So, now they are encouraging addiction to high fat, high calorie diets. And, the reward is sitting back, watching a movie. Sounds like a great way to add inches to our kids waste lines.
I believe they are encouraging acceptance of heavy-handed DRM schemes, and the reward for this acceptance is a fat/glucose hit. Sounds like a great way to raise a new generation of docile sheep for Hollywood.
...but habituating kids to stop/go DRM restrictions while they get their fat/glucose fix seems a rather low level to stoop in order to gain consumer acceptance.
What's next? They push some must-have movie or game to get kids to scream until their parents let them install a Sony rootkit??
It seems like Apple designers have crossed a threshold in their thinking. They follow a pattern of consistency that more closely resembles the Web now, where different sites each have their own look, but all the little widgets work the same 90% of the time. If this is true, its very smart because they're following the tastes and expectations of their target audience.
Consider also that Apple always wanted icons to have unique color-schemes and shapes to make them instantly identifiable. But now people can more quickly discern an application by variations in window style... and that certainly works in favor of Expose.
That's not to say they haven't transgressed against consistency more than they should. All the old criticisms are still valid; just certain ones are much less important now.
Editors, please add the relevant info. Many of us do not use Windows and end up wasting time checking a virus' background every time a vague alert is posted on Slashdot.
Any virus article that doesn't state which OS or application is acting as host is remiss. Windows != "Computers"
Editors, please add the relevant info. Many of us do not use Windows and end up wasting time checking a virus' background every time a vague alert is posted on Slashdot.
Fundies are so anti-humanism that back in the 80s they brought the issue to the Supreme Court, which declared secular humanism a religion (sans deities, supernatural influences, and general credulity). I believe the argument essentially went that since religions and philosophies overlap, they must really be the same. So now any whiff of a non-supernatural system of values or behavioral rules can be tossed out of the classroom because its illegal.
As for selfishness, I'd say that evolutionary psychology has some great insights about the need for generosity. Now those are two words that fundies hate with a passion; Putting them together is even better.
Instead of carrying a flask of flammable fluid, or many methanol modules, I can carry alkalines around always. They stay fresh for years, ready for me in case I can't make a quick swap-out of my NiMH rechargables. Plus no blindness, no death due to defects and accidents.
Is this too complex for people to think about, as they search for the One True Powermedium? Do we have a monomania blinding our judgement, that we have to live up to consumer merchandising a'la Buck Rogers and Trek?
The only fuel cell I've ever read about that I'd want in a portable device (in pocket or on wheels) is the light-metal kind; Aluminum or zinc, not hydrogen. Even the DoD seems to share my preference.
H2 fuel cells are undeniably useful in certain mostly stationary applications. But it is niche, has been niche, and could very well remain there.
I believe the best overall solution for facilitating a GUI is to make the server capable of serializing its own configuration data to disk, and provide API calls for accessing this function. Then native GUIs can all handle configuration of the service in a way that is thorough and consistent across platforms.
This doesn't mean I'd advocate binary config files (I never would). However the prospect of using XML is intriguing.
I think you are deluding yourself. PCs hapened because the top-down, thinclient/terminal model was unsustainable. Working with the mainframe programmers to get needed features shoehorned into an old COBOL program, and sometimes finding these people asleep at their desks taught me a lesson: The rest of us who were busting our asses running PC-floppy-Lotus based Snearkernets and trying to get IBM PCs through Purchasing as often as possible needed automation that ran off our own initiative and inventiveness.
Officeworkers are still individuals who need some control of the tools on their assigned desks, not the least of whom are all the managers, directors and VPs who just *love* all their novel little toys and executive softwares, their MS Access "erector sets" etc. In a lot of ways, this dynamic acts as a proving ground for widely useful apps that are eventually scaled up and handed off to the IT people near the server room. But just because the server room still matters and contains lots of Unix, doesn't mean the mucky-mucks won't insist that most of the other office workers they interact with should run the same OS that they prefer. For most, that choice of OS is Windows.
The emerging Linux model of desktop use does little for a corporate work environment beyond the level of a call center or data entry farm or government branch office. Everything is in the hands of (very uppity) Unix sysadmins whose job is to dictate. Purchasing approved an app for your departmjent of 6 people, and it arrived in the mail on CD-ROM? Good luck, cuz nothing on your CD drive will execute and you won't get sudo or root access from us. By the way, your email client has been 'upgraded' to web-based thing with your old executable removed. Oh, it breaks the address-polling functions of your Writer macros? Well, that function sounds like a great idea.... please submit a request to the programmers in MIS to see if they'll incorporate that in the internal webportal. Have a nice day.
Corporate America long ago rejected mainframe and Unix cultures on their desktops. What makes you think it will be any different for Linux?
UI readjustment is not such a huge barrier (as long as the UI makes sense). Gamers adjust to new UIs all the time.
Average users cannot install their own application software or drivers on a Linux distro. They must go to the "repository" and see what's offered there. That disk that came with your scanner or internal cablemodem? Forget it... come to the distro forums and twist in the wind with the rest of us. Learning to compile can be fun!
That's why creative software genres are scarcely appearing at all on "Linux"; Its not a stable platform yet. There are these distros with vast repositories of software that look like vast mountains of parts, and every 6-12 months those mountains tremble and move! And if you don't open-source enough of your application's code, then it ceases to run on the latest distro in 2 years time because too many parts would have to be recompiled in the new environment.
That is not a stable platform and it drives creative types away. They want to think about their detailed vision for a greap app or game, not which layers need to be GPLd, or creating 3 different package formats for each verion they release and maintaining relationships with downstream maintainers at SuSE, and Fedora, and Debian and giving them all mostly the same discussion. More than anything, they DON'T want their app to be kinda-sorta glued onto the OS.
People also to be able to buy the software off the shelf, or download from the vendor's website.
Answer this question: Where does the OS end and where do the appliations begin? Can't answer that question?? Then don't bother end-users; sysadmin types and hobbyists are about as far you'll get.
I second the recommendation for Xandros and Linspire.
With Xandros, you at least get RealPlayer, Acrobat, Java and Flash, not to mention the longest-standing "plug-n-play" hardware detection scheme around, and everything you need to deal with a corporate environment (it's had ADC, VPN support and easy handling of folder/printer shares for years now). Its also Debian-derrived, synchronized with Sarge and highly compatible.
Linspire has *all* the plugins and multimedia stuff, incl DVD playback. I don't like its default to root user, and its obfuscated package names (which means you don't benefit from Debian), but that doesn't prevent generic LSB packages from installing.
Especially compared to Xandros, Ubuntu setup is still quite complicated. I know many Slashdotters don't read the 'PC' mags, but they *are* experts when they come to end-users and they've consistently been recommending Xandros ever since it was Corel (over 6 years now). Its quite pathetic to see the Ubuntu rah-rah crowd (who apparently used to be the Fedora rah-rah crowd) keep recommending Ubuntu as the "simplest" with ignorant abandon. It is far from being the simplest for doing anything except using OOo, and even that's too hard for most people if they must clear the installation hurdle themselves.
The difference is that I am BellSouth's customer, not Yahoo. This is the equivalent of HBO paying a cable company not to carry all of the Showtime channels, and then telling me its good for me because of all the HBO channels I get.
Or this is similar to giving large media corps an advantage over P2P (and other independant) traffic. Hollywood will probably love BellSouth for this.
Someone should spell it out: If a server has paid for a certain upstream bandwidth, then end-user ISPs need to ferry that data as quickly as possible. The more ISP customers demand from that originating site, the more traffic that ISP needs to ferry from that site to its customers. Simple as that. And that's the way it is now. Putting artificial restrictions on the receiving end just means the serving site has to pay a whole range of ISPs in addition to their own!
Imagine if Sprint demanded payment from every end-user that a Sprint customer called.
Someone wants to get paid TWICE to traffic a data packet.
Most well-mannered businesses are either not publicly traded, or are still run by a group of original founders who happen to be more ethical than most. As time wears on the business will go bust, or get bought, or go to the stock market, and/or rid itself of the founders' influence. We saw this last one happen with CNN and Ted Turner. OTOH Microsoft started with some real doozies.
Google is still at the "young and dominated by founders with a conscience" phase. But even that is wearing off.
BTW, Ben & Jerry's is now just a brand owned by a much larger corporation, so you may consider it more a source of good PR for Unilever than an ethical profit center.
What does your link have to do with biodiesel? That whole article concerns running a different fuel, petroleum diesel.
OTOH if you had even Googled "biodiesel carcinogens" you would know that one of the benefits of BD is exhaust that is 90% less carcinogenic than exhaust from petro-diesel. One of the reasons its less toxic is because BD reduces particulates and unburned hydrocarbons.
The main downfall of BD at the tailpipe is NOX, and even then only a slight increase. It can be argued that reducing unbuned hydrocarbons, even with a 5% bump in NOX output, has a net positive effect as far as ozone and smog are concerned.
Where do I sign up? Oh, it's one of those "This technology will be really cool when it becomes available in 10-15 years" stories, huh?
Biodiesel is already a good business and has seen exponential growth in the US for the past 5 years (nearly doubling in output each year).
Why aren't you growing it? I don't know. But I'm fueling up with it.
In absolute terms, the volume is still but a dent in our energy supply. But then there is also that "square state" interest resulting in Minnesota mandating a 2% minimum blend of biodiesel in all diesel sold. In Germany, nearly 5% of all diesel-type fuel sold is biodiesel. As alternative energy goes, that's one heck of a gain especially when you consider the very favorable energy balance associated w/the bioidiesel lifecycle.
Have we gotten anywhere if we are still trying to use the same amount of petroleum - but now we're just using it to grow more vegetables to make more fuel?
Yes, it gets us somewhere. Biodiesel from soybeans returns energy at a ratio of 3.2:1 (this is the fuel's energy balance). That means we gain 220% more energy than we put into farming, fertilizing and processing it. Now consider that not all of the farming/fertilizer/processing energy is fossil (some comes from renewable energy). You can Google for biodiesel, energy balance, lifecycle to find out more (studies, articles, etc.). You can also check out biodiesel.org.
Ok, Mr. Technical. If you want to get right down to it, Oil is Solar power...
Not on any timescale that is meaningful to human industry. "Oil" or petroleum is as much a product of geology and geothermal effects as anything else... it is absorbed into the Earth's crust, transformed by pressure and heat, and spewed back out by volcanoes as CO2 and noxious fumes. So it is not merely solar power because there is a whole lot more baggage that goes with it: We are transferring the natural carbon sink in the Earth's crust to the atmosphere faster than photosynthesis and geology can replace it... not using "solar power".
OTOH photovoltaics and biodiesel are both ways of collecting and using solar energy with associated lifecycles of months and years. Their modes of initial production and end-consumption are engineered so as to minimize negative side-effects and deliver energy from the sun in as direct a manner as possible.
"Put it this way: Who do you trust more, the FSF or Microsoft... and why? For that matter, why does someone go to work for Microsoft vs. the FSF or particular FOSS projects? The former is always characterized by money, whereas the latter operates on and advocates for a mix of business models and incentives. Does providing an alternative to vendor-lockin have to mean that someone is "biased" instead of using good judgement?
Just because some people have strong opinions or come to certain conclusions doesn't meant they're "biased". And I must say, this is the typical "Fox News Defense". They won the right to knowingly LIE to viewers in a court of law, then they try to tear down everyone else with innuendos starting with "everyone is biased". That's the defense of someone who cannot convincingly marshall actual facts in response to criticism.
Maybe you should be more concerned with how complete and accurate a picture the different parties are willing to reveal."
Many of the better-behaved Windows apps explicitly search the application's containing folder for DLLs, instead of mucking with system-wide path variables or (worse) trying to copy their stuff into \WINDOWS. The typical Linux development model doesn't even try to address this issue for the end-user, and instead codifies something resembling "stuff it into \WINDOWS" as normal behavior... then invents a "package management" system as a band-aid. Then, you pray to the package management system every day and hope that having this "culture" makes up for not having a stable platform.
Apple takes the most workable approach IMHO: Use appdirs as a general rule, and document which APIs are stable and which are still evolving.
Private monopolies and cartels are some of the most coercive forces on earth, esp. when they are buying political influence in a monetized 'free-market' of governance.
Your ex-Canadian aquaintances better check that their communities aren't in need of levee repairs (not that they'd want to pay the taxes to have em fixed; nor have they seemd to help New Orleans in this regard). I hope they feel good about the bargain they're getting.
Anyway, you're one to grouse about mixed-market socialism. Libertarians tilt toward toward a degree of naive single-mindedness reminescent of communism. But communists have experience at the helm, and you don't. Therefore I declare the human race as one large conspiracy against libertarians.:-)
"I think having a government that wasn't bought out by international oil companies would make officials more accountable to the needs of the population. "
Yeah, but the guy asking the question is from Nigeria. What the hell can he do about political conditions in the USA?
I meant the Nigerian govt, but I think you knew that.;)
What did Americans back in 1776 do about the political conditions in Britain? No doubt, they were tired of having English Governors making decisions that favored the British East India corporation (money-making arm of the Crown).
For nearly 30 years, the West has tried to return to its colonial/imperialist ways while avoiding the old superficial imagery. These days its associated with "free trade" and "foreign investment". What it really is: corporate globalization. Multinational corps get the lions share of legal rights, while individuals remain internationally divided and have no rights as a class within that same global scope. Its a disempowerment program that pits people against each other to give up their resources and labor to corps in ways that overwhelmingly favor the latter. Thus its H-1Bs instead of green cards, privatize everything (telecom, power, water, etc.), and let our semi-interested absentee investors stampede through your locals markets like a herd of flighty 50-ton elephants. Provide maximum number of avenues for laundering and payola, so that local authorities remain sated even when the population is hit with nasty problems... these are after all a type of "freedom", the ones that count. Throw in a couple of coups against relatively independant-minded (i.e. responsive to the locals) governments, and over the decades the country ends up lacking in the culture of self-determination.
The United States was once a colony and "banana reepublic". I think our early traade history is instructive here. The same goes for others that have raised their own regional entrepeneurial cultures... This didn't happen by letting Ford Motor and Magnavox build factories in Japan.
Slashdot Mirror
So, now they are encouraging addiction to high fat, high calorie diets. And, the reward is sitting back, watching a movie. Sounds like a great way to add inches to our kids waste lines.
I believe they are encouraging acceptance of heavy-handed DRM schemes, and the reward for this acceptance is a fat/glucose hit. Sounds like a great way to raise a new generation of docile sheep for Hollywood.
...but habituating kids to stop/go DRM restrictions while they get their fat/glucose fix seems a rather low level to stoop in order to gain consumer acceptance.
What's next? They push some must-have movie or game to get kids to scream until their parents let them install a Sony rootkit??
It seems like Apple designers have crossed a threshold in their thinking. They follow a pattern of consistency that more closely resembles the Web now, where different sites each have their own look, but all the little widgets work the same 90% of the time. If this is true, its very smart because they're following the tastes and expectations of their target audience.
Consider also that Apple always wanted icons to have unique color-schemes and shapes to make them instantly identifiable. But now people can more quickly discern an application by variations in window style... and that certainly works in favor of Expose.
That's not to say they haven't transgressed against consistency more than they should. All the old criticisms are still valid; just certain ones are much less important now.
Editors, please add the relevant info. Many of us do not use Windows and end up wasting time checking a virus' background every time a vague alert is posted on Slashdot.
Any virus article that doesn't state which OS or application is acting as host is remiss. Windows != "Computers"
You're joking, right? It's always Windows.
I'm not joking.
First, there is one virus announcement for Linux that I recall this past year.
Second, Microsoft should never escape having their product explicitly associated with the malware it hosts.
Third, the rest of the IT industry does not deserve the wide-ranging implication that this is a "computer virus". This is a Windows virus.
Again... please specify the OS!
Fundies are so anti-humanism that back in the 80s they brought the issue to the Supreme Court, which declared secular humanism a religion (sans deities, supernatural influences, and general credulity). I believe the argument essentially went that since religions and philosophies overlap, they must really be the same. So now any whiff of a non-supernatural system of values or behavioral rules can be tossed out of the classroom because its illegal.
As for selfishness, I'd say that evolutionary psychology has some great insights about the need for generosity. Now those are two words that fundies hate with a passion; Putting them together is even better.
Instead of carrying a flask of flammable fluid, or many methanol modules, I can carry alkalines around always. They stay fresh for years, ready for me in case I can't make a quick swap-out of my NiMH rechargables. Plus no blindness, no death due to defects and accidents.
Is this too complex for people to think about, as they search for the One True Powermedium? Do we have a monomania blinding our judgement, that we have to live up to consumer merchandising a'la Buck Rogers and Trek?
The only fuel cell I've ever read about that I'd want in a portable device (in pocket or on wheels) is the light-metal kind; Aluminum or zinc, not hydrogen. Even the DoD seems to share my preference.
H2 fuel cells are undeniably useful in certain mostly stationary applications. But it is niche, has been niche, and could very well remain there.
After that, I think those (often colorful) Antec fans with the variable speed switch are rather good and quiet.
I believe the best overall solution for facilitating a GUI is to make the server capable of serializing its own configuration data to disk, and provide API calls for accessing this function. Then native GUIs can all handle configuration of the service in a way that is thorough and consistent across platforms.
This doesn't mean I'd advocate binary config files (I never would). However the prospect of using XML is intriguing.
I think you are deluding yourself. PCs hapened because the top-down, thinclient/terminal model was unsustainable. Working with the mainframe programmers to get needed features shoehorned into an old COBOL program, and sometimes finding these people asleep at their desks taught me a lesson: The rest of us who were busting our asses running PC-floppy-Lotus based Snearkernets and trying to get IBM PCs through Purchasing as often as possible needed automation that ran off our own initiative and inventiveness.
Officeworkers are still individuals who need some control of the tools on their assigned desks, not the least of whom are all the managers, directors and VPs who just *love* all their novel little toys and executive softwares, their MS Access "erector sets" etc. In a lot of ways, this dynamic acts as a proving ground for widely useful apps that are eventually scaled up and handed off to the IT people near the server room. But just because the server room still matters and contains lots of Unix, doesn't mean the mucky-mucks won't insist that most of the other office workers they interact with should run the same OS that they prefer. For most, that choice of OS is Windows.
The emerging Linux model of desktop use does little for a corporate work environment beyond the level of a call center or data entry farm or government branch office. Everything is in the hands of (very uppity) Unix sysadmins whose job is to dictate. Purchasing approved an app for your departmjent of 6 people, and it arrived in the mail on CD-ROM? Good luck, cuz nothing on your CD drive will execute and you won't get sudo or root access from us. By the way, your email client has been 'upgraded' to web-based thing with your old executable removed. Oh, it breaks the address-polling functions of your Writer macros? Well, that function sounds like a great idea.... please submit a request to the programmers in MIS to see if they'll incorporate that in the internal webportal. Have a nice day.
Corporate America long ago rejected mainframe and Unix cultures on their desktops. What makes you think it will be any different for Linux?
UI readjustment is not such a huge barrier (as long as the UI makes sense). Gamers adjust to new UIs all the time.
Average users cannot install their own application software or drivers on a Linux distro. They must go to the "repository" and see what's offered there. That disk that came with your scanner or internal cablemodem? Forget it... come to the distro forums and twist in the wind with the rest of us. Learning to compile can be fun!
That's why creative software genres are scarcely appearing at all on "Linux"; Its not a stable platform yet. There are these distros with vast repositories of software that look like vast mountains of parts, and every 6-12 months those mountains tremble and move! And if you don't open-source enough of your application's code, then it ceases to run on the latest distro in 2 years time because too many parts would have to be recompiled in the new environment.
That is not a stable platform and it drives creative types away. They want to think about their detailed vision for a greap app or game, not which layers need to be GPLd, or creating 3 different package formats for each verion they release and maintaining relationships with downstream maintainers at SuSE, and Fedora, and Debian and giving them all mostly the same discussion. More than anything, they DON'T want their app to be kinda-sorta glued onto the OS.
People also to be able to buy the software off the shelf, or download from the vendor's website.
Answer this question: Where does the OS end and where do the appliations begin? Can't answer that question?? Then don't bother end-users; sysadmin types and hobbyists are about as far you'll get.
I second the recommendation for Xandros and Linspire.
With Xandros, you at least get RealPlayer, Acrobat, Java and Flash, not to mention the longest-standing "plug-n-play" hardware detection scheme around, and everything you need to deal with a corporate environment (it's had ADC, VPN support and easy handling of folder/printer shares for years now). Its also Debian-derrived, synchronized with Sarge and highly compatible.
Linspire has *all* the plugins and multimedia stuff, incl DVD playback. I don't like its default to root user, and its obfuscated package names (which means you don't benefit from Debian), but that doesn't prevent generic LSB packages from installing.
Especially compared to Xandros, Ubuntu setup is still quite complicated. I know many Slashdotters don't read the 'PC' mags, but they *are* experts when they come to end-users and they've consistently been recommending Xandros ever since it was Corel (over 6 years now). Its quite pathetic to see the Ubuntu rah-rah crowd (who apparently used to be the Fedora rah-rah crowd) keep recommending Ubuntu as the "simplest" with ignorant abandon. It is far from being the simplest for doing anything except using OOo, and even that's too hard for most people if they must clear the installation hurdle themselves.
The difference is that I am BellSouth's customer, not Yahoo. This is the equivalent of HBO paying a cable company not to carry all of the Showtime channels, and then telling me its good for me because of all the HBO channels I get.
Or this is similar to giving large media corps an advantage over P2P (and other independant) traffic. Hollywood will probably love BellSouth for this.
Someone should spell it out:
If a server has paid for a certain upstream bandwidth, then end-user ISPs need to ferry that data as quickly as possible. The more ISP customers demand from that originating site, the more traffic that ISP needs to ferry from that site to its customers. Simple as that. And that's the way it is now. Putting artificial restrictions on the receiving end just means the serving site has to pay a whole range of ISPs in addition to their own!
Imagine if Sprint demanded payment from every end-user that a Sprint customer called.
Someone wants to get paid TWICE to traffic a data packet.
Most well-mannered businesses are either not publicly traded, or are still run by a group of original founders who happen to be more ethical than most. As time wears on the business will go bust, or get bought, or go to the stock market, and/or rid itself of the founders' influence. We saw this last one happen with CNN and Ted Turner. OTOH Microsoft started with some real doozies.
Google is still at the "young and dominated by founders with a conscience" phase. But even that is wearing off.
BTW, Ben & Jerry's is now just a brand owned by a much larger corporation, so you may consider it more a source of good PR for Unilever than an ethical profit center.
What does your link have to do with biodiesel? That whole article concerns running a different fuel, petroleum diesel.
OTOH if you had even Googled "biodiesel carcinogens" you would know that one of the benefits of BD is exhaust that is 90% less carcinogenic than exhaust from petro-diesel. One of the reasons its less toxic is because BD reduces particulates and unburned hydrocarbons.
The main downfall of BD at the tailpipe is NOX, and even then only a slight increase. It can be argued that reducing unbuned hydrocarbons, even with a 5% bump in NOX output, has a net positive effect as far as ozone and smog are concerned.
Where do I sign up? Oh, it's one of those "This technology will be really cool when it becomes available in 10-15 years" stories, huh?
Biodiesel is already a good business and has seen exponential growth in the US for the past 5 years (nearly doubling in output each year).
Why aren't you growing it? I don't know. But I'm fueling up with it.
In absolute terms, the volume is still but a dent in our energy supply. But then there is also that "square state" interest resulting in Minnesota mandating a 2% minimum blend of biodiesel in all diesel sold. In Germany, nearly 5% of all diesel-type fuel sold is biodiesel. As alternative energy goes, that's one heck of a gain especially when you consider the very favorable energy balance associated w/the bioidiesel lifecycle.
Have we gotten anywhere if we are still trying to use the same amount of petroleum - but now we're just using it to grow more vegetables to make more fuel?
Yes, it gets us somewhere. Biodiesel from soybeans returns energy at a ratio of 3.2:1 (this is the fuel's energy balance). That means we gain 220% more energy than we put into farming, fertilizing and processing it. Now consider that not all of the farming/fertilizer/processing energy is fossil (some comes from renewable energy). You can Google for biodiesel, energy balance, lifecycle to find out more (studies, articles, etc.). You can also check out biodiesel.org.
PV systems suck at storing and moving energy at high concentrations. Hence, biofuels contribute far more solar energy to transportation than does PV.
I think alternative crops (like sugarcane or microalgae) can even out-compete PV in terms of energy contribution over the entire lifecycle.
Ok, Mr. Technical. If you want to get right down to it, Oil is Solar power...
Not on any timescale that is meaningful to human industry. "Oil" or petroleum is as much a product of geology and geothermal effects as anything else... it is absorbed into the Earth's crust, transformed by pressure and heat, and spewed back out by volcanoes as CO2 and noxious fumes. So it is not merely solar power because there is a whole lot more baggage that goes with it: We are transferring the natural carbon sink in the Earth's crust to the atmosphere faster than photosynthesis and geology can replace it... not using "solar power".
OTOH photovoltaics and biodiesel are both ways of collecting and using solar energy with associated lifecycles of months and years. Their modes of initial production and end-consumption are engineered so as to minimize negative side-effects and deliver energy from the sun in as direct a manner as possible.
Broadcasters can bully and fire reporters for not doctoring the news on-command:
In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
Why is a vendor website "an untrusted source"?
That's like saying Firefox extensions are broken, because they might come from sites other than mozilla.org.
Many of the better-behaved Windows apps explicitly search the application's containing folder for DLLs, instead of mucking with system-wide path variables or (worse) trying to copy their stuff into \WINDOWS. The typical Linux development model doesn't even try to address this issue for the end-user, and instead codifies something resembling "stuff it into \WINDOWS" as normal behavior... then invents a "package management" system as a band-aid. Then, you pray to the package management system every day and hope that having this "culture" makes up for not having a stable platform.
Apple takes the most workable approach IMHO: Use appdirs as a general rule, and document which APIs are stable and which are still evolving.
Your ex-Canadian aquaintances better check that their communities aren't in need of levee repairs (not that they'd want to pay the taxes to have em fixed; nor have they seemd to help New Orleans in this regard). I hope they feel good about the bargain they're getting.
Anyway, you're one to grouse about mixed-market socialism. Libertarians tilt toward toward a degree of naive single-mindedness reminescent of communism. But communists have experience at the helm, and you don't. Therefore I declare the human race as one large conspiracy against libertarians.
Yeah, but the guy asking the question is from Nigeria. What the hell can he do about political conditions in the USA?
I meant the Nigerian govt, but I think you knew that.
What did Americans back in 1776 do about the political conditions in Britain? No doubt, they were tired of having English Governors making decisions that favored the British East India corporation (money-making arm of the Crown).
For nearly 30 years, the West has tried to return to its colonial/imperialist ways while avoiding the old superficial imagery. These days its associated with "free trade" and "foreign investment". What it really is: corporate globalization. Multinational corps get the lions share of legal rights, while individuals remain internationally divided and have no rights as a class within that same global scope. Its a disempowerment program that pits people against each other to give up their resources and labor to corps in ways that overwhelmingly favor the latter. Thus its H-1Bs instead of green cards, privatize everything (telecom, power, water, etc.), and let our semi-interested absentee investors stampede through your locals markets like a herd of flighty 50-ton elephants. Provide maximum number of avenues for laundering and payola, so that local authorities remain sated even when the population is hit with nasty problems... these are after all a type of "freedom", the ones that count. Throw in a couple of coups against relatively independant-minded (i.e. responsive to the locals) governments, and over the decades the country ends up lacking in the culture of self-determination.
The United States was once a colony and "banana reepublic". I think our early traade history is instructive here. The same goes for others that have raised their own regional entrepeneurial cultures... This didn't happen by letting Ford Motor and Magnavox build factories in Japan.