Replying to myself again. This is really a weird document. They have this little bit of sanity in there, which voids part of what I have said.
Most of the Linux Programs are licensed pursuant to a Linux EULA that permits you to copy, modify, and redistribute the software, in both source code and binary code forms. However, you must review the on-line documentation that accompanies each of the Linux Programs included in this product for the applicable Linux EULA. Review these Linux EULAs carefully, in order to understand your rights under them and to realize the maximum benefits available to you with Red Hat Linux. Nothing in this license agreement limits your rights under, or grants you rights that supercede, the terms of any applicable Linux EULA.
But then they have this part again.
CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS BEFORE INSTALLING ANY OF THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS. INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SET FORTH IN THIS DOCUMENT AND OF THE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT ASSOCIATED WITH THE SOFTWARE PROGRAM. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, DO NOT INSTALL THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS.
So it is not clear to me that this EULA is not adding restrictions on top of all software packages includet with RHL, including the GPL ones. One particular problem is that you have to agree to this license before you can install the software and review individual licenses to see which rights you have.
Perhaps I'm freaking out needlessly here. I just find it _so_ weird that Red Hat has a EULA. Oh well. I'll get over it. It's not like I'm a license freak or anything.
Sorry for replying to myself this quickly. But you really have to look at this document. Look at the first part, that talks about the auto-signing "feature" of the EULA.
By installing any or all of the software included with this product, you agree to the following terms and conditions.
Now, I really love and respect Red Hat. I haven't lost any respect for them since they started making it big and I am sure that this is just a big, big mistake. Really./P>
But think about what they are saying! If I use the SRPM to compile and install the source code for kernel, or Emacs, or any GNU tools, I am agreeing to this? Has someone gone insane at RedHat? That software is covered under the GNU GPL. Slapping a EULA on it isn't even remotely legal!
Putting a EULA on a distribution is one thing. Putting one on "any or all of the software included" with it is another entirely. I hope this is just a big mistake, or that I just misunderstand this whole issue and am blowing it all out of proportion. Anyone at RedHat care to comment?
This is really weird. Browsing the left navbar on the release notes, I just discovered that Red Hat Linux comes with a fancy EULA. Yes, the type that you are assumed to agree to by installing the product. No, I am not making this up. Read for yourself.
Now, I have not read the EULA. Perhaps there is nothing sinister here. They probably have a very valid reason for doing this. I suppose the lawyers insist on it. But I had never heard of this practice and I doubt many here have. To me, it seems inconsistent with RedHat's reasonable, pro-open source, transparent attitude.
I mean, the document says that this applied to 7.2 as well. I installed 7.2 on quite a few machines and never once did the installation program warn me that I was simultaneously "signing" a legal document. Even if that EULA really is harmless, I should be told about it.
PS: I love Red Hat, bot for their product and their attitude. It is an amazing company, but this comes as a shock to me. And the more I think about it, the weirder I feel about it. Which probably explains why I have been editing this post for 15 minutes now.
You despair about Cheapbytes' notice stating that they have to call Red Hat Linux "XXX XXX Linux" because of the trademark. Don't despair, they could be even more serious about trademark law. I personnally think they should call it "XXX XXX XXXXX". Maybe it's just me, but a "XXXXX distribution" sounds a lot more interesting than yet another Linux distro. The GUI on that has to be nice.
I am afraid it is you who are mistaken about many things... You have a decent analysis, but your facts are all wrong. Of course, that is always a bad start.
George Lucas did make the original Star Wars. And that movie turned out pretty much how you describe it. However, George Lucas did not make the two following films. Not really. Not in the sense we usually give that word.
The Empire Strikes Back was directed by Irvin Kershner. Lucas is credited with the role of executive producer and with the story, but not the script. Apparently, Lucas gave Kershner a lot of leeway. Kershner put a lot of himself in the film, which explains why it stands out so vividly in the franchise. As for Lucas, he thought it was a bit too dark. (There is an anecdote, verified by Kershner, about Han's macho "I know" line, which he says to Leia when she tells him she loves him. Lucas didn't like the line and wanted it out, but Kershner held his ground. Lucas only let it stand after he saw how the public reacted in a private screening. Sad but true, Lucas would have preferred Han say "I love you too.")
Now admittedly The Return of the Jedi looks more like a Lucas movie. But he still didn't direct it. He gave that job to Richard Marquand. Again, Lucas is the executive producer and is credited with the story, but not the script. Obviously the film is going to feel a bit different. Now apart from the advance in technology which you mention, I personnally see this film as a return to the aesthetics of the first film. I think that this is what Lucas wanted when he picked Marquand. Now, I understand that Lucas guided Marquand more than he had Kershner. But maybe Marquand just happened to share Lucas' tastes more than Kershner did.
So do not be surprised if the movies look and feel different... They were made by diferent people. Funny thing is, I think Lucas used to be very open about all of this. But not anymore. He doesn't usually mention neither directed nor wrote the scripts to two of them. Kind of strange. So... As long as Lucas writes and directs the prequels, don't expect any one of them to turn out like Episode V. Especially since he didn't like it that much in the first place.
One of the big challanges for sorcerer was upgrade from db3 to db4. That one tooked me 2 #cast --fix till system self healed. Try doing this with any other distro and see what happens.
Interesting. On RedHat, all I'm getting are cryptic "bash: cast: command not found", but my system does seem to run _much_ smoother now. Anybody try it on Debian yet?.
I believe that allowing posters to "opt out" of their +1 is moronic. The premise behind the bonus is that said poster generally posts good comments, so this one is probably good too. Now this either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, remove the +1. If it does, grant the +1 and get over it.
Allowing an option to "opt out" of the +1 is like an option that would allow you to "opt out" of being moderated up. The feature is down-right silly. Judging the quality of a post is not the job of the poster. It is the job of the community system and the moderators.
Just remove that option. It makes no sense.
Re:Older version
on
Netscape 6.2
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Whoa. You realize your cron starts up in $HOME, and if that `cd` for some reason returns an error...
Try cd/home/mozilla && rm -rf *
I now that geeks use ampersands, but can you tell me what the hell is wrong with rm -rf/home/mozilla/*? Simpler is better. And writing rm -rf * is almost always a bad idea. You will edit this cron job again someday, and probably get it wrong.
The thing that really gets to me is what this says about free software businesses, and about our understanding of it. Most people agreed, making a business from free software was supposed to go like this:
Give the software, sell support: this, as we all know, doesn't work. If the software is that good, no-one needs support. If it isn't, no-one wants it. This is what RedHat does.
Give the software, sell the hardware: now this works! Just look at IBM. Okay, okay, they don't actually give DB2 or OS/2 away, but you get the idea. It works! IBM, VA Whatever. VA Whatever, IBM. Profit!
Yet VA Whatever has gone down in flames in a major way while RedHat is mostly going strong. Zope Corporation is doing very well too. So was Cygnus before it was bought out. And etc. ad nauseam. I guess we were flat-out wrong.
Or maybe it was VA Whatever's fault. They had it all: big visibility, a whole shitload of cash, and many of the smartest people in the business. The only snag, I think, was that Direction didn't realize that they actually needed a plan, too.
I think they still don't realize that. Someone should tell them and tell them now. Will you do it, or should I? How about you, Taco? You know the guys. GO TO THEIR OFFICE AND CLUB THEM OVER THE HEAD REPEATEDLY WHILE SCREAMING "YOU FRIGGING MORONS".
Well, if you want very well-documented drawbacks, you can go fetch VA Linux's SEC filing, quarterly reports and that nice graph of its plunging stock price.
Sorry to be mean, I really admire what VA stood for... But that company's financial history should serve as a big, fat warning sign. At least RedHat is doing ok...
For starters, there is a great quantity of raw material in the comments on slashdot. A lot of the high-rated posts are really good stuff, even if they're not polished.
I think that it was at that point that I literally burst out laughing in the computer lab. Man, oh man. Any text about current events just needs "some revision, fact-checking, and proofing" before it's publishable. But that is precisely where all the hard work goes. The devil is in the details, as the saying goes.
Now, I don't mean any disrespect. I truly agree with your first paragraph... LWN puts out very high-quality material. But Slashdot comments are closer to rants, often informed, sometimes accurate and rarely both. There are many reader-operated Linux news sites, none of which compare with LWN for quality commentary.
(Slashdot posts as quality journalism. Damn that's funny.)
What you have to understand is this: you cannot compare this sentencing to the kind of sentencing he could have received had he been tried in the US or even in Ontario. Mafiaboy was not judged on US soil, by the US judicial system and under US laws.
If you compare sentencing in the US with sentencing in other countries of the industrialized occident, the US in no way comes out as an average nation. Comparatively speaking, the US judicial system is extremely harsh. Prison sentences are much more common and much, much longer. Another example of this harshness is the death penalty, which is much more widely used in (parts of) the US than in the rest of the industrialized occident.
Mafiaboy was judged and sentenced in Quebec, Canada. The Quebec judicial system operates on Canadian federal laws, but with largely distinct underlying values and interpretations. Whereas what is usually called "English Canada" generally wants to move towards a harsher, US-style judicial system, Quebec gererally wants to go towards prevention, leniency, and re-integration. This is especially true for young offenders. Young offenders in Quebec are not sentenced to five-year prison terms, even for violent crimes. Their anonymity is secured and they are sent to youth centers.
Interestingly, it seems that the efficiency argument is on the side of lenient Quebec in this case. Quebec has a very good track record at maintaining low crime and violence rates amoungst youngsters. Prevention and re-integration obviously fails in many cases (as we all know), but apparently works "often enough" or "well enough" to give Quebec very good results.
(My personal opinion? All other things being equal, I prefer shorter sentences. I will favor any solution which just works, but luckily, it seems that the one naturally prefer does precisely work. Yet if you must know, I am definitely for a "dangerous offender" clause which keeps total, dangerous lunatics off the streets for good.)
So whoever was expecting a 15-year prison sentence (or anything vaguely similar) is not very well-informed. That is of course understandable: Quebec and Canada are not very well known outside or... Quebec and Canada. Some would even say respectively. But the amount of surprise apparent here just goes to show how much many US citizens believe "their way" to be "the standard way."
And please remember: this is a DDOS attack; not a mass rape, not a murder, not a bloody beating. And if you stop thinking about magical, crime-banishing 25-year prison sentences for just a second, you might realize that 8 months in a youth detention actually is no small deal for a 17-year-old. I rather enjoyed beeing free during my teenage years.
Replying to myself... Obviously, my chess skills are getting rusty.
for starters B3 is left unprotected if you move all of your pawns and nothing else
Of course, that is not true. B3 is protected by the queen... The pawn which is left wide open is actually G3, on the king's side. I remember a time when thinking about chess in bed meant going deeper than "Doesn't the queen start on D1?" Ah... The good old days.
to make 8 quick moves at the beginning, saving his time for later
This is mostly non-sensical. "Quick moves" do not exist in chess. Moving is never slow... Thinking about it is. And for most games, world-class chess players do not have to think about opening moves. They can, but going through the Sicilian is no slower for them than moving all pawns sequentially.
Also, while they're lousy moves to start with, they don't lead to any obvious attacks,
Well, I don't know how obvious you want it, but for starters B3 is left unprotected if you move all of your pawns and nothing else. Plus, there are many different ways to check-mate in under eight moves. At the international level, wasted opening moves precisely lead to obvious attacks (obvious to the players). Giving away 8 moves is suicide.
so Short probably didn't have time to figure out how to take advantage of his ability to develop an attack without being bothered.
Not enough time? To win when someone throws away his first eight moves? He had three minutes. I'd have enough time! Do you have any idea what the man would do to you on a chess table even with just 30 seconds on the clock? The very thought sends shivers down my spine.
And what do I think? Read between the lines. Get the general gist. Bobby didn't move A2-A3, B2-B3... H2-H3. He did a very cramped, Caro-Kann style development , had most or all of his pawns go through row 3 early in the game, and most of them stay there for a while. Or something like that.
Or maybe you're right. Maybe Short got so confused, he let a dead-easy win slip through his fingers. What do I know? I'm no master, and I didn't see the game (nor would I really understand it if i did). But I don't think I could win a tennis match against Andrei Agassi... Even if I played bad enough, which I would.
My first thought was that it's because Stephen Tweedie, lead developer of ext3, works for RedHat. ReiserFS was developed primarily by SUSE. JFS and XFS come from IBM and SGI. / So I read the article, and all of those reasons could easily apply to any of the above filesystems.
Your very thorough reading probably missed this surprising section:
"Easy transition:
It is easy to change from ext2 to ext3 and gain the benefits of a robust journaling file system, without reformatting. That's right, no need to do a long, tedious, and error-prone backup, reformat, restore operation in order to experience the advantages of ext3."
It could happen to anyone. I know I had to read the article half-way before I even saw it!
You think Pong is great. I think it's just mindless fun.
Did I ever say it wasn't? Many fun games are mindless fun... Now we do disagree on Pong's greatness, but note that I actually provided arguments to back my opinion.:-) Understandable. One of Pong's strengths is that there is not much you can say against it other than a variation of "I don't like it". What are you to complain about? The plot? Voice acting?
I fully agree however with your second paragraph: some games are not really comparable.
I'd also like to point out there is a big difference between the greatest games of all time, and the most influential games of all time. A list of the influential games will likely have the games you're listing.
I'm posting late so I will get ignored, but...
You are sadly missing the point that many of the games he mentions were great. Case in point: Pong. I play way too much video games and have been groosly interested in the topic for quite a while. And you are sadly mistaken to gloss over Pong. Pong is an amazing game in its own right. It is amazingly simple, but so is soccer when you think about it. And Pong has something that almost no other game has: it is perfect.
Think about it. Think about the games you love. Any one of them could be improved upon: better AI, more balanced weapons, better thought-out multi-player, smoother game-play, more involving story-line, etc. None of this applies to pong. You could implement AI for it and Pong would gain 0 appeal. The same goes for the graphics. If they were better, they wouldn't be perfect. The original graphics are perfect because they are simple, effective and don't matter.
Readers will think I am being funny. I am. But I truely believe what I just said: Pong is quite possibly the only perfect game in videogame history. (And in any case, how could a not-so-great gane become one of the most influential ever? Hogwash.)
Slashdot Mirror
Replying to myself again. This is really a weird document. They have this little bit of sanity in there, which voids part of what I have said.
Most of the Linux Programs are licensed pursuant to a Linux EULA that permits you to copy, modify, and redistribute the software, in both source code and binary code forms. However, you must review the on-line documentation that accompanies each of the Linux Programs included in this product for the applicable Linux EULA. Review these Linux EULAs carefully, in order to understand your rights under them and to realize the maximum benefits available to you with Red Hat Linux. Nothing in this license agreement limits your rights under, or grants you rights that supercede, the terms of any applicable Linux EULA.
But then they have this part again.
CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS BEFORE INSTALLING ANY OF THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS. INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SET FORTH IN THIS DOCUMENT AND OF THE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT ASSOCIATED WITH THE SOFTWARE PROGRAM. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, DO NOT INSTALL THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS.
So it is not clear to me that this EULA is not adding restrictions on top of all software packages includet with RHL, including the GPL ones. One particular problem is that you have to agree to this license before you can install the software and review individual licenses to see which rights you have.
Perhaps I'm freaking out needlessly here. I just find it _so_ weird that Red Hat has a EULA. Oh well. I'll get over it. It's not like I'm a license freak or anything.
Sorry for replying to myself this quickly. But you really have to look at this document. Look at the first part, that talks about the auto-signing "feature" of the EULA.
By installing any or all of the software included with this product, you agree to the following terms and conditions.
Now, I really love and respect Red Hat. I haven't lost any respect for them since they started making it big and I am sure that this is just a big, big mistake. Really./P>
But think about what they are saying! If I use the SRPM to compile and install the source code for kernel, or Emacs, or any GNU tools, I am agreeing to this? Has someone gone insane at RedHat? That software is covered under the GNU GPL. Slapping a EULA on it isn't even remotely legal!
Putting a EULA on a distribution is one thing. Putting one on "any or all of the software included" with it is another entirely. I hope this is just a big mistake, or that I just misunderstand this whole issue and am blowing it all out of proportion. Anyone at RedHat care to comment?
This is really weird. Browsing the left navbar on the release notes, I just discovered that Red Hat Linux comes with a fancy EULA. Yes, the type that you are assumed to agree to by installing the product. No, I am not making this up. Read for yourself.
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhl_standard_us.htm l
Now, I have not read the EULA. Perhaps there is nothing sinister here. They probably have a very valid reason for doing this. I suppose the lawyers insist on it. But I had never heard of this practice and I doubt many here have. To me, it seems inconsistent with RedHat's reasonable, pro-open source, transparent attitude.
I mean, the document says that this applied to 7.2 as well. I installed 7.2 on quite a few machines and never once did the installation program warn me that I was simultaneously "signing" a legal document. Even if that EULA really is harmless, I should be told about it.
PS: I love Red Hat, bot for their product and their attitude. It is an amazing company, but this comes as a shock to me. And the more I think about it, the weirder I feel about it. Which probably explains why I have been editing this post for 15 minutes now.
Funny. I didn't know that the Path to God could be revealed through pop-ups. Aren't pop-ups evil?
You despair about Cheapbytes' notice stating that they have to call Red Hat Linux "XXX XXX Linux" because of the trademark. Don't despair, they could be even more serious about trademark law. I personnally think they should call it "XXX XXX XXXXX". Maybe it's just me, but a "XXXXX distribution" sounds a lot more interesting than yet another Linux distro. The GUI on that has to be nice.
I am afraid it is you who are mistaken about many things... You have a decent analysis, but your facts are all wrong. Of course, that is always a bad start.
George Lucas did make the original Star Wars. And that movie turned out pretty much how you describe it. However, George Lucas did not make the two following films. Not really. Not in the sense we usually give that word.
The Empire Strikes Back was directed by Irvin Kershner. Lucas is credited with the role of executive producer and with the story, but not the script. Apparently, Lucas gave Kershner a lot of leeway. Kershner put a lot of himself in the film, which explains why it stands out so vividly in the franchise. As for Lucas, he thought it was a bit too dark. (There is an anecdote, verified by Kershner, about Han's macho "I know" line, which he says to Leia when she tells him she loves him. Lucas didn't like the line and wanted it out, but Kershner held his ground. Lucas only let it stand after he saw how the public reacted in a private screening. Sad but true, Lucas would have preferred Han say "I love you too.")
Now admittedly The Return of the Jedi looks more like a Lucas movie. But he still didn't direct it. He gave that job to Richard Marquand. Again, Lucas is the executive producer and is credited with the story, but not the script. Obviously the film is going to feel a bit different. Now apart from the advance in technology which you mention, I personnally see this film as a return to the aesthetics of the first film. I think that this is what Lucas wanted when he picked Marquand. Now, I understand that Lucas guided Marquand more than he had Kershner. But maybe Marquand just happened to share Lucas' tastes more than Kershner did.
So do not be surprised if the movies look and feel different... They were made by diferent people. Funny thing is, I think Lucas used to be very open about all of this. But not anymore. He doesn't usually mention neither directed nor wrote the scripts to two of them. Kind of strange. So... As long as Lucas writes and directs the prequels, don't expect any one of them to turn out like Episode V. Especially since he didn't like it that much in the first place.
One of the big challanges for sorcerer was upgrade from db3 to db4. That one tooked me 2 #cast --fix till system self healed. Try doing this with any other distro and see what happens.
Interesting. On RedHat, all I'm getting are cryptic "bash: cast: command not found", but my system does seem to run _much_ smoother now. Anybody try it on Debian yet?.
heh.
Quake 3 has never been smoother on my machine. 2.4.18-pre7 with Robert Love's Pre-emptible Kernel patch and Ingo's O(1) patch.
Sounds awesome. Quick question: does Ingo's patch make all of userland O(1), or just the kernel? I'm curious.
(1/5 wink)
I found additional documents looking through the website. These are much more interesting to read than the changelog.
The README
The release notes
Installation details
Driver status
Enjoy!
Mirror site coming (Score:5, Informative)
And people say Slashdot is not what it used to be. I say! Moderation totals never used to be _that_ entertaining.
Hey, A second paragraph! I think we are going to need (Score:10, Mind-Enhancing) to cover those cases!
I believe that allowing posters to "opt out" of their +1 is moronic. The premise behind the bonus is that said poster generally posts good comments, so this one is probably good too. Now this either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, remove the +1. If it does, grant the +1 and get over it.
Allowing an option to "opt out" of the +1 is like an option that would allow you to "opt out" of being moderated up. The feature is down-right silly. Judging the quality of a post is not the job of the poster. It is the job of the community system and the moderators.
Just remove that option. It makes no sense.
Whoa. You realize your cron starts up in $HOME, and if that `cd` for some reason returns an error...
Try cd /home/mozilla && rm -rf *
I now that geeks use ampersands, but can you tell me what the hell is wrong with rm -rf /home/mozilla/*? Simpler is better. And writing rm -rf * is almost always a bad idea. You will edit this cron job again someday, and probably get it wrong.
The thing that really gets to me is what this says about free software businesses, and about our understanding of it. Most people agreed, making a business from free software was supposed to go like this:
Yet VA Whatever has gone down in flames in a major way while RedHat is mostly going strong. Zope Corporation is doing very well too. So was Cygnus before it was bought out. And etc. ad nauseam. I guess we were flat-out wrong.
Or maybe it was VA Whatever's fault. They had it all: big visibility, a whole shitload of cash, and many of the smartest people in the business. The only snag, I think, was that Direction didn't realize that they actually needed a plan, too.
I think they still don't realize that. Someone should tell them and tell them now. Will you do it, or should I? How about you, Taco? You know the guys. GO TO THEIR OFFICE AND CLUB THEM OVER THE HEAD REPEATEDLY WHILE SCREAMING "YOU FRIGGING MORONS".
Thank you.
Well, if you want very well-documented drawbacks, you can go fetch VA Linux's SEC filing, quarterly reports and that nice graph of its plunging stock price.
Sorry to be mean, I really admire what VA stood for... But that company's financial history should serve as a big, fat warning sign. At least RedHat is doing ok...
For starters, there is a great quantity of raw material in the comments on slashdot. A lot of the high-rated posts are really good stuff, even if they're not polished.
I think that it was at that point that I literally burst out laughing in the computer lab. Man, oh man. Any text about current events just needs "some revision, fact-checking, and proofing" before it's publishable. But that is precisely where all the hard work goes. The devil is in the details, as the saying goes.
Now, I don't mean any disrespect. I truly agree with your first paragraph... LWN puts out very high-quality material. But Slashdot comments are closer to rants, often informed, sometimes accurate and rarely both. There are many reader-operated Linux news sites, none of which compare with LWN for quality commentary.
(Slashdot posts as quality journalism. Damn that's funny.)
Major developer? Since when?
Roughly, since the late eighties. But you got modded up to +5 Insightful, so obviously, you already knew that.
on the other hand, hasn't he been in detention for about 1.5 years?
Juveniles here are not sent to jail... Not as part of their sentencing, and certainly not when awaiting judgement.
What you have to understand is this: you cannot compare this sentencing to the kind of sentencing he could have received had he been tried in the US or even in Ontario. Mafiaboy was not judged on US soil, by the US judicial system and under US laws.
If you compare sentencing in the US with sentencing in other countries of the industrialized occident, the US in no way comes out as an average nation. Comparatively speaking, the US judicial system is extremely harsh. Prison sentences are much more common and much, much longer. Another example of this harshness is the death penalty, which is much more widely used in (parts of) the US than in the rest of the industrialized occident.
Mafiaboy was judged and sentenced in Quebec, Canada. The Quebec judicial system operates on Canadian federal laws, but with largely distinct underlying values and interpretations. Whereas what is usually called "English Canada" generally wants to move towards a harsher, US-style judicial system, Quebec gererally wants to go towards prevention, leniency, and re-integration. This is especially true for young offenders. Young offenders in Quebec are not sentenced to five-year prison terms, even for violent crimes. Their anonymity is secured and they are sent to youth centers.
Interestingly, it seems that the efficiency argument is on the side of lenient Quebec in this case. Quebec has a very good track record at maintaining low crime and violence rates amoungst youngsters. Prevention and re-integration obviously fails in many cases (as we all know), but apparently works "often enough" or "well enough" to give Quebec very good results.
(My personal opinion? All other things being equal, I prefer shorter sentences. I will favor any solution which just works, but luckily, it seems that the one naturally prefer does precisely work. Yet if you must know, I am definitely for a "dangerous offender" clause which keeps total, dangerous lunatics off the streets for good.)
So whoever was expecting a 15-year prison sentence (or anything vaguely similar) is not very well-informed. That is of course understandable: Quebec and Canada are not very well known outside or... Quebec and Canada. Some would even say respectively. But the amount of surprise apparent here just goes to show how much many US citizens believe "their way" to be "the standard way."
And please remember: this is a DDOS attack; not a mass rape, not a murder, not a bloody beating. And if you stop thinking about magical, crime-banishing 25-year prison sentences for just a second, you might realize that 8 months in a youth detention actually is no small deal for a 17-year-old. I rather enjoyed beeing free during my teenage years.
Pong was not invented. It was discovered.
Replying to myself... Obviously, my chess skills are getting rusty.
for starters B3 is left unprotected if you move all of your pawns and nothing else
Of course, that is not true. B3 is protected by the queen... The pawn which is left wide open is actually G3, on the king's side. I remember a time when thinking about chess in bed meant going deeper than "Doesn't the queen start on D1?" Ah... The good old days.
Erm. You obviously do not know much about chess.
to make 8 quick moves at the beginning, saving his time for later
This is mostly non-sensical. "Quick moves" do not exist in chess. Moving is never slow... Thinking about it is. And for most games, world-class chess players do not have to think about opening moves. They can, but going through the Sicilian is no slower for them than moving all pawns sequentially.
Also, while they're lousy moves to start with, they don't lead to any obvious attacks,
Well, I don't know how obvious you want it, but for starters B3 is left unprotected if you move all of your pawns and nothing else. Plus, there are many different ways to check-mate in under eight moves. At the international level, wasted opening moves precisely lead to obvious attacks (obvious to the players). Giving away 8 moves is suicide.
so Short probably didn't have time to figure out how to take advantage of his ability to develop an attack without being bothered.
Not enough time? To win when someone throws away his first eight moves? He had three minutes. I'd have enough time! Do you have any idea what the man would do to you on a chess table even with just 30 seconds on the clock? The very thought sends shivers down my spine.
And what do I think? Read between the lines. Get the general gist. Bobby didn't move A2-A3, B2-B3... H2-H3. He did a very cramped, Caro-Kann style development , had most or all of his pawns go through row 3 early in the game, and most of them stay there for a while. Or something like that.
Or maybe you're right. Maybe Short got so confused, he let a dead-easy win slip through his fingers. What do I know? I'm no master, and I didn't see the game (nor would I really understand it if i did). But I don't think I could win a tennis match against Andrei Agassi... Even if I played bad enough, which I would.
My first thought was that it's because Stephen Tweedie, lead developer of ext3, works for RedHat. ReiserFS was developed primarily by SUSE. JFS and XFS come from IBM and SGI. / So I read the article, and all of those reasons could easily apply to any of the above filesystems.
Your very thorough reading probably missed this surprising section:
"Easy transition:
It is easy to change from ext2 to ext3 and gain the benefits of a robust journaling file system, without reformatting. That's right, no need to do a long, tedious, and error-prone backup, reformat, restore operation in order to experience the advantages of ext3."
It could happen to anyone. I know I had to read the article half-way before I even saw it!
You think Pong is great. I think it's just mindless fun.
Did I ever say it wasn't? Many fun games are mindless fun... Now we do disagree on Pong's greatness, but note that I actually provided arguments to back my opinion. :-) Understandable. One of Pong's strengths is that there is not much you can say against it other than a variation of "I don't like it". What are you to complain about? The plot? Voice acting?
I fully agree however with your second paragraph: some games are not really comparable.
I'd also like to point out there is a big difference between the greatest games of all time, and the most influential games of all time. A list of the influential games will likely have the games you're listing.
I'm posting late so I will get ignored, but...
You are sadly missing the point that many of the games he mentions were great. Case in point: Pong. I play way too much video games and have been groosly interested in the topic for quite a while. And you are sadly mistaken to gloss over Pong. Pong is an amazing game in its own right. It is amazingly simple, but so is soccer when you think about it. And Pong has something that almost no other game has: it is perfect.
Think about it. Think about the games you love. Any one of them could be improved upon: better AI, more balanced weapons, better thought-out multi-player, smoother game-play, more involving story-line, etc. None of this applies to pong. You could implement AI for it and Pong would gain 0 appeal. The same goes for the graphics. If they were better, they wouldn't be perfect. The original graphics are perfect because they are simple, effective and don't matter.
Readers will think I am being funny. I am. But I truely believe what I just said: Pong is quite possibly the only perfect game in videogame history. (And in any case, how could a not-so-great gane become one of the most influential ever? Hogwash.)
Ok. I have only played around for a while, but please try to fix this for the next version.
And thanks again for the great work!
(wink wink)