Consider. These guys want you to believe the Earth is at unprecedented highs, thus we MUST panic and DO something. Something usually being defined as harmful to Western Civilization.
Note that Kyoto would only limit CO2 emmissions from advanced Western nations yet allow China and the 3rd world to spew unlimited amounts of the stuff.
Those two points are unrelated. Whether or not the earth getting too hot will have bad effects on western civilisation is completely tangential to anything about the way the Kyoto protocol is structured and the stupid UN politics that created it.
Since when does "emissions need to be reduced" equate to "Kyoto is the best and only way to combat this"?
People making comments like yours seem to irrationally extend their legitimate dislike of parts of the Kyoto protocol into some sort of loony conspiracy theory that left wing scientists are inventing the whole scenario to destroy western civilisation with the Kyoto protocol.
This isn't really a single sign on need as far as I can tell.
Sure SSO helps out heaps with access control on all the machines on your LAN, but there are a ton of other passwords a typical IT team will need to keep track of that it can't help out with. eg passwords for domain registrars, CA logins for SSL certs, logins for supplier or partner extranets, DMZ or externally hosted servers, any lower end network devices that can't integrate with your SSO system, AD recovery accounts, local admin accounts, all those unix services that can't/won't integrate with SSO etc etc.
In the first case, religion, at least none of the many religions I'm familiar with, really takes any position on the shape of the earth or its relationship with the sun.
They might not anymore but they did until they lost that fight a few hundred years ago.
The fight over evolution is the same irrationalism and fear all over again. The only difference is that it is happening now.
Fundamentalists regard the religious writings as gospel (pun intended) rather than a bunch of fallible people thousands of years ago writing down their interpretation of things. More moderate religious people see the writings for the historical context they were written in and wouldn't let the possibility of factual errors in them shake their own faith.
It seems a little ironic that those want to think they have the strongest faith are the least confident in the ability of their own faith to stand up to a little questioning.
One of the maxims of business is, has, and will always be that the customer is always right. Why can't OSS defenders see this?
They can - it's just that with most open source projects the end user isn't a customer. For the most part end users are just freeloaders who don't give anything back to the project. For an open source project, a few good contributors (eg developers, testers, writers, artists, donors etc) is worth far more than hundreds of end users that don't contribute. Contributors are effectively the 'customers' of an open source project not the end users. The project is the contributors.
Re:That's an easy one.
on
IBM Opts for AMD
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· Score: 3, Insightful
One thing that seems apparent to me is how AMD comes out with better technology than Intel, and it takes literally many years of hard slog for AMD before the rest of the (non tech geek) world finally seems to grudgingly accept this.
Then when Intel comes out with better technology after all those years, suddenly before the hardware is even released the whole world has seemingly swung back to Intel in the space of a few days.
The marketing guys at AMD must be wondering just what it takes to overcome the massive gravity of Intels mindshare.
I'm using OS X right now. I'm happy FreeBSD enabled its creation. I'm posting from Safari. I'm happy Konq's code helped Apple build this very fast, mature browser. Without totally free and open licenses like the ones I wrote about, above, we wouldn't have this OS X.
Are you aware that Konqueror is GPL? And that KHTML is LGPL?
Maybe Apple chose FreeBSD for other reasons than the BSD license? I'd say that their web browser is a strategically more important component to Apple and its userbase than some unix userland utils. If Apple really was anti GPL, they could've used Gecko as the MPL is closer to BSD style licenses than the GPL is.
Re:Yeah, but that's not what we need.
on
Python-to-C++ Compiler
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· Score: 2, Insightful
it gives you an extra area for weird bugs to creep in... get the Python right and go straight to machine code with a trusted compiler.
Is that the same way the method of using layers of multiple simple tools that all do one thing really well is more buggy that just using one larger general purpose monolithic app?
A cross platform Python to machine code compiler would presumably need to reinvent a whole lot of difficult platform specific stuff that has already been solved by C++ compilers.
I've got one as well - so has my wife. I think it's great - kinda geeky and different from standard jewelery metals.
I actually like the weight, the durability, the comfort and just plain look of it. Titanium is great for those with metal allergies (my wife), and warms up to skin temp quickly (not really an issue for a ring though).
Windows doesn't have 20% more uptime, Windows has increased their uptime by 20% while Linux was increased by (insert some random number here)
What's the bet that 20% increase in uptime is just due to MS saving up all their patches into larger sets of monthly updates. Disclaimer: I can't remember when they started doing that and have no idea how well it correlates with the timeframe in the study.
Whereas Linux kernel patches may be released anytime, MS patches are now only released in groups once a month. Easy accounting trick to reduce total downtime due to reboots at the expense of slower patch release.
It's just plain old business reality. They need some software, they can choose between paying x for a badly written app or some multiple of x for a well engineered one. If their budget stretches just as far as x, what choice do they have?
They can then pay more later to fix it up and improve it as they get more money in the future, and their business plans for earning that extra money possibly relied on having the app anyway. It can be a chicken and egg situation.
The other problem is they have no real way of knowing whether paying all that extra money up front really gets them the well designed and engineered version anyway. At some point they just have to have faith that the developers they are commissioning are telling them the truth - after all no developer is going to tell the customer up front they plan on giving them an unmaintainable nightmare.
Debugging valid code in semi-compliant browsers is still much better than debugging invalid code in semi-compliant browsers.
If something doesn't look or work properly, the first thing you should do is test whether or not it is your code that is wrong. It gives you more certainty whether or not it is a browser bug you are dealing with, and how to research working around it.
Nope, I'm not American (a NZer) but it wasn't really taught at school here either. I just used to work with a pedantic tightwad that used to go on about the misuse of 'acronym'. I was getting a bit worried I was becoming just like him...:)
That wikipedia article was informative - thanks. It seems things aren't quite as clear cut these days - common usage changing definitions and all that.
OK I omitted a set of categorisation, but USA is still an abbreviation and not an acronym. Specifically it is an initialism. Acronyms and initialisms are subsets of abbreviations. Acronyms and initialisms also share an intersection set - not all acronyms are initialisms, ie some acronyms are made from subsections of words not just the initial letters eg Interpol and radar. Likewise scuba and NATO are both acronyms and initialisms, while FBI and USA are just initialisms.
Acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations or initialisms are acronyms.
USA is an initialism and an abbreviation but not an acronym. Because it isn't an acronym it doesn't get prounced as a word. An acronym is actually a word, but the others aren't necessarily.
Gawd I hate having to get that pedantic, but the original point stands - acronyms are supposed to be pronouncible. I'll leave it at that.
Forget about getting a perfectly working desktop system, and just concentrate on learning Linux. Don't treat the project as a plug and play Windows or Mac replacement so much as a side project learning a new (and very different) system. Linux is a rewarding and fun system with the right expectations, and the willingness to take your time learning stuff.
If you are new to *nix altogether - I would even say forget about the GUI altogether and learn Linux from the ground up with the command line (on an old surplus PC) and maybe some stuff like Apache etc. IMO learning Linux is easier from the bottom up rather than the top down. Starting with a nearly fully configured desktop is just too much complexity to take in at first.
Installing non detected drivers requires a level of skill that is much higher than that needed to just use Linux. You will struggle if you decide to tackle that as your first lesson. Start with simpler goals and you will soon find that over time you can tackle trickier problems much easier as the info you find on the web starts making more and more sense.
Learn Linux because you want to learn Linux, not so you can just replace something else.
Ubuntu was a good choice - I'd recommend just forgetting about trying to get the sound working for now. If Ubuntu doesn't autodetect it, it will probably be a 'hard' problem for you at this stage. Just start learning and playing with the stuff that does work, and worry about the sound drivers much later on.
Half of the comments are suggesting software such as Hijack This, Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, SpywareBlaster, etc. You would think that all of the uber-geeks around here would know how to properly secure their system in the first place. I've been using Windows for years and have never had to install any of that software. Anti-Virus, a firewall, and a little common sense would help.
Ahhh, but you're missing the point. That advice isn't for themselves, it's for a self confessed Windows newbie that will soon be installing anything and everything they can find off the net.
To me, one kernel is an advantage, not a limitation. A kernel upgrade on a VServer box is a one-step operation, whereas on a Xen (or like) you have to repeat it for every guest.
Not quite. Unless your guests use different kernels (in which case you wouldn't be using VServer anyway), you only have one guest kernel to worry about. I have a Xen machine running 4 Debian Sarge machines - in the boot directory of the host there is the host kernel and a guest kernel. All guest instances boot off that one guest kernel. There are no kernels installed in the guests themselves.
Sure upgrading two kernels is more work than upgrading one kernel, but it not as bad as you think.
Slashdot Mirror
Those two points are unrelated. Whether or not the earth getting too hot will have bad effects on western civilisation is completely tangential to anything about the way the Kyoto protocol is structured and the stupid UN politics that created it.
Since when does "emissions need to be reduced" equate to "Kyoto is the best and only way to combat this"?
People making comments like yours seem to irrationally extend their legitimate dislike of parts of the Kyoto protocol into some sort of loony conspiracy theory that left wing scientists are inventing the whole scenario to destroy western civilisation with the Kyoto protocol.
This isn't really a single sign on need as far as I can tell.
Sure SSO helps out heaps with access control on all the machines on your LAN, but there are a ton of other passwords a typical IT team will need to keep track of that it can't help out with. eg passwords for domain registrars, CA logins for SSL certs, logins for supplier or partner extranets, DMZ or externally hosted servers, any lower end network devices that can't integrate with your SSO system, AD recovery accounts, local admin accounts, all those unix services that can't/won't integrate with SSO etc etc.
They might not anymore but they did until they lost that fight a few hundred years ago.
http://evolution.mbdojo.com/conflict.html
The fight over evolution is the same irrationalism and fear all over again. The only difference is that it is happening now.
Fundamentalists regard the religious writings as gospel (pun intended) rather than a bunch of fallible people thousands of years ago writing down their interpretation of things. More moderate religious people see the writings for the historical context they were written in and wouldn't let the possibility of factual errors in them shake their own faith.
It seems a little ironic that those want to think they have the strongest faith are the least confident in the ability of their own faith to stand up to a little questioning.
That just removes the icons not the actual code.
or a surfer?
But good news for comets and man made satellites etc
They can - it's just that with most open source projects the end user isn't a customer. For the most part end users are just freeloaders who don't give anything back to the project. For an open source project, a few good contributors (eg developers, testers, writers, artists, donors etc) is worth far more than hundreds of end users that don't contribute. Contributors are effectively the 'customers' of an open source project not the end users. The project is the contributors.
One thing that seems apparent to me is how AMD comes out with better technology than Intel, and it takes literally many years of hard slog for AMD before the rest of the (non tech geek) world finally seems to grudgingly accept this.
Then when Intel comes out with better technology after all those years, suddenly before the hardware is even released the whole world has seemingly swung back to Intel in the space of a few days.
The marketing guys at AMD must be wondering just what it takes to overcome the massive gravity of Intels mindshare.
Are you aware that Konqueror is GPL? And that KHTML is LGPL?
Maybe Apple chose FreeBSD for other reasons than the BSD license? I'd say that their web browser is a strategically more important component to Apple and its userbase than some unix userland utils. If Apple really was anti GPL, they could've used Gecko as the MPL is closer to BSD style licenses than the GPL is.
Is that the same way the method of using layers of multiple simple tools that all do one thing really well is more buggy that just using one larger general purpose monolithic app?
A cross platform Python to machine code compiler would presumably need to reinvent a whole lot of difficult platform specific stuff that has already been solved by C++ compilers.
I actually like the weight, the durability, the comfort and just plain look of it. Titanium is great for those with metal allergies (my wife), and warms up to skin temp quickly (not really an issue for a ring though).
What's the bet that 20% increase in uptime is just due to MS saving up all their patches into larger sets of monthly updates. Disclaimer: I can't remember when they started doing that and have no idea how well it correlates with the timeframe in the study.
Whereas Linux kernel patches may be released anytime, MS patches are now only released in groups once a month. Easy accounting trick to reduce total downtime due to reboots at the expense of slower patch release.
I don't think it is something MS taught them.
It's just plain old business reality. They need some software, they can choose between paying x for a badly written app or some multiple of x for a well engineered one. If their budget stretches just as far as x, what choice do they have?
They can then pay more later to fix it up and improve it as they get more money in the future, and their business plans for earning that extra money possibly relied on having the app anyway. It can be a chicken and egg situation.
The other problem is they have no real way of knowing whether paying all that extra money up front really gets them the well designed and engineered version anyway. At some point they just have to have faith that the developers they are commissioning are telling them the truth - after all no developer is going to tell the customer up front they plan on giving them an unmaintainable nightmare.
All 3 conversions are ok - they just have different numbers of significant figures. Or was that your point? :)
I'm surprised that Wired made such an obvious mistake.
:)
They're just lucky it probably wouldn't make a top 10 list of stupid journalism mistakes
Agreed.
Debugging valid code in semi-compliant browsers is still much better than debugging invalid code in semi-compliant browsers.
If something doesn't look or work properly, the first thing you should do is test whether or not it is your code that is wrong. It gives you more certainty whether or not it is a browser bug you are dealing with, and how to research working around it.
Nope, trolling works
http://bennettmarine.com/rigging_trolling.html
Although in reality it was the employee trolling for bites on their resume - they just caught a big nasty fish they weren't intending to.
Nope, I'm not American (a NZer) but it wasn't really taught at school here either. I just used to work with a pedantic tightwad that used to go on about the misuse of 'acronym'. I was getting a bit worried I was becoming just like him... :)
That wikipedia article was informative - thanks. It seems things aren't quite as clear cut these days - common usage changing definitions and all that.
OK I omitted a set of categorisation, but USA is still an abbreviation and not an acronym. Specifically it is an initialism. Acronyms and initialisms are subsets of abbreviations. Acronyms and initialisms also share an intersection set - not all acronyms are initialisms, ie some acronyms are made from subsections of words not just the initial letters eg Interpol and radar. Likewise scuba and NATO are both acronyms and initialisms, while FBI and USA are just initialisms.
Acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations or initialisms are acronyms.
USA is an initialism and an abbreviation but not an acronym. Because it isn't an acronym it doesn't get prounced as a word. An acronym is actually a word, but the others aren't necessarily.
Gawd I hate having to get that pedantic, but the original point stands - acronyms are supposed to be pronouncible. I'll leave it at that.
How is that wrong? Are you claiming that acronyms aren't supposed to be pronouncable?
The "USA" is "You-Ess-Ay" because it is just an abbreviation not an acronym. Acronyms are a subset of abbreviations.
Acronyms are things like "SCUBA" "RADAR" etc - do you feel uncomfortable pronouncing those?
Umm, you do understand what an acronym is don't you? Pronouncing them as a word is what makes an acronym an acronym rather than just an abbreviation.
My advice?
Forget about getting a perfectly working desktop system, and just concentrate on learning Linux. Don't treat the project as a plug and play Windows or Mac replacement so much as a side project learning a new (and very different) system. Linux is a rewarding and fun system with the right expectations, and the willingness to take your time learning stuff.
If you are new to *nix altogether - I would even say forget about the GUI altogether and learn Linux from the ground up with the command line (on an old surplus PC) and maybe some stuff like Apache etc. IMO learning Linux is easier from the bottom up rather than the top down. Starting with a nearly fully configured desktop is just too much complexity to take in at first.
Installing non detected drivers requires a level of skill that is much higher than that needed to just use Linux. You will struggle if you decide to tackle that as your first lesson. Start with simpler goals and you will soon find that over time you can tackle trickier problems much easier as the info you find on the web starts making more and more sense.
Learn Linux because you want to learn Linux, not so you can just replace something else.
Ubuntu was a good choice - I'd recommend just forgetting about trying to get the sound working for now. If Ubuntu doesn't autodetect it, it will probably be a 'hard' problem for you at this stage. Just start learning and playing with the stuff that does work, and worry about the sound drivers much later on.
Half of the comments are suggesting software such as Hijack This, Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, SpywareBlaster, etc. You would think that all of the uber-geeks around here would know how to properly secure their system in the first place. I've been using Windows for years and have never had to install any of that software. Anti-Virus, a firewall, and a little common sense would help.
Ahhh, but you're missing the point. That advice isn't for themselves, it's for a self confessed Windows newbie that will soon be installing anything and everything they can find off the net.
To me, one kernel is an advantage, not a limitation. A kernel upgrade on a VServer box is a one-step operation, whereas on a Xen (or like) you have to repeat it for every guest.
Not quite. Unless your guests use different kernels (in which case you wouldn't be using VServer anyway), you only have one guest kernel to worry about. I have a Xen machine running 4 Debian Sarge machines - in the boot directory of the host there is the host kernel and a guest kernel. All guest instances boot off that one guest kernel. There are no kernels installed in the guests themselves.
Sure upgrading two kernels is more work than upgrading one kernel, but it not as bad as you think.
Were these the same mysterious alien beings that convinced the Golgafrinchians to get rid of the useless third of their population?
Very clever - they probably also planted the virulent telephone disease to get rid of any evidence they were involved.