I mean, from the "spent $125 on cd's from her $.05 salary" and "the girl was arrested by the police who showed up at her door" and calling the artist "Sir-Paid-A-Lot"???!?!? This is almost word-for-word what I would have done if I was *parodying* propaganda....
Next up, hunters using "Bambi" as material for showing why hunting is great.
I apologize if I don't use the term "scientific creationism" in the traditional sense. However, I would argue for the redefinition of the word to include those who actually don't believe in hand-waving and magical "poofs" that spring the world into being, fossils and all:-)
That out of the way, maybe I can help with the redefinition. Let's remove the word "God" from the picture for the moment. I believe that a being posessing greater technological power than we currently have (not hard to imagine) created this world using methods that we don't fully understand (simply due to lack of knowledge, not because it is some sort of miracle or magic). That this world did not form spontaneously out of asteroid belts and lightning stricks in chemicals. Let us call that assumption A. Based on A, I have several theories on how and when it happened. But to be perfectly honest, those details aren't important for this discussion. Now, is it possible for this theory to be scientific? Or is it doomed for pseudo-scientific just because I cannot *prove* A? And if it is, then how is that different from the scientist who has never seen a black hole, cannot prove that he has even seen the *effects* of black holes, yet continues to believe in black holes and creates models of how the universe works based on those models? In both cases, they are incredibly powerful forces that we cannot observe:-)
Anyways, you probably won't read this (it's no longer the first or second article!) but it was great having this discussion. I am *so* bloody tired of this turning into "Stupid fundies!" "Atheist pig-dogs!" "Yo' Moma!" and so on.....
Sorry, I wasn't trying to list all of the possible variations on the "how did we get here" theme:-) I actually *was* a theistic evolutionist up until a fairly short time ago, and as such know exactly where you're coming from. One great thing about the Bible, is that it is almost infinetly malleable. If I am proven wrong, (and I very well might be) and someone has indisputable *proof* of evolution, then I will quite happily go back to being a theistic evolutionist. While trying to explain to some people why my faith is unshakeable, even though it is scientifically unprovable (which, btw, isn't strictly true), I generally bring up the following example. They have a theory of an all-powerful force that affects the universe, that you can't see/smell/touch. Scientists can't prove by direct observation that they exist. They call this force a "blackhole".:-) (And yes, I know it's not a direct correlation. that's why it's called an analogy, stupid!).
Sorry, that was a poor attempt to reply, I will try and do better this time (I got sufficently chewed out off-line by "Croft na" that you don't have to:-)
I can imagine both scenarios. As an avid reader/watcher of sci-fi, I can imagine *many* different scenarios;-) I *believe* the "godded" universe is true. This belief is based on a mixture of "blind" faith, personal experience, and various interpretations of science.
Re: both statements are bunk. I meant that without further proof, neither statement can have any meaning beyond interesting conjecture. "bunk" was the wrong word. So no, I'm not agnostic, it just came out that way.
And Chaos Theory has nothing to do with it. My statement was based on an erroneous interpetation of the second law of thermodynamics, which, based on a link from someone else that responded, has been cleared up. If you're interested, check out: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html.
See, I have a very open mind about this, and am always willing to learn something new. And, as I'm only human, sometimes I say something wrong;-) Feel free to correct me if it ever happens again.....
"but I know a lot of people that are willingly ignorant".
Man, you have no idea how much that pisses me off. God gave you a brain, use it!! Don't tiptoe around ideas, just because they challenge your faith. Either it's true, or it's not. If it is true, then someone coming up with a different theory isn't going to somehow reverse it. People who refuse to learn or read strike me as being fundamentally unfaithful. I.e., their faith is so small, they cannot stand to have it challenged. Deliberate ignorance is maddening.
Oh, look, that's a soapbox I'm standing on:-) I better get down before someone gets hurt....
Please note this rant isn't aimed at you (dR.fuZZo), but at those supposedly "religous" fundies that... Ahh, I was just going to go off on another rant. I better end this post here:-)
Dolly, what I was trying to tip-toe around saying for fear of offending the fundies, is that God isn't omnipotent in the traditional sense of the word. He *can't* just wave His hand and make justice disappear. He *can't* just say "Okay, I think I want a planet here, *poof*". See, this is what I was talking about wrt assuming what someone else believe:-)
As for the "Scientific Creationist" part of your post, might I point something out? You are assuming there is no science behind creationism (in fact, you said so). What I believe, and what I really, truly *wish* the other "scientific creationists" believed, is that if we knew for a fact *how* the earth was created, it would not be a case of "God did it", but would instead be "He took material from here, shaped it using these techniques, placed it in orbit around Sol, then used this and...." Do you see what I mean? It's incredibly tough to get across to some people, but not everybody who believes in God believes the same way *grin* Now *that's* a shock.....
Thank you for making my point:-) That's *exactly* what I was trying to say, but I think it got lost in the translation. I was attacking those that say "God is omnipotent and thus *nothing* is beyond Him, and Jesus died for our sins because the Law of Justice needs fulfillment". It's one or the other:-) Omnipotent is YAWTNC (Yet Another Word That Needs Clarification) before being used in conversation...
One of the beliefs that I hold is that All Truths are Consistent. In other words, I will not, nor have I ever, used the scriptures in an attempt to "disprove" evolution. It presupposes that the Bible, in the thousands of years it has been around, has never been mis-transcribed or mis-translated, whether on purpose or accident. Now *that* would be a miracle:-) No, evolution has enough holes on it's own, according to it's own science, that I can use *that* to discount evolution as a plausible model for creation. However, this is one point where honest people on both sides can disagree, so I don't see the point in rehashing old arguments:-)
*ding ding ding* You caught me, I'm mormon:-) I really, really, should have prefaced my previous post with "This is *not* doctrine as canonified by the LDS Church", but I didn't think enough people would know about us to make a difference. Obviously I'm wrong;-)
To expand a little bit on what GeekBoy said, yes, we believe the ultimate purpose of existence is to create (hence the large families;-). And, as God is our Father in Heaven, just like fathers here on earth, He wants us to someday be *like* Him. Don't you want *your* kids to progress, grow up, and lead productive lives? That doesn't mean that your kids *replace* you. You'll always be their father. In a similar manner, He wants us to grow up.
Btw, what I just said *is*, afaik, official LDS doctrine, however, if it isn't, then it's *my* fault, and not the church's.
No closet here:-) One *glaring* inconsistency in "traditional" Christian belief is that Christ died for our sins, fulfilling the law of Justice (there must be reward for every action, whether good or bad (see: action/reaction on a spiritual level)). If God is omnipotent such that He can disregard all Laws, spiritual or physical, then why have His only begotten Son die? Why couldn't he wave his hand and make Justice disappear?
One of the *major* problems with discussing religion and science with anybody, is that just saying "I'm a Christian" doesn't come nearly close to defining what I believe. Hence, quite a few responses to my post (including yours) are based on presumptions of beliefs that I don't hold. Unfortunetly, I don't have anyway of dumping my brain into yours so that you know where I'm coming from:-(
Maybe we should both but our hands in a box of crytals and think really hard *grin*.
A circular argument, how nice:-) If you can accept the fact that the universe always existed, does that somehow disprove that there was always a God as well? I could just as easily say that it *proves* the existence of God, as there would otherwise be no "regulating" force (see Chaos Theory). But until other proof is found, both statements are bunk:-)
While another response to your post asks us to believe that God *wants* us to be confused, by "planting" bones in the earth, I think that is fairly, um, dumb:-) However, there are really two seperate issues.
1) You have so-called "Creationists" who not only don't understand how the world was created, but don't *want* to understand. "That is one of God's Mysterys and not in the realm of man". BS. Pure and utter BS. As has been said before, if God gave us curiosity, then he meant for us to use it. These people won't be swayed by *any* proof you show them.
2) Scientific Creationists, of which I am one, believe that God is bound be the same laws of physics that we are. However, his level of technology is much, much, much, greater than ours. That presents us with the same difficulty of your stereotypical caveman trying to understand how a microwave works. We can say "this happened, and we're trying really hard to understand how, but some of this is just going to be over our heads". That isn't willing ignorance, that's humility. In other words, just because scientists a 1000 years ago didn't understand basic principles of flight, doesn't mean birds were violating the Laws of Nature.
Now, as to the subject at hand, accurate dating of rocks. Very few Scientific Creationists (intelligent ones, that is) claim that God waved his hand and the earth sprang in being. Matter (energy) can neither be created nor destroyed. So, when creating the Earth, God used existing materials. Whether they came from this solar system or outside of it, doesn't really matter. It does mean that the rocks can be older than the Earth is. The common example used is "if you use 100 year old bricks to make a new house, is the house new, or 100 years old?"
Anyways, I gotta go to lunch, but I'll follow up later.
At least now we know where they are getting the money to fund the Sphinx.
Anways, I'm packing my bags and moving to Germany. Seems like they are the current holders of the Free World torch:-)
I'm gonna karma whore for a little bit, and c&p an email to the kmail developer's list that came in today. Text follows.
Dear list,
we are happy to announce that the German
"Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik"
(Federal Agency for IT Security, BSI)
contracted us (Intevation, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult and g10 Code)
to make sure that Free Software for their email security
standard Sphinx will be created.
Sphinx basically consists of S/MIME, a PKIX compatible X.509
profile, together with certificate revocation lists (CRLs)
based on LDAP. The code developed will be modular
allowing inclusion in several MUAs released under the GNU GPL.
Part of the contract with the BSI is the inclusion in mutt
and KMail.
The initial project pages can be reached from the URL below.
We wanted to get the good news out to you as fast as possible.
Expect more information to get released on the website or on the
corresponding mailing lists.
We plan to do the development in an open manner suitable
for Free Software projects. We want to handle the project in a
way that it will leverage and add to the work of other developers
and ask for your collaboration. The BSI pays us to ensure that their
specs are followed precisely and the result passes strict tests.
This is the first time the BSI contracts for Free Software development
and the experiences they make will be important.
We will demonstrate the power of commercial Free Software.
www.gnupg.org/aegypten
So, basically they are adding ldap support (w00t!), S/Mime, X.509, and CRL support to Kmail and mutt, using the GPL and working together with the main developers to make sure it gets included. Very cool, if I do say so myself.
(and yes, I know there is already s/mime support for mutt, but iirc it is via a patch. dunno about ldap/x.509/crl, I use kmail:-).
Yes, but as other people keep pointing out, OpenOffice != StarOffice, and even StarOffice 6.0 is still in beta. So no matter how you squint, it still isn't "released":-)
If it has been, openoffice.org sure doesn't know about it. All that is available for download are some "recent builds" with not "W00t! First Release!" hysteria anywhere. Maybe the title should have been "OpenOffice guy interviewed, betas available". But that might be expecting too much from poor Timothy.. I mean, he'd have to actually follow a link!
Hrrm. Does it use a pull-cord to start the phone? Does that mean I can wander around asking people to yank my cord to start me up? Heh. "Yank it, baby! Yank it! W000t!".
I thought *demanding* that credit be given for code used was the major "non-gpl compatible" problem with the old BSD licenses advertising clause. Now, it's another case entirely to argue about not supplying source code after modifications, and frankly IANAL. However, this tirade about not giving credit where credit is due seems more than just a little bit hypocritical...
And here is where you insert all the usual "let's get all the facts before going on a tirade" sort of speech. I'm frankly too tired of the whole thing to spell it out.
Not to spoil a good joke (psychic accountants! Ha! Much funny!) but it's fairly obvious that their fiscal year started last quarter. For instance, I work at Micron, and our fiscal end-of-year just happened, and we are now officially in "2002". Now, we didn't do *nearly* as well as Redhat, and apart from a couple chicken-little engineers, nobody is talking about how we might as well close shop (not that you did).
I mean, sure, the optical network isn't connected to the 'net *yet*. Just wait until the orderlies figure how to make a bridge, and load up counterstrike....
"Um, sorry ma'am, your husband didn't make it. The lag was too great, and those bastards kept ping flooding us. But don't worry, my clan and I will get them next time! D0ct3rz r00l!"
Speaking of KDE...
on
KDE 2.2.1 Up
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I've been a Gnome + Enlightenment man ever since the 0.14 days of E and the initial betas of Gnome. *Hated* the whole KDE 1.x line, from the looks to the "usability" to the looks....;-) Anyways, I followed the party line, accepted that KDE was evil because of the whole QT thing, couldn't stand the looks (did I mention that?) and even when they started shipping themes, they were all butt ugly. Well, the 2.0 release rolled around, I heard good things, wasn't interested. 2.1 came, wackos were raving about konqueror on/., I was running sid so I said "what the heck" and installed it.
Instant love.
Kmail is the client that I've always wanted for linux, and could never find. It is the *only* client that has managed to pull me away from my beloved mutt. Nice. Clean. Simple. Stable. Luckily, I don't need imap support (though it has been in the last couple versions, it's pretty beta'ish), ldap, smtp-auth, or any other "esoteric" feature. Gpg-support works quite well, it just rocks *quietly*.
Konsole was a delight. I had previously tried super-term (I think) that had the same basic idea (multiple terms in one window) but the interface was clunky enough it was unusable (at the time, haven't tried it in a couple years). shift-arrow to cycle through the terms, instant configurability (i.e., no editing Eterm config files by hand), again, just plain rocked.
Konqueror. Don't really have much to say that hasn't already been said. About the only thing I *don't* use it for is managing files:-) Dunno if it's just habit, or if it's a failing in gui fm's, but if I want to move a file, I alt-tab to konsole, then "cp ~/fi[tab]/tm[tab]ba[tab]foo.gz" and I'm done. I truly can't imagine/any/ gui that could improve on that. But as a web browser, it is more stable than IE (not that IE is stable, but it still locks up on me occasionaly, whereas with the stable releases of KDE, a crash is noteworth), pretty standards compliant, and if it supported https through an authenticating proxy, I would be 97% of the way to removing all other browsers from my machine.
Kdevelop and kde-designer (though that's not really a KDE project) rock my world. I am a crappy coder, and fairly inexperienced in c++, but I have been able to help out the main kpilot developer simply by recreating the kpilot config screens in designer, allowing him to focus on getting usb support up to speed rather than rewriting the interface. I know there are some old-school programmers shaking their head at these new-fangled gui toys that lower the bar so much, but anything that allows a newbie like me to help out with one of his favorite OS projects and actually make a difference (the next version of kpilot that ships will be with my GUI) is nothing but a good thing.
Anyways, to make a long story short (heh), if you haven't tried KDE since the 1.x days, this is the time. You will be pleasantly suprised, and may even make the switch. If not, then happy Gnomeing, or BlackBoxing, or WindowMakering, or CommandLineCommandoing. Just have fun! The world is too great a place to worry about what other people are using for their desktop.
I wasted a week of my life trying to get tomcat 3.2.x up and going on a solaris machine. The documentation was the worst that I had *ever* run across, with "how-tos" sporadically jumping back and forth between version 3.1 and 3.3, with not one single "clear, concise, consistent" document available for 3.2 (the previously current stable version). Even step involved downloading another package from the jakarta project, trying to figure out *it's* documentation, installing it, testing, and then finally getting back to tomcat just to discover (generally buried in some obscure comment four pages into a mostly-irrelevant faq) that you need to go get something else.
Frankly, it wasn't until I got it going on a debian/x86 machine (apt-get install tomcat) that I was able to trace my way back and install it on solaris. Not that apache itself was much better, trying to get apxs working.
Then, after it was going, I tried to enable.jsp support in all my user's home directories, the same way we do with cgi's (this is intranet, and we have a lot of people running things out of their ~username). Can't be done. Absa-no-freaking way. Either you configure each directory individually, basically "giving" the/public_html/ dir to tomcat and bypassing apache completely, or you make everybody create a new directory and then configure them *individually*. If someone has a work around for this, I would *love* to hear it. Note the main problem is that tomcat doesn't understand the ~ syntax, so the url passed by apache when a.jsp page is requested is "foo.com/~user/baz.jsp", and then tomcat complains that ~user/baz.jsp doesn't exist. This is the #1 reason jsp/servlets aren't used more where I work.
So, I am *eager* to try out this release, and I truly hope that my complaints are now foundless. I would love nothing better than to be proven wrong, that the documentation has been completely overhauled, that it now understands the common ~username, that it works with any jdk besides blackdown's (on linux), and that it basically doesn't suck. But I'm not holding my breath.
Slashdot Mirror
can make those who defended it eat crow. All in one day! It just doesn't get better than this....
I mean, from the "spent $125 on cd's from her $.05 salary" and "the girl was arrested by the police who showed up at her door" and calling the artist "Sir-Paid-A-Lot"???!?!? This is almost word-for-word what I would have done if I was *parodying* propaganda....
Next up, hunters using "Bambi" as material for showing why hunting is great.
I apologize if I don't use the term "scientific creationism" in the traditional sense. However, I would argue for the redefinition of the word to include those who actually don't believe in hand-waving and magical "poofs" that spring the world into being, fossils and all :-)
:-)
That out of the way, maybe I can help with the redefinition. Let's remove the word "God" from the picture for the moment. I believe that a being posessing greater technological power than we currently have (not hard to imagine) created this world using methods that we don't fully understand (simply due to lack of knowledge, not because it is some sort of miracle or magic). That this world did not form spontaneously out of asteroid belts and lightning stricks in chemicals. Let us call that assumption A. Based on A, I have several theories on how and when it happened. But to be perfectly honest, those details aren't important for this discussion. Now, is it possible for this theory to be scientific? Or is it doomed for pseudo-scientific just because I cannot *prove* A? And if it is, then how is that different from the scientist who has never seen a black hole, cannot prove that he has even seen the *effects* of black holes, yet continues to believe in black holes and creates models of how the universe works based on those models? In both cases, they are incredibly powerful forces that we cannot observe
Anyways, you probably won't read this (it's no longer the first or second article!) but it was great having this discussion. I am *so* bloody tired of this turning into "Stupid fundies!" "Atheist pig-dogs!" "Yo' Moma!" and so on.....
Cheers.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to list all of the possible variations on the "how did we get here" theme :-) I actually *was* a theistic evolutionist up until a fairly short time ago, and as such know exactly where you're coming from. One great thing about the Bible, is that it is almost infinetly malleable. If I am proven wrong, (and I very well might be) and someone has indisputable *proof* of evolution, then I will quite happily go back to being a theistic evolutionist. While trying to explain to some people why my faith is unshakeable, even though it is scientifically unprovable (which, btw, isn't strictly true), I generally bring up the following example. They have a theory of an all-powerful force that affects the universe, that you can't see/smell/touch. Scientists can't prove by direct observation that they exist. They call this force a "blackhole". :-) (And yes, I know it's not a direct correlation. that's why it's called an analogy, stupid!).
Sorry, that was a poor attempt to reply, I will try and do better this time (I got sufficently chewed out off-line by "Croft na" that you don't have to :-)
;-) I *believe* the "godded" universe is true. This belief is based on a mixture of "blind" faith, personal experience, and various interpretations of science.
y .html.
;-) Feel free to correct me if it ever happens again.....
I can imagine both scenarios. As an avid reader/watcher of sci-fi, I can imagine *many* different scenarios
Re: both statements are bunk. I meant that without further proof, neither statement can have any meaning beyond interesting conjecture. "bunk" was the wrong word. So no, I'm not agnostic, it just came out that way.
And Chaos Theory has nothing to do with it. My statement was based on an erroneous interpetation of the second law of thermodynamics, which, based on a link from someone else that responded, has been cleared up. If you're interested, check out: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probabilit
See, I have a very open mind about this, and am always willing to learn something new. And, as I'm only human, sometimes I say something wrong
"but I know a lot of people that are willingly ignorant".
:-) I better get down before someone gets hurt....
:-)
Man, you have no idea how much that pisses me off. God gave you a brain, use it!! Don't tiptoe around ideas, just because they challenge your faith. Either it's true, or it's not. If it is true, then someone coming up with a different theory isn't going to somehow reverse it. People who refuse to learn or read strike me as being fundamentally unfaithful. I.e., their faith is so small, they cannot stand to have it challenged. Deliberate ignorance is maddening.
Oh, look, that's a soapbox I'm standing on
Please note this rant isn't aimed at you (dR.fuZZo), but at those supposedly "religous" fundies that... Ahh, I was just going to go off on another rant. I better end this post here
Dolly, what I was trying to tip-toe around saying for fear of offending the fundies, is that God isn't omnipotent in the traditional sense of the word. He *can't* just wave His hand and make justice disappear. He *can't* just say "Okay, I think I want a planet here, *poof*". See, this is what I was talking about wrt assuming what someone else believe :-)
As for the "Scientific Creationist" part of your post, might I point something out? You are assuming there is no science behind creationism (in fact, you said so). What I believe, and what I really, truly *wish* the other "scientific creationists" believed, is that if we knew for a fact *how* the earth was created, it would not be a case of "God did it", but would instead be "He took material from here, shaped it using these techniques, placed it in orbit around Sol, then used this and...." Do you see what I mean? It's incredibly tough to get across to some people, but not everybody who believes in God believes the same way *grin* Now *that's* a shock.....
Thank you for making my point :-) That's *exactly* what I was trying to say, but I think it got lost in the translation. I was attacking those that say "God is omnipotent and thus *nothing* is beyond Him, and Jesus died for our sins because the Law of Justice needs fulfillment". It's one or the other :-) Omnipotent is YAWTNC (Yet Another Word That Needs Clarification) before being used in conversation...
One of the beliefs that I hold is that All Truths are Consistent. In other words, I will not, nor have I ever, used the scriptures in an attempt to "disprove" evolution. It presupposes that the Bible, in the thousands of years it has been around, has never been mis-transcribed or mis-translated, whether on purpose or accident. Now *that* would be a miracle :-) No, evolution has enough holes on it's own, according to it's own science, that I can use *that* to discount evolution as a plausible model for creation. However, this is one point where honest people on both sides can disagree, so I don't see the point in rehashing old arguments :-)
*ding ding ding* You caught me, I'm mormon :-) I really, really, should have prefaced my previous post with "This is *not* doctrine as canonified by the LDS Church", but I didn't think enough people would know about us to make a difference. Obviously I'm wrong ;-)
;-). And, as God is our Father in Heaven, just like fathers here on earth, He wants us to someday be *like* Him. Don't you want *your* kids to progress, grow up, and lead productive lives? That doesn't mean that your kids *replace* you. You'll always be their father. In a similar manner, He wants us to grow up.
To expand a little bit on what GeekBoy said, yes, we believe the ultimate purpose of existence is to create (hence the large families
Btw, what I just said *is*, afaik, official LDS doctrine, however, if it isn't, then it's *my* fault, and not the church's.
This is drifting off topic, oh well......
No closet here :-) One *glaring* inconsistency in "traditional" Christian belief is that Christ died for our sins, fulfilling the law of Justice (there must be reward for every action, whether good or bad (see: action/reaction on a spiritual level)). If God is omnipotent such that He can disregard all Laws, spiritual or physical, then why have His only begotten Son die? Why couldn't he wave his hand and make Justice disappear?
:-(
One of the *major* problems with discussing religion and science with anybody, is that just saying "I'm a Christian" doesn't come nearly close to defining what I believe. Hence, quite a few responses to my post (including yours) are based on presumptions of beliefs that I don't hold. Unfortunetly, I don't have anyway of dumping my brain into yours so that you know where I'm coming from
Maybe we should both but our hands in a box of crytals and think really hard *grin*.
A circular argument, how nice :-) If you can accept the fact that the universe always existed, does that somehow disprove that there was always a God as well? I could just as easily say that it *proves* the existence of God, as there would otherwise be no "regulating" force (see Chaos Theory). But until other proof is found, both statements are bunk :-)
While another response to your post asks us to believe that God *wants* us to be confused, by "planting" bones in the earth, I think that is fairly, um, dumb :-) However, there are really two seperate issues.
1) You have so-called "Creationists" who not only don't understand how the world was created, but don't *want* to understand. "That is one of God's Mysterys and not in the realm of man". BS. Pure and utter BS. As has been said before, if God gave us curiosity, then he meant for us to use it. These people won't be swayed by *any* proof you show them.
2) Scientific Creationists, of which I am one, believe that God is bound be the same laws of physics that we are. However, his level of technology is much, much, much, greater than ours. That presents us with the same difficulty of your stereotypical caveman trying to understand how a microwave works. We can say "this happened, and we're trying really hard to understand how, but some of this is just going to be over our heads". That isn't willing ignorance, that's humility. In other words, just because scientists a 1000 years ago didn't understand basic principles of flight, doesn't mean birds were violating the Laws of Nature.
Now, as to the subject at hand, accurate dating of rocks. Very few Scientific Creationists (intelligent ones, that is) claim that God waved his hand and the earth sprang in being. Matter (energy) can neither be created nor destroyed. So, when creating the Earth, God used existing materials. Whether they came from this solar system or outside of it, doesn't really matter. It does mean that the rocks can be older than the Earth is. The common example used is "if you use 100 year old bricks to make a new house, is the house new, or 100 years old?"
Anyways, I gotta go to lunch, but I'll follow up later.
"116 *Million* Dollars".....
:-)
At least now we know where they are getting the money to fund the Sphinx.
Anways, I'm packing my bags and moving to Germany. Seems like they are the current holders of the Free World torch
I'm gonna karma whore for a little bit, and c&p an email to the kmail developer's list that came in today. Text follows.
:-).
Dear list,
we are happy to announce that the German
"Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik"
(Federal Agency for IT Security, BSI)
contracted us (Intevation, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult and g10 Code)
to make sure that Free Software for their email security
standard Sphinx will be created.
Sphinx basically consists of S/MIME, a PKIX compatible X.509
profile, together with certificate revocation lists (CRLs)
based on LDAP. The code developed will be modular
allowing inclusion in several MUAs released under the GNU GPL.
Part of the contract with the BSI is the inclusion in mutt
and KMail.
The initial project pages can be reached from the URL below.
We wanted to get the good news out to you as fast as possible.
Expect more information to get released on the website or on the
corresponding mailing lists.
We plan to do the development in an open manner suitable
for Free Software projects. We want to handle the project in a
way that it will leverage and add to the work of other developers
and ask for your collaboration. The BSI pays us to ensure that their
specs are followed precisely and the result passes strict tests.
This is the first time the BSI contracts for Free Software development
and the experiences they make will be important.
We will demonstrate the power of commercial Free Software.
www.gnupg.org/aegypten
So, basically they are adding ldap support (w00t!), S/Mime, X.509, and CRL support to Kmail and mutt, using the GPL and working together with the main developers to make sure it gets included. Very cool, if I do say so myself.
(and yes, I know there is already s/mime support for mutt, but iirc it is via a patch. dunno about ldap/x.509/crl, I use kmail
Hope that clears some questions up.
Yes, but as other people keep pointing out, OpenOffice != StarOffice, and even StarOffice 6.0 is still in beta. So no matter how you squint, it still isn't "released" :-)
But I *will* have to try that beta....
If it has been, openoffice.org sure doesn't know about it. All that is available for download are some "recent builds" with not "W00t! First Release!" hysteria anywhere. Maybe the title should have been "OpenOffice guy interviewed, betas available". But that might be expecting too much from poor Timothy.. I mean, he'd have to actually follow a link!
Hrrm. Does it use a pull-cord to start the phone? Does that mean I can wander around asking people to yank my cord to start me up? Heh. "Yank it, baby! Yank it! W000t!".
I thought *demanding* that credit be given for code used was the major "non-gpl compatible" problem with the old BSD licenses advertising clause. Now, it's another case entirely to argue about not supplying source code after modifications, and frankly IANAL. However, this tirade about not giving credit where credit is due seems more than just a little bit hypocritical...
And here is where you insert all the usual "let's get all the facts before going on a tirade" sort of speech. I'm frankly too tired of the whole thing to spell it out.
Not to spoil a good joke (psychic accountants! Ha! Much funny!) but it's fairly obvious that their fiscal year started last quarter. For instance, I work at Micron, and our fiscal end-of-year just happened, and we are now officially in "2002". Now, we didn't do *nearly* as well as Redhat, and apart from a couple chicken-little engineers, nobody is talking about how we might as well close shop (not that you did).
HAND!
what would he do? Spell check the stories? Too obvious...
I mean, sure, the optical network isn't connected to the 'net *yet*. Just wait until the orderlies figure how to make a bridge, and load up counterstrike....
"Um, sorry ma'am, your husband didn't make it. The lag was too great, and those bastards kept ping flooding us. But don't worry, my clan and I will get them next time! D0ct3rz r00l!"
I've been a Gnome + Enlightenment man ever since the 0.14 days of E and the initial betas of Gnome. *Hated* the whole KDE 1.x line, from the looks to the "usability" to the looks.... ;-) Anyways, I followed the party line, accepted that KDE was evil because of the whole QT thing, couldn't stand the looks (did I mention that?) and even when they started shipping themes, they were all butt ugly. Well, the 2.0 release rolled around, I heard good things, wasn't interested. 2.1 came, wackos were raving about konqueror on /., I was running sid so I said "what the heck" and installed it.
:-) Dunno if it's just habit, or if it's a failing in gui fm's, but if I want to move a file, I alt-tab to konsole, then "cp ~/fi[tab] /tm[tab]ba[tab]foo.gz" and I'm done. I truly can't imagine /any/ gui that could improve on that. But as a web browser, it is more stable than IE (not that IE is stable, but it still locks up on me occasionaly, whereas with the stable releases of KDE, a crash is noteworth), pretty standards compliant, and if it supported https through an authenticating proxy, I would be 97% of the way to removing all other browsers from my machine.
Instant love.
Kmail is the client that I've always wanted for linux, and could never find. It is the *only* client that has managed to pull me away from my beloved mutt. Nice. Clean. Simple. Stable. Luckily, I don't need imap support (though it has been in the last couple versions, it's pretty beta'ish), ldap, smtp-auth, or any other "esoteric" feature. Gpg-support works quite well, it just rocks *quietly*.
Konsole was a delight. I had previously tried super-term (I think) that had the same basic idea (multiple terms in one window) but the interface was clunky enough it was unusable (at the time, haven't tried it in a couple years). shift-arrow to cycle through the terms, instant configurability (i.e., no editing Eterm config files by hand), again, just plain rocked.
Konqueror. Don't really have much to say that hasn't already been said. About the only thing I *don't* use it for is managing files
Kdevelop and kde-designer (though that's not really a KDE project) rock my world. I am a crappy coder, and fairly inexperienced in c++, but I have been able to help out the main kpilot developer simply by recreating the kpilot config screens in designer, allowing him to focus on getting usb support up to speed rather than rewriting the interface. I know there are some old-school programmers shaking their head at these new-fangled gui toys that lower the bar so much, but anything that allows a newbie like me to help out with one of his favorite OS projects and actually make a difference (the next version of kpilot that ships will be with my GUI) is nothing but a good thing.
Anyways, to make a long story short (heh), if you haven't tried KDE since the 1.x days, this is the time. You will be pleasantly suprised, and may even make the switch. If not, then happy Gnomeing, or BlackBoxing, or WindowMakering, or CommandLineCommandoing. Just have fun! The world is too great a place to worry about what other people are using for their desktop.
I wasted a week of my life trying to get tomcat 3.2.x up and going on a solaris machine. The documentation was the worst that I had *ever* run across, with "how-tos" sporadically jumping back and forth between version 3.1 and 3.3, with not one single "clear, concise, consistent" document available for 3.2 (the previously current stable version). Even step involved downloading another package from the jakarta project, trying to figure out *it's* documentation, installing it, testing, and then finally getting back to tomcat just to discover (generally buried in some obscure comment four pages into a mostly-irrelevant faq) that you need to go get something else.
.jsp support in all my user's home directories, the same way we do with cgi's (this is intranet, and we have a lot of people running things out of their ~username). Can't be done. Absa-no-freaking way. Either you configure each directory individually, basically "giving" the /public_html/ dir to tomcat and bypassing apache completely, or you make everybody create a new directory and then configure them *individually*. If someone has a work around for this, I would *love* to hear it. Note the main problem is that tomcat doesn't understand the ~ syntax, so the url passed by apache when a .jsp page is requested is "foo.com/~user/baz.jsp", and then tomcat complains that ~user/baz.jsp doesn't exist. This is the #1 reason jsp/servlets aren't used more where I work.
Frankly, it wasn't until I got it going on a debian/x86 machine (apt-get install tomcat) that I was able to trace my way back and install it on solaris. Not that apache itself was much better, trying to get apxs working.
Then, after it was going, I tried to enable
So, I am *eager* to try out this release, and I truly hope that my complaints are now foundless. I would love nothing better than to be proven wrong, that the documentation has been completely overhauled, that it now understands the common ~username, that it works with any jdk besides blackdown's (on linux), and that it basically doesn't suck. But I'm not holding my breath.
If you don't like reading a three page article by starting on page two, follow the link: *click*.