates, high unemployment in many areas, and in many ways lack of tolerance.
The obsession with death is a human psychological trait. Everyone in a civilized nation on this planet knew of Princess Diana's death nearly immediately after it happened. Why? Because people are obsessed with death. My country has many failings, but this is not ours alone.
Countries like India, Pakistan, and nearly the whole continent of Africa have much higher levels of poverty than the US does, but our violent crime rate is disproportionately higher.
Lack of tolerance isn't just here in the US, in Germany it's illegal to say anything about the Nazis that isn't negative. It could be illegal to publicly say "As bad as Hitler was, as evil as Hitler was, he did alot of good for Germany as a whole." In much of Europe the fact that we have firearms here in the US is so reviled that our European slashdotters seem to feel an obligation to slam us everytime something violent happens here.
>>Gun control laws have to be part of a package, and that package must at the very least also include making guns hard to get for EVERYONE.
In that "EVERYONE" do you include the police and the governments? After all they have killed more people in the past 99 years than all of the criminals on the planet combined.
We have enough gun control laws here in the US, but they are not enforced properly. Why? Because there are people with political agendas who don't want them enforced. Because they can then call for more and more restrictive laws. If we enforced all of the laws that we already have and added one new wrinkle, "Commit a crime with a gun and you'll serve life. Commit a murder and you'll be executed." we'd see our crime rate drop immediately.
One last point, I've seen a conspicuous lack of THE main factor as to why we see so much violent crime here in the US. Drugs. People who are addicted wll do anything to get another hit. I smoked cigarettes for several years, now I'm in the process of quitting. I have a piece of Nicotine gum in my mouth right now. Addiction is a powerful thing. Money is also a powerful motivator. If one drug dealer or group of drug dealers sees someone cutting into their profits an all out war can and probably will occur. This can be resolved in one of two ways, eliminate the supply of illegal drugs OR legalize them. Marijuana being a (sorry for the pun) weed will grow anywhere so it'll be next to impossible to eliminate that. Cocaine must be refined. To refine cocaine from the coca plant you need Ethyr and Sulfuric Acid, the only place in the western hemisphere where those can be obtained in any great quantity is the USA. If export was severely restricted the supply would dry up immediately. If they were legalized the profit motive would be gone and drug dealers would have to get a regular job. There's be no more drug wars. I know that both "solutions" have more problems of their own and we don't have the time and this isn't the place to discuss them all.
>>At the end of the day a gun has one purpose - killing.
If you believe that, you've bought the lie.
Modern firearms are not designed to kill. They are designed to woulnd. The economics of combat make this necessary.
>>Please don't defend firearms by comapring them to potentially dangerous objects that *do* have a place in civilised, modern society.
I'll defend firearms from another perspective. It is my right to own one under the constitution of my country. I don't care what those backwards fucks on the otherside of the atlantic do. It is the firearm which has kept my country free.
>>The biggest thing Apple can do is pressure IBM to stop giving out these mobo designs.
They can also pressure IBM & motorola to not sell PPC chips for a reasonable price. Or they could filew law suits against smaller makers. Like their suing Daewoo & E-Machines because of a computer that looks too much like the iMac.
If you don't have big money to fight it, you either fold or go out of business.
I believe that it would be legal to include MacOS ROMs IF they salvage them from dead Macs. I remember a company, I think they were called Outbound systems who scavanged Mac Plus and SE ROMS for their portable "Mac" system.
Apple has the position to bully people, just as any rich company does. It would have to be another big company to be able to fight it out in court, some little upstart company won't be able to afford the legal fees involved.
>>How would making a PPC system vs. an X86 or Alpha system running linux hurt Apple's bottom line?
Apple would most likely take the same position of the BSA or the SPA that every PowerPC machine on the market that they didn't make/sell is a lost sale.
M$ has demonstrated their utter contempt for the spirit of fair competition and the legal system itself by producing FALSE EVIDENCE to bolster their case.
They presented a simulation of what might happen if IE was removed from windows as if it were an actual demonstration. If this were a civil or a criminal case they alone would have been enough to destroy a defendants credibility and cause them to lose.
Remember when they got caught STEALING stacker's code?
Most of the things that M$ has done over they years aren't illegal in and of themselves, but when you look at the big picture they have engaged in a pattern of anti-competitive behavior which is illegal given their position in the marketplace.
M$ has an illegal monopoly and something should be done about it. I don't think that they should be broken up, I don't believe that will do much good, I believe that they should have to pay MAMMOTH fines and be subject to daily DoJ scrutiny until they have proven that they can obey the law.
Forget corporate welfare, I'm talking about corporate probation.
With published specs out there for PPC CHRP (PPCP) machines out there it's only a matter of time until someone produces a PPC machine on the cheap that will run linux. All you really need is open firmware and you're in business.
With an ATX style MB you'd pay a slight premium over x86 hardware, but they benefits would be great. Lower power consumption and therefore less HEAT. You could put such a beast into a small enclosure with a modest fan to disperse heat.
Imagine running down to your next local computer show and picking up a PPCP mb and ordering a CPU card from Pre-owned electronics and throwing together an SMP PPC machine for under a grand.
The PPC is obviously not perfect, but it's raw number crunching ability makes it a good buy.
Hopefully Apple isn't able to put pressure on anyone to prevent them from doing this.
The bear suit was able to withstand a 12 gauge shotgun blast using a sabot slug. That is enough to kill an elephant. If that suit can protect against that, his next suit the G Man Genesis will have no problem at all protecting against the 9mm or.40 caliber bullets from a police officer's service pistol.
Then for once I can treat cops with the same amount of respect that they treat the rest of us, with impunity no less.
>>Gee, I thought Slashdot was "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters", not "News for rabid Linux cheerleaders"
Here on slashdot people have a low tolerance for bullshit. There have been times when I either was tired or just got a little too big for my britches and people let me know when I was talking out of my ass.
You can expect the same. If you spread lies and FUD about linux or anything else that the people here are familiar with then maybe first you should buy som asbestos underwear.
>>And a Republican Party convention generally doesn't have a big sign outside saying "This is a gathering of gun-toting, jack-booted authoritarian racist scum." That doesn't mean that's not what you'll find there. Your point was?
I'm a black republican, come on and tell me how much of a racist I am...
(before you start, remember that my wife and about 30% of my family are people of other races)
He's speaking of Linux as if it's similar in scope, or attitude to Win32. As if Linux ships once every 3 years or something. If you obtained a brand new copy of Win95 in June 1995, and I obtained a brand new copy in August 1997, we most likely have two different products(Due to Rev. B and Rev. C). Linux changes at a much more rapid rate. When I went up from Kernel 2.0.36 to 2.2.9 there was a world of difference in speed and stability.
While it's true that Linux can't be all things to all people, it can be more things to more people than any other OS out there. BTW, I'm nut a linux fanatic, I'm not really much of an advocate, I recommend the right tool for the right job.
For some people NT is what they need. For others MacOS is what they need. For me it's a combination of 98/95/NT/MacOS/and linux.
As far as Dvorak's fear of flaming, I'd say that it's unfounded. Those people who know the most about linux are the ones who are most likely to rip somebody a new one for spreading misinformation about linux.
His comments are surprisingly similar to if someone mysogenist were making statements about women like "Women just can't hack it. Women are weak. Look at the evidence, women can't flap their arms and fly."
Someone then responds "Well, men can't flap their arms and fly either. YOU can't flap your arms and fly."
To which the mysogenist replies "That's not my point. Don't change the subject. I'm not talking about men, I'm not talking about me. You're personal attacks only prevent people from speaking the truth."
Dvorak and people like him are talking out of their asses, and someone should let them know whan they're wrong.
>>Very very true. I've been flamed countless times for saying I like Windows more than Linux. You say anything bad about Linux, no matter the basis of it (be it flame or actually a good point), people will flame you.
Did you ever think that maybe it's you who is to blame when you got flamed?
If you're in the middle of a pro-linux group of people and you proudly proclaim how much of a Windoze fan you are, maybe you deserved a good flaming.
I wouldn't go to a meeting of the National Organization for Women while wearing a tee shirt that says "Show me your tits, you bitch!"
>>As Dvorak says, "Just hating Microsoft is not a good enough reason to promote Linux above everything else."
Did you ever think that it's not so much Microsoft that people hate? Did you ever think that we hate the random repeated crashes more than the company that made the OS?
This is a completely valid response. This is Dvorak's evidence that linux isn't ready for "The Big Time". Well if the M$ flagship can't do it either, why is he bitching about linux? Why isn't he making the observation about both?
When unfair criticism is made we should point it out. You will never win if you allow the terms of victory to be defined by your opposition.
"Yes, officer bitch, I have a driver's license." "Yes, officer pussy face, I have an insurance card" "Kiss my ass barney fife, I don't CARE how fast I was driving."
"This ain't Miami Vice and you ain't Don Johnson. You and your piss ant 40 caliber can go to hell."
"Hey, officer XXXXXX I went to high school with your daughter, I was there when she blew the whole football team. Did she ever get those teeth replaced? I know she's made many men happy over the years."
Baby, you rule! If I didn't have to agree to an exclusive HD usage policy tomorrow, I'd offer you a service contract.
Such is the dilemma of a super technician.
On a side note, when do we get to see more than just the back of the case?
Just to get a little closer to beating this metaphor to death... Do you have an aversion to SCSI hard drives? With removable drives do you prefer internals which can be accessed from the front, or do you like it when they plug into the back through the LPT port?
I think I'll stop there, I'm running out of stuff to say that won't get me a -40 moderation total.
My grandmother is a nurse who cares for old Jewish people. I've met some holocaust avoiders (people who pretended to be something other than Jewish until they could escape from Europe) and my wife to be (getting married tomorrow, WooHoo!) is also a nurse and when she was in college she worked at a nursing home where there there was one old man who had the tattoo from when he was in one of the Nazi camps.
There were actually morons there who didn't know what the tattoo was. Some stupid bitch made this old man cry by grabbing his arm and asking "What is this?"
Many in our generation are totally clueless. In 20 years when all of the holocaust survivors and most of their children are gone, I can see the short attention spanned people in this country (The USA) thinking that shit like this is actually a good idea.
It's kinda funny (funny as in strange, not is in comedic) that after the holocaust more than hald of all male babies in the USA now get circumcised. I had a Jewish Biology professor who used to joke that this was a Jewish conspiracy to prevent easy visual identification of Jews to avoid a future holocaust here in the USA.
When I was a kid I was raised as a Christian. I was forced to attend church, and sunday school. I learned about the mark of the beast in sunday school.
I was told that nobody would be allowed to buy or sell anything without the mark. Well, if you read the application for patent protection it is a system to very human identity during sales transactions.
It sounds to me like either
1. This is the attempt of some well meaning Christian to legally stall or possibly even prevent the apocalypse that he believes is coming, or perhaps even scare some non-practicing Christians into coming back to the church.
or
2. I made a mistake when I changed my religion.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet on 1.
This system would be highly vulnerable to color copies being used instead of real flesh and blood to authorize transactions.
This is an administration which has fought to give the FBI the ability for "roving" wiretaps.
This is the administration of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is the administration of "I will have the most ethical administration in history...".
This is the administration which has kept Louis Freeh in charge of the FBI. In case you don't remember Louis Freeh has opposed encryption on the grounds of "We need a fouth amdendment that works into the 21st century."
Have no doubt that they'll do nothing of any importance to strengthen crypto. If they do weaken the restrictions it will be meaningless.
You make several good points, I'm going to use one of them to deal with the other.
>This is particularly important when the users are neanderthals like corporate lawyers and merger & acquisition types who think PGP is one of those new US television ratings.
>Will the FBI/CIA/NSA have a back door into this? What if they do? As I have already stated, this product is clearly aimed at the corporate market (who may want some sort of key escrow anyway). If you're worried about it, software encrypt whatever you're going to send first.
You yourself have admitted that the target market for these devices isn't very techno savvy. Yet those people have a cery real need for privacy. Sometimes it is vital to have SECURE communications between people in the company. Imagine chipmaker XYZ decides that they're going to announce a 5% drop in prices tomorrow at noon. Company ZYX finds out and decides to steal their thunder. They announce a 10% reduction at 10am.
XYZ has two choices, take one in the eye and let ZYX make the best of the situation. Or two tighten up the belt and make price reduction of twice what they anticipated having to.
IMPORTANT shit is what gets encrypted. Nobody cares what the company cafeteria is serving for lunch today.
Slashdot Mirror
I could imagine a medium powered laser being enough to temporarily blind or damage a CCD, BUT you'd have to be able to aim it without being noticed.
Since the emits a coherent beam of light, nobody should be able to detect it, and even a camera operator my not be able to determine it's source.
LK
It's a part of the Brit's psychology. For as long as there has been an England they've been governed by the whim of the Royalty.
In fact I'm rather surprised that Christianity even took hold there, due to their undying loyalty to authority the typical Brit response to the story of Christ should have been "Well, if he was executed, he must have been a criminal."
Every country seems to have it's own psychological traits. Here in the US, the "Cowboy mentality" seems to be very common. In Japan the culture can be traced back to their feudal past. These traits can often be carried with a people no matter where they live. For example, around the globe Jewish people seem to be very concerned with remembering the hardships that they faced in the past so that they can be strong in the future. This seems to be common from the American Jews to the Seraphim that have been scattered through Europe.
LK
I'd like to make a point before I get on to my main one. Hopefully the peripheral point doesn't get me moderated down.
1. Isn't it ironic that it took a Republican to introduce this legislation? With ALGORE being the father of the internet don't you think his people should have been fighting for this first? Now I can't wait to hear the conspiracy theories about how since McCain is a Republican he has some racist/sexist/homophobic agenda behind this.
2. It's not possible for ANYTHING to be permanent in the US, the congress has the power to do anything when they agree to it. Every constitutional amdendment can be repealed, just as any law can be overturned. If people had been pissed off enough the Ex Post Facto clause and the "Double Jeopardy" clause could have been removed just to make sure OJ Simpson went to jail. If we get enough "Pro Tax" folks in congress this legislation can be overturned in a heartbeat.
2.1 This is wonderful, this will give a chance for Online only joints to flourish. Just because there is no "internet tax" doesn't mean that States won't get their money somehow. In my state there is a "Usage" tax, anything that we get mailorder is supposed to have a 6% "Usage" tax paid on it. Virtually nobody ever pays, but if more and more sales become electronic internet sales my state and several others would start enforcing these taxes to get our money.
LK
Linux (and *BSD et all) is also great for power users. I do not consider myself a *NIX geek. I know a little. I can administer my linux box and a couple at work, but other than that I'm no guru.
/.), but I try to learn from them. I don't fault anyone for not knowing, but gleefully displaying and basking in one's own ignorance is intolerable to me.
I am however a power user. I can fiddly with C++, I can fiddle with BASIC, I can fiddle with HTML, but I'm not going to write anything which changes the world any time soon. I like linux because of it's power and flexibility. If I want more speed, I can turn off services, rather easily. Explain to the average newbie how to stop an app from running in the background on a windoze box. Explain to Joe Schmoe what the system tray is and what it is for.
For those clueless assholes who don't want to learn, I say screw them. Let them use a buggy crashprone OS on closed proprietary hardware, if you refuse to educate yourself you deserve whatever you get.
It's like having a car and all you know is how to open the doors, fasten the seatbelts, start it up and drive. Even though you may choose not to you should know how to change your oil and fill your gas tank. Hopefully you'll never need to but you should know how to change a flat tire. If grandma can't re-install her printer driver when it fails to print, maybe she shouldn't own a printer.
I don't know crap about amateur radio. I therefore don't go out and buy a CB radio and act like a horse's ass with it. If I were interested I'd buy a book, and possible get a no code class license and get myself a HAM. But that's not my thing. Computers and technology are. I spend my time away from work learning about the things that interest me.
This "plug me in and let me go" mentality of the clueless dimwits is invading every segment of our daily lives. From the dolts who still have "12:00" flashing on their VCRs, to the idiots who need automatic seatbelts in their cars so they don't go flying through the winshields.
HG Wells had a great point my friends, in a million years we will be the morlocks. We'll do all of the legwork for our beautiful, moronic fodder.
In my life I've made more mistakes and stupid decisions than I can count(many of them in off the cuff posts that I've made here on
LK
This was perfectly acceptable. I have on occasion told about many things that I've done related to work. I never give names, dates or places.
I love telling the story about how I helped expose the activivies of a cheating wife. She thought that deleting the AOL shortcut from her Win3.1 box would delete all of the AOL related files. Oooooops!
Or I could talk about how stingy and unreasonable a certain professional Hockey player was when we dealt with him.
As long as name, date, and place (when applicable) are not given, there is nothing unprofessional, unethical or in poor taste about telling the tale. Not all of us work for the FBI, NSA or military you know...
LK
I'm a gaming prOn king. I want whichever is available in my area first.
LK
>>Of course, this isn't the only answer, but the argument about having guns for protection simply doesn't hold:
Sure it does, look at history. In Nazi ocupied Europe the germans did whatever they wanted to to the mostly unarmed Jewish population. Until they hit the Warsaw ghetto. The Jews there had 10 handguns (cheap handguns) and they were ablt to hold the German military at bay for nearly two weeks. The Germans had to burn that ghetto to the ground to get those people out.
The Swiss are and have been a heavily armed society. Isn't it just convienent how the Nazis managed to "forget" to bother them. The Swiss have few natural resources, BUT their watchmaking skills could have been easily used for weapon development. If the Germans had been able to get them under their control they would have been a valuable asset to the Nazi war machine.
>>But a lot fewer will get in a situation where they die because someone else have a gun.
Since the begininning of this century at least 100 million people died because they did not have access to firearms, or at least suitable firearms. From Ottoman Turkey, to the Khemer Rouge it's a historically proven fact that when people are disarmed genocide can occur.
>>The same holds true for restrictive gun laws (provided they're enforced properly): There may be cases where someone would save their life without those laws, but there's more cases where having them will save people.
Another lie. There is no way in hell that you or anyone else will be able to prove that "gun control" has saved more lives this century than it has cost. What gun control laws have saved over 100 million people? NONE. Gun control kills people. Gun control serves only to disarm the peaceable and make them prey for violent lawbreakers.
A couple of years back, right here in the US a school shooting was stopped before it hit Colombine proportions by the principal who ran out to his vehicle and and came back into the school with his own firearm.
>>One of problems in the US is a society that seems to worship violence, and with high poverty rates, high unemployment in many areas, and in many ways lack of tolerance.
The obsession with death is a human psychological trait. Everyone in a civilized nation on this planet knew of Princess Diana's death nearly immediately after it happened. Why? Because people are obsessed with death. My country has many failings, but this is not ours alone.
Countries like India, Pakistan, and nearly the whole continent of Africa have much higher levels of poverty than the US does, but our violent crime rate is disproportionately higher.
Lack of tolerance isn't just here in the US, in Germany it's illegal to say anything about the Nazis that isn't negative. It could be illegal to publicly say "As bad as Hitler was, as evil as Hitler was, he did alot of good for Germany as a whole." In much of Europe the fact that we have firearms here in the US is so reviled that our European slashdotters seem to feel an obligation to slam us everytime something violent happens here.
>>Gun control laws have to be part of a package, and that package must at the very least also include making guns hard to get for EVERYONE.
In that "EVERYONE" do you include the police and the governments? After all they have killed more people in the past 99 years than all of the criminals on the planet combined.
We have enough gun control laws here in the US, but they are not enforced properly. Why? Because there are people with political agendas who don't want them enforced. Because they can then call for more and more restrictive laws. If we enforced all of the laws that we already have and added one new wrinkle, "Commit a crime with a gun and you'll serve life. Commit a murder and you'll be executed." we'd see our crime rate drop immediately.
One last point, I've seen a conspicuous lack of THE main factor as to why we see so much violent crime here in the US. Drugs. People who are addicted wll do anything to get another hit. I smoked cigarettes for several years, now I'm in the process of quitting. I have a piece of Nicotine gum in my mouth right now. Addiction is a powerful thing. Money is also a powerful motivator. If one drug dealer or group of drug dealers sees someone cutting into their profits an all out war can and probably will occur. This can be resolved in one of two ways, eliminate the supply of illegal drugs OR legalize them. Marijuana being a (sorry for the pun) weed will grow anywhere so it'll be next to impossible to eliminate that. Cocaine must be refined. To refine cocaine from the coca plant you need Ethyr and Sulfuric Acid, the only place in the western hemisphere where those can be obtained in any great quantity is the USA. If export was severely restricted the supply would dry up immediately. If they were legalized the profit motive would be gone and drug dealers would have to get a regular job. There's be no more drug wars. I know that both "solutions" have more problems of their own and we don't have the time and this isn't the place to discuss them all.
It's not the guns, it's the people.
LK
>>At the end of the day a gun has one purpose - killing.
If you believe that, you've bought the lie.
Modern firearms are not designed to kill. They are designed to woulnd. The economics of combat make this necessary.
>>Please don't defend firearms by comapring them to potentially dangerous objects that *do* have a place in civilised, modern society.
I'll defend firearms from another perspective. It is my right to own one under the constitution of my country. I don't care what those backwards fucks on the otherside of the atlantic do. It is the firearm which has kept my country free.
LK
>>The biggest thing Apple can do is pressure IBM to stop giving out these mobo designs.
They can also pressure IBM & motorola to not sell PPC chips for a reasonable price. Or they could filew law suits against smaller makers. Like their suing Daewoo & E-Machines because of a computer that looks too much like the iMac.
If you don't have big money to fight it, you either fold or go out of business.
LK
1. There is still a boot rom which is required to even get to the point of loading the ROM file from the HD.
2. Beige G3s still had on board ROMs, those can be readily harvested.
LK
I believe that it would be legal to include MacOS ROMs IF they salvage them from dead Macs. I remember a company, I think they were called Outbound systems who scavanged Mac Plus and SE ROMS for their portable "Mac" system.
Apple has the position to bully people, just as any rich company does. It would have to be another big company to be able to fight it out in court, some little upstart company won't be able to afford the legal fees involved.
>>How would making a PPC system vs. an X86 or Alpha system running linux hurt Apple's bottom line?
Apple would most likely take the same position of the BSA or the SPA that every PowerPC machine on the market that they didn't make/sell is a lost sale.
LK
M$ has demonstrated their utter contempt for the spirit of fair competition and the legal system itself by producing FALSE EVIDENCE to bolster their case.
They presented a simulation of what might happen if IE was removed from windows as if it were an actual demonstration. If this were a civil or a criminal case they alone would have been enough to destroy a defendants credibility and cause them to lose.
Remember when they got caught STEALING stacker's code?
Most of the things that M$ has done over they years aren't illegal in and of themselves, but when you look at the big picture they have engaged in a pattern of anti-competitive behavior which is illegal given their position in the marketplace.
M$ has an illegal monopoly and something should be done about it. I don't think that they should be broken up, I don't believe that will do much good, I believe that they should have to pay MAMMOTH fines and be subject to daily DoJ scrutiny until they have proven that they can obey the law.
Forget corporate welfare, I'm talking about corporate probation.
LK
With published specs out there for PPC CHRP (PPCP) machines out there it's only a matter of time until someone produces a PPC machine on the cheap that will run linux. All you really need is open firmware and you're in business.
With an ATX style MB you'd pay a slight premium over x86 hardware, but they benefits would be great. Lower power consumption and therefore less HEAT. You could put such a beast into a small enclosure with a modest fan to disperse heat.
Imagine running down to your next local computer show and picking up a PPCP mb and ordering a CPU card from Pre-owned electronics and throwing together an SMP PPC machine for under a grand.
The PPC is obviously not perfect, but it's raw number crunching ability makes it a good buy.
Hopefully Apple isn't able to put pressure on anyone to prevent them from doing this.
LK
The bear suit was able to withstand a 12 gauge shotgun blast using a sabot slug. That is enough to kill an elephant. If that suit can protect against that, his next suit the G Man Genesis will have no problem at all protecting against the 9mm or .40 caliber bullets from a police officer's service pistol.
Then for once I can treat cops with the same amount of respect that they treat the rest of us, with impunity no less.
Any clearer now?
LK
>>Gee, I thought Slashdot was "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters", not "News for rabid Linux cheerleaders"
Here on slashdot people have a low tolerance for bullshit. There have been times when I either was tired or just got a little too big for my britches and people let me know when I was talking out of my ass.
You can expect the same. If you spread lies and FUD about linux or anything else that the people here are familiar with then maybe first you should buy som asbestos underwear.
LK
>>And a Republican Party convention generally doesn't have a big sign outside saying "This is a gathering of gun-toting, jack-booted authoritarian racist scum." That doesn't mean that's not what you'll find there. Your point was?
I'm a black republican, come on and tell me how much of a racist I am...
(before you start, remember that my wife and about 30% of my family are people of other races)
Enquiring minds want to know.
LK
He's speaking of Linux as if it's similar in scope, or attitude to Win32. As if Linux ships once every 3 years or something. If you obtained a brand new copy of Win95 in June 1995, and I obtained a brand new copy in August 1997, we most likely have two different products(Due to Rev. B and Rev. C). Linux changes at a much more rapid rate. When I went up from Kernel 2.0.36 to 2.2.9 there was a world of difference in speed and stability.
While it's true that Linux can't be all things to all people, it can be more things to more people than any other OS out there. BTW, I'm nut a linux fanatic, I'm not really much of an advocate, I recommend the right tool for the right job.
For some people NT is what they need. For others MacOS is what they need. For me it's a combination of 98/95/NT/MacOS/and linux.
As far as Dvorak's fear of flaming, I'd say that it's unfounded. Those people who know the most about linux are the ones who are most likely to rip somebody a new one for spreading misinformation about linux.
His comments are surprisingly similar to if someone mysogenist were making statements about women like "Women just can't hack it. Women are weak. Look at the evidence, women can't flap their arms and fly."
Someone then responds "Well, men can't flap their arms and fly either. YOU can't flap your arms and fly."
To which the mysogenist replies "That's not my point. Don't change the subject. I'm not talking about men, I'm not talking about me. You're personal attacks only prevent people from speaking the truth."
Dvorak and people like him are talking out of their asses, and someone should let them know whan they're wrong.
LK
>>Very very true. I've been flamed countless times for saying I like Windows more than Linux. You say anything bad about Linux, no matter the basis of it (be it flame or actually a good point), people will flame you.
Did you ever think that maybe it's you who is to blame when you got flamed?
If you're in the middle of a pro-linux group of people and you proudly proclaim how much of a Windoze fan you are, maybe you deserved a good flaming.
I wouldn't go to a meeting of the National Organization for Women while wearing a tee shirt that says "Show me your tits, you bitch!"
>>As Dvorak says, "Just hating Microsoft is not a good enough reason to promote Linux above everything else."
Did you ever think that it's not so much Microsoft that people hate? Did you ever think that we hate the random repeated crashes more than the company that made the OS?
LK
This is a completely valid response. This is Dvorak's evidence that linux isn't ready for "The Big Time". Well if the M$ flagship can't do it either, why is he bitching about linux? Why isn't he making the observation about both?
When unfair criticism is made we should point it out. You will never win if you allow the terms of victory to be defined by your opposition.
LK
For the next time I get pulled over.
"Yes, officer bitch, I have a driver's license."
"Yes, officer pussy face, I have an insurance card"
"Kiss my ass barney fife, I don't CARE how fast I was driving."
"This ain't Miami Vice and you ain't Don Johnson. You and your piss ant 40 caliber can go to hell."
"Hey, officer XXXXXX I went to high school with your daughter, I was there when she blew the whole football team. Did she ever get those teeth replaced? I know she's made many men happy over the years."
Lord Kano
Baby, you rule! If I didn't have to agree to an exclusive HD usage policy tomorrow, I'd offer you a service contract.
Such is the dilemma of a super technician.
On a side note, when do we get to see more than just the back of the case?
Just to get a little closer to beating this metaphor to death... Do you have an aversion to SCSI hard drives? With removable drives do you prefer internals which can be accessed from the front, or do you like it when they plug into the back through the LPT port?
I think I'll stop there, I'm running out of stuff to say that won't get me a -40 moderation total.
Keep the comics coming,
LK
My grandmother is a nurse who cares for old Jewish people. I've met some holocaust avoiders (people who pretended to be something other than Jewish until they could escape from Europe) and my wife to be (getting married tomorrow, WooHoo!) is also a nurse and when she was in college she worked at a nursing home where there there was one old man who had the tattoo from when he was in one of the Nazi camps.
There were actually morons there who didn't know what the tattoo was. Some stupid bitch made this old man cry by grabbing his arm and asking "What is this?"
Many in our generation are totally clueless. In 20 years when all of the holocaust survivors and most of their children are gone, I can see the short attention spanned people in this country (The USA) thinking that shit like this is actually a good idea.
It's kinda funny (funny as in strange, not is in comedic) that after the holocaust more than hald of all male babies in the USA now get circumcised. I had a Jewish Biology professor who used to joke that this was a Jewish conspiracy to prevent easy visual identification of Jews to avoid a future holocaust here in the USA.
LK
When I was a kid I was raised as a Christian. I was forced to attend church, and sunday school. I learned about the mark of the beast in sunday school.
I was told that nobody would be allowed to buy or sell anything without the mark. Well, if you read the application for patent protection it is a system to very human identity during sales transactions.
It sounds to me like either
1. This is the attempt of some well meaning Christian to legally stall or possibly even prevent the apocalypse that he believes is coming, or perhaps even scare some non-practicing Christians into coming back to the church.
or
2. I made a mistake when I changed my religion.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet on 1.
This system would be highly vulnerable to color copies being used instead of real flesh and blood to authorize transactions.
LK
This is an administration which has fought to give the FBI the ability for "roving" wiretaps.
This is the administration of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is the administration of "I will have the most ethical administration in history...".
This is the administration which has kept Louis Freeh in charge of the FBI. In case you don't remember Louis Freeh has opposed encryption on the grounds of "We need a fouth amdendment that works into the 21st century."
Have no doubt that they'll do nothing of any importance to strengthen crypto. If they do weaken the restrictions it will be meaningless.
LK
You make several good points, I'm going to use one of them to deal with the other.
>This is particularly important when the users are neanderthals like corporate lawyers and merger & acquisition types who think PGP is one of those new US television ratings.
>Will the FBI/CIA/NSA have a back door into this? What if they do? As I have already stated, this product is clearly aimed at the corporate market (who may want some sort of key escrow anyway). If you're worried about it, software encrypt whatever you're going to send first.
You yourself have admitted that the target market for these devices isn't very techno savvy. Yet those people have a cery real need for privacy. Sometimes it is vital to have SECURE communications between people in the company. Imagine chipmaker XYZ decides that they're going to announce a 5% drop in prices tomorrow at noon. Company ZYX finds out and decides to steal their thunder. They announce a 10% reduction at 10am.
XYZ has two choices, take one in the eye and let ZYX make the best of the situation. Or two tighten up the belt and make price reduction of twice what they anticipated having to.
IMPORTANT shit is what gets encrypted. Nobody cares what the company cafeteria is serving for lunch today.
LK