Same thing happened in Orwell's 1984. Say what you want, mod me as you like, but that was one of the central ideas of the book, news articles, etc, being changed after the fact. If you went back and did any research, you would find that the news agency/authority in charge of information was always right. In more mundane terms, you really have to wonder about a news agency that changes it's story and doesn't even post a retraction.
Its a dirty lawyer trick, to put pressure on the opposition. The common way is to file a motion as close to the close of business as possible, giving the least amount of time permissible under law. Like 3 days to comply, filing it at 4:50pm on a Friday and they have to have it by Monday. Only in this case, MS is hoping that they will just give up the money, if they really wanted to make sure they were in compliance, they would give them more time.
Another problem is that people are naming their boxes after popular domains that they don't own, and the dynamic updates are pounding the hell out of the domain owners nameservers. If anyone here is doing this, owl.com and jove.com were two of the domains named.
Surely the feds could quite easily gain some sort of access to put packet sniffers on an isp's network and read anyones email, without the need to ask the ISP's or Telco's.
Sure they could, however nothing they gathered would have been admissible in court. In addition, if they were caught, it would lead to severe punishment under the former laws. Illegal wiretapping and conducting an illegal investigation used to be very strictly enforced, even if the prepatrator was the FBI. Now, they can gather whatever they wish, use it in a court of law if anything ever turns up and not have to prove that you did anything wrong to get their attention in the first place. Whatever happens to us, remember, we deserve it because we didn't stop it.
According to the article, it sounds like they are trying to make things better for the consumer, considering things like camera angles and music to make a more enjoyable home experience. I guess since we can more easily see what mistakes, or whatever go into the movie now, they are trying to take that into consideration.
Hmmm...that link doesn't really convey what the main page said. Try just going here and scroll down.
SealBeater
Re:Lifetime Subscriptions limiting people ...
on
TiVo Service Cost Rising
·
· Score: 4, Informative
however, these are locked to the UNIT itself.
There is a website that will transfer the service from a pre-existing TiVo to a new one. Here is the direct link, they have other services as well, such as removing the nag screens (for people who don't want the service, such as myself), memory upgrades, harddrive upgrades, etc. Well worth bookmarking.
Neither radiation nor tse-tse flies are new, and it's pretty easy to put some in a lab
That's my point. real world != lab. I have no doubt that radiation will sterilize some of the flies, but what are they going to do, take sperm samples?
I'm not asserting that they have done the research, but that you're assuming they havent, and that I haven't provided evidence to the contrary does not prove me wrong.
It does not, however there is a significant weight of historical precident that implies that they have not. Also, given the sheer scope of accurately ascertaining the impact on an ecological system, any research done without
a) a control enviroment, flawed by its nature of trying to emulate the scope of the ecological systems in Africa and b) the absolutness of the cure, the erratication of an entire species, as sited in the article strongly implies the lack of any type of research.
Aside from that, if you had read the article, you whould know that they've done this before in other places
Really? I wasn't aware that tsetse flies occupied an ecological niche in another location identical to Africa. Of course, by your logic, all ecosystems are the same everywhere and what works in one place will surely work in another.
You see SealB, so long as you and yours cannot even debate issues without resorting to insults
I feel rather passionately about this. Thick skins are needed in heated debates. I have yet to see one person offer a constructive arguement. Yes, I feel your view is short-sighted and potentially far more destructive than any fly. I apologize to you for calling you an idiot, its just I am disappointed at peoples lack of vision. Of course, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. By all means, present your counter arguement and I will do my best to match it.
Africa is not some park, it is a continent where thousands, perhaps millions of people are malnourished or suffering from disease.
That's exactly my point, it's not a park, and the fact that people are malnourished or suffering from disease should be a reason for us to watch where we step instead of just blindly charging ahead and making what promises to be irreversable changes to the ecosystem. Africa has suffered enough due to similar efforts that were simularly misguided.
Yes it will kill wildlife -- but I could give a damn about wildlife when human beings are at stake.
That's a very short-sighted attitude, that invariably has caused more problems than it has solved.
The sterilization program does NOT seek to eradicate the fly, so there is no planned destruction of an entire species.
From the article: "VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday it would use nuclear technology to help rid Africa of the deadly tsetse fly. " and "After pesticides have sharply reduced the population, the sterilized males are released in large numbers into the breeding population, heavily outnumbering fertile males in the fight to mate. Over time, the tsetse population falls to zero."
Perhaps you should try to actually engage in something called "reading comprehension" before you attempt to engage in debate, otherwise you run the risk of embarrassing yourself, as demonstrated here today
What do you mean by "constructive"? Does this mean doing something "good" for the planet?
It means not doing something wholly destructive. For instance, not wiping out a layer of an ecosystem, without doing any sort of research into possible effects, simply because of a loss of percieved monetary value.
Organisms are inherently selfish. Why is it such a surprise that humans are to?
Only humans have shown an ability to change the balance of the planet for good or ill. Forgive me if I believe that that ability confers upon our species a certain level of responsibility. There is a balance on this planet, everytime there has been some sort of ecological disaster, we (humans) have been the cause. We wipe out the wolf population because we are losing cattle. Next year, the deer population soars, decimates the local greenary, and moves into human locales. We start shooting deer, etc, etc, etc. Maybe we should think before we interfere, which I admit would be a first.
Only humans have the capacity to self sacrifice.
I know several people with dogs who would disagree with you.
What you must realize is humans are part of the ecosystem.
That's the whole point you idiot. We can't just abitrarily decimate a species without affecting ourselves in some way. Anybody who believes otherwise in my opinion is a fool. That's the whole point of an ecosystem, everything affects everything else.
What humanity will (and should) do is attempt to control these vast systems for our benefit.
Name one attempt to do this that has not had disasterous results.
The article points out that they cost the region about $4.5 billion a year and these are people who can't afford that kind of loss.
Oh, but they can afford the possible ecological problems delivered by the eratication of a native species? And before you say that there will be no harm, there have been countless instances where human intervention in an ecological system, has caused far greater harm than good.
If science and technology can succeed in hauling these countries into the 21st century
Oh, like applying western farming techiques, which resulted in the loss of topsoil due to erosion caused by Western advice to cut down trees and make grazing land?
The suggestion that the tsetse fly, HIV, etc are helping to deal with population problems in Africa is abhorrent. We need to help solve these problems and make Africa wealthy
Actually, I was speaking more generally, ie, regarding the human race as a whole. Nowhere did I mention HIV, etc, so I would appricate it if you would confine your responses, weak as they are, to my actual comments and not to whatever your flights of fancy have lead you to wish I had said. That being stated, I doubt highly you have ever been to Africa, have any idea what problems are truly facing the people of this particular region, and I can state with all assurance that whatever problems exist, were caused by Westerners in particular "helping to solve these problems".
Is the preservation of wildlife even more important than the preservation of human lives?
I'll take this question. Yes, the preservation of wildlife is more important than the preservation of human lives. Esp, considering how we are entirely dependant on this planet, one would think we would at least exercise a little more caution. What exactly is so special about human lives? We destroy everything we come across, 98% of us don't do a single thing that is constructive, other than eating, sleeping and dying. Also, I hold myself to this same standard, when I am in Africa (which I have been and I am sure 90% of the/. community hasn't), I would rather take the chance of getting bit and dying, than introduce a potentially disasterous new element into as fragile and infinately complex an equation as an ecosystem.
I am pretty sure the scientists who thought it would be a good idea to inter-breed the American honey bee with the African bees viewed the experiment with the same amount of confidence that these scientists are displaying regarding the notion of irradiating the tsete fly with radiation. How do we know this will sterilize the flies?
Actually, you're wrong. Enviromental Variables are always expressed as all upper-case.
SealBeater
Re:Good for some, nightmare for others
on
Peek-a-Boo(ty)
·
· Score: 2
It seems you're doing something wrong...where I work, the only access to the outside world is via the proxy; changing proxy settings to other values will result in loss of Internet access because values other than the ones prescribed by the company don't work.
If you can get out via https, check out bouncer, it's an easy way to create an ssl tunnel to another box to bypass proxies, bouncer
Sorry I have you marked as a foe, cause of the page widening, so just now saw your post.
This is not about a system wide conf file for all users. It may be about a single conf file for each user (in their respective $HOME). Of course that would make perfect sense.
Ok, suppose I take a vacation. Instead of touching.vacation, I have to open up a config file (by what method is left up to the reader) and uncomment the vacation section. How about.signature? At home, I have a perl script that changes.signature every 5 minutes by recreating a symlink to a dir that contains various sigs. How is that supposed to work with your system?
Same issue, slrn. I have multiple.slrnrcs for diffrent NNTP providers. I guess I'll just have to add them all to the flat file. My.muttrc, nicely customized, is part of this one file, I guess. So, if I install it on another box, instead of just copying over the.muttrc, I have to what? cut and paste the revelant section to the flat file on anther box? And how does the single conf file know what settings, etc to have? Does it get appended to the conf file on installation by root? For every user? Only users with $HOME dirs? Do I need to say why this would be an incredibly bad thing?
And suppose there is a new whiz bang app that comes out. What do you have to upgrade to get the settings into the single config file. Would it mudge the settings? Change the format of the file to take advantage of newer XML or whatever features? Would that break existing apps so you have to upgrade everything? All except that one app that hasn't upgraded, so your configs are broken?
There is such a thing as single point of failure...this is one of them.
Of course I can look that up in the program manual. It's about the fact that the variable is not standardized across different programs (which I was trying to illustrate by giving it different names).
I would be very interested to hear what program that parses $ENV_VAR for proxies (to use your example) doesn't use $HTTP_PROXY. w3m does. mpg123 does. lynx does. wget does. w3mir does. Please find one that uses $PROXY or some subset for me.
The point is that such config info is not standardized across several different apps, so you may end up changing several different config files for one setting. That's the problem.
As far as I know, most programs check for a config in $HOME, then/etc. Please give examples of what settings or apps you are refering to.
And you're right, I didn't fully understand what you meant. Sorry.
The sole purpose of the dot file system seems to be to not confuse the configuration files with the user files. This could simply be achieved by using a ~/config/ directory. It would make things clear for everyone at first sight.
So, what does that achieve? You still have all the files in your home dir, only now you have them in a dir in $HOME, instead of in $HOME. I thought the whole point was to make things simpler. Everyone who uses *nix knows that a dotfile is a user config file. Their hidden so you don't have to see them all the time, if you want to, alias ls -a to ls. My only complaint with dotfiles is that there isn't a central information site that has what all the dotfiles are and what they do. The fact remains however, that your solution does nothing, as far as I can see. All you have done is move normally hidden files into an unhidden dir. Half of the dotfiles you have to actually put there, like.forward and.signature
Where we differ is that I desperately want more Unix-friendly work environments
I am actually not sure where I stand on that. I would like a more unix friendly work environment in which I can either use *nix myself or have a *nix infrastucture in place. I have been lucky in that that has not been too uncommon, but from a user standpoint, I don't know. I came from an enviromnent were if someone asked if they should use *nix, the answer was no. I thought at the time that that was elitest and repungnant, but after having tried twice to teach people, I can understand. If you're interested, you'll get it, if not, you won't.
My main objection to making things easy is that often, the student, for lack of a better word, doesn't ever feel the need to progress. It works well enough so why should I learn more, is the previlant attitude. Argh, what's the use?
My main thing is, a unified configuration system is not a *nix thing, for lack of a better word. Every app out there would have to adopt it, it would be an additional overhead, and what would happen in terms of security holes, updates, etc?
If I updated the xml lib, would that render my config unusable? World-readable? What about some hard-core customization? A one-off, if you will. What about a brand new module or app? Will I have to wait for the "configurator" app to catch up? What if I update an app and not the config, and the app parses configs differently? I just think it would create more problems then it solves.
Slashdot Mirror
Same thing happened in Orwell's 1984. Say what you want, mod me as you like,
but that was one of the central ideas of the book, news articles, etc, being
changed after the fact. If you went back and did any research, you would find
that the news agency/authority in charge of information was always right.
In more mundane terms, you really have to wonder about a news agency that
changes it's story and doesn't even post a retraction.
SealBeater
Its a dirty lawyer trick, to put pressure on the opposition. The common way is
to file a motion as close to the close of business as possible, giving the
least amount of time permissible under law. Like 3 days to comply, filing it
at 4:50pm on a Friday and they have to have it by Monday. Only in this case,
MS is hoping that they will just give up the money, if they really wanted to
make sure they were in compliance, they would give them more time.
SealBeater
Another problem is that people are naming their boxes after popular domains
that they don't own, and the dynamic updates are pounding the hell out of the
domain owners nameservers. If anyone here is doing this, owl.com and jove.com
were two of the domains named.
Sealbeater
Surely the feds could quite easily gain some sort of access to put packet
sniffers on an isp's network and read anyones email, without the need to ask
the ISP's or Telco's.
Sure they could, however nothing they gathered would have been admissible in
court. In addition, if they were caught, it would lead to severe punishment
under the former laws. Illegal wiretapping and conducting an illegal
investigation used to be very strictly enforced, even if the prepatrator was
the FBI. Now, they can gather whatever they wish, use it in a court of law if
anything ever turns up and not have to prove that you did anything wrong to
get their attention in the first place. Whatever happens to us, remember, we
deserve it because we didn't stop it.
SealBeater
First thing I did, and try to do when I am at a new job, is to reinstall the OS of my workstations. Might not be a bad idea for others to consider.
SealBeater
According to the article, it sounds like they are trying to make things better
for the consumer, considering things like camera angles and music to make a
more enjoyable home experience. I guess since we can more easily see what
mistakes, or whatever go into the movie now, they are trying to take that into
consideration.
SealBeater
Link to find out your Representative's contact info here.
Click on the state, decide who you want to contact and click on the bio for the mailing address.
SealBeater
One would think that Microsoft would have learned by now...
SealBeater
Hmmm...that link doesn't really convey what the main page said. Try just going here and scroll down.
SealBeater
however, these are locked to the UNIT itself.
There is a website that will transfer the service from a pre-existing TiVo to a new one. Here is the direct link, they have other services as well, such as removing the nag screens (for people who don't want the service, such as myself), memory upgrades, harddrive upgrades, etc. Well worth bookmarking.
SealBeater
Neither radiation nor tse-tse flies are new, and it's pretty easy to put some in a lab
That's my point. real world != lab. I have no doubt that radiation will sterilize some of the flies, but what are they going to do, take sperm samples?
SealBeater
I'm not asserting that they have done the research, but that you're assuming they havent, and that I haven't provided evidence to the contrary does not prove me wrong.
It does not, however there is a significant weight of historical precident that implies that they have not. Also, given the sheer scope of accurately ascertaining the impact on an ecological system, any research done without
a) a control enviroment, flawed by its nature of trying to emulate the scope of the ecological systems in Africa and
b) the absolutness of the cure, the erratication of an entire species, as sited in the article strongly implies the lack of any type of research.
Aside from that, if you had read the article, you whould know that they've done this before in other places
Really? I wasn't aware that tsetse flies occupied an ecological niche in another location identical to Africa. Of course, by your logic, all ecosystems are the same everywhere and what works in one place will surely work in another.
SealBeater
You see SealB, so long as you and yours cannot even debate issues without resorting to insults
I feel rather passionately about this. Thick skins are needed in heated debates. I have yet to see one person offer a constructive arguement. Yes, I feel your view is short-sighted and potentially far more destructive than any fly. I apologize to you for calling you an idiot, its just I am disappointed at peoples lack of vision. Of course, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. By all means, present your counter arguement and I will do my best to match it.
SealBeater
Africa is not some park, it is a continent where thousands, perhaps millions of people are malnourished or suffering from disease.
That's exactly my point, it's not a park, and the fact that people are malnourished or suffering from disease should be a reason for us to watch where we step instead of just blindly charging ahead and making what promises to be irreversable changes to the ecosystem. Africa has suffered enough due to similar efforts that were simularly misguided.
Yes it will kill wildlife -- but I could give a damn about wildlife when human beings are at stake.
That's a very short-sighted attitude, that invariably has caused more problems than it has solved.
SealBeater
The sterilization program does NOT seek to eradicate the fly, so there is no planned destruction of an entire species.
From the article:
"VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday it would use nuclear technology to help rid Africa of the deadly tsetse fly. "
and "After pesticides have sharply reduced the population, the sterilized males are released in large numbers into the breeding population, heavily outnumbering fertile males in the fight to mate. Over time, the tsetse population falls to zero."
Perhaps you should try to actually engage in something called "reading comprehension" before you attempt to engage in debate, otherwise you run the risk of embarrassing yourself, as demonstrated here today
SealBeater
You have just commited an act of dumbness. You can not assume that because you have not done research that the research has not been done.
Please post a link that states otherwise. Otherwise, the "dumbness" resides solely within yourself.
SealBeater
What do you mean by "constructive"? Does this mean doing something "good" for the planet?
It means not doing something wholly destructive. For instance, not wiping out a layer of an ecosystem, without doing any sort of research into possible effects, simply because of a loss of percieved monetary value.
Organisms are inherently selfish. Why is it such a surprise that humans are to?
Only humans have shown an ability to change the balance of the planet for good or ill. Forgive me if I believe that that ability confers upon our species a certain level of responsibility. There is a balance on this planet, everytime there has been some sort of ecological disaster, we (humans) have been the cause. We wipe out the wolf population because we are losing cattle. Next year, the deer population soars, decimates the local greenary, and moves into human locales. We start shooting deer, etc, etc, etc. Maybe we should think before we interfere, which I admit would be a first.
Only humans have the capacity to self sacrifice.
I know several people with dogs who would disagree with you.
What you must realize is humans are part of the ecosystem.
That's the whole point you idiot. We can't just abitrarily decimate a species without affecting ourselves in some way. Anybody who believes otherwise in my opinion is a fool. That's the whole point of an ecosystem, everything affects everything else.
What humanity will (and should) do is attempt to control these vast systems for our benefit.
Name one attempt to do this that has not had disasterous results.
SealBeater
The article points out that they cost the region about $4.5 billion a year and these are people who can't afford that kind of loss.
Oh, but they can afford the possible ecological problems delivered by the eratication of a native species? And before you say that there will be no harm, there have been countless instances where human intervention in an ecological system, has caused far greater harm than good.
If science and technology can succeed in hauling these countries into the 21st century
Oh, like applying western farming techiques, which resulted in the loss of topsoil due to erosion caused by Western advice to cut down trees and make grazing land?
The suggestion that the tsetse fly, HIV, etc are helping to deal with population problems in Africa is abhorrent. We need to help solve these problems and make Africa wealthy
Actually, I was speaking more generally, ie, regarding the human race as a whole. Nowhere did I mention HIV, etc, so I would appricate it if you would confine your responses, weak as they are, to my actual comments and not to whatever your flights of fancy have lead you to wish I had said. That being stated, I doubt highly you have ever been to Africa, have any idea what problems are truly facing the people of this particular region, and I can state with all assurance that whatever problems exist, were caused by Westerners in particular "helping to solve these problems".
SealBeater
Is the preservation of wildlife even more important than the preservation of human lives?
I'll take this question. Yes, the preservation of wildlife is more important than the preservation of human lives. Esp, considering how we are entirely dependant on this planet, one would think we would at least exercise a little more caution. What exactly is so special about human lives?
We destroy everything we come across, 98% of us don't do a single thing that is constructive, other than eating, sleeping and dying. Also, I hold myself to this same standard, when I am in Africa (which I have been and I am sure 90% of the
SealBeater
I am pretty sure the scientists who thought it would be a good idea to inter-breed the American honey bee with the African bees viewed the experiment with the same amount of confidence that these scientists are displaying regarding the notion of irradiating the tsete fly with radiation. How do we know this will sterilize the flies?
SealBeater
No, it's $http_proxy. Yeesh.
Actually, you're wrong. Enviromental Variables are always expressed as all upper-case.
SealBeater
It seems you're doing something wrong...where I work, the only access to the outside world is via the proxy; changing proxy settings to other values will result in loss of Internet access because values other than the ones prescribed by the company don't work.
If you can get out via https, check out bouncer, it's an easy way to create an ssl tunnel to another box to bypass proxies, bouncer
SealBeater
Sorry I have you marked as a foe, cause of the page widening, so just now saw your post.
.vacation, I have to open up a config file (by what method is left up to the reader) and uncomment the vacation section. How about .signature? At home, I have a perl script that changes .signature every 5 minutes by recreating a symlink to a dir that contains various sigs. How is that supposed to work with your system?
.slrnrcs for diffrent NNTP providers. I guess I'll just have to add them all to the flat file. My .muttrc, nicely customized, is part of this one file, I guess. So, if I install it on another box, instead of just copying over the .muttrc, I have to what? cut and paste the revelant section to the flat file on anther box? And how does the single conf file know what settings, etc to have? Does it get appended to the conf file on installation by root? For every user? Only users with $HOME dirs? Do I need to say why this would be an incredibly bad thing?
/etc. Please give examples of what settings or apps you are refering to.
This is not about a system wide conf file for all users. It may be about a single conf file for each user (in their respective $HOME). Of course that would make perfect sense.
Ok, suppose I take a vacation. Instead of touching
Same issue, slrn. I have multiple
And suppose there is a new whiz bang app that comes out. What do you have to upgrade to get the settings into the single config file. Would it mudge the settings? Change the format of the file to take advantage of newer XML or whatever features? Would that break existing apps so you have to upgrade everything? All except that one app that hasn't upgraded, so your configs are broken?
There is such a thing as single point of failure...this is one of them.
Of course I can look that up in the program manual. It's about the fact that the variable is not standardized across different programs (which I was trying to illustrate by giving it different names).
I would be very interested to hear what program that parses $ENV_VAR for proxies (to use your example) doesn't use $HTTP_PROXY. w3m does. mpg123 does. lynx does. wget does. w3mir does. Please find one that uses $PROXY or some subset for me.
The point is that such config info is not standardized across several different apps, so you may end up changing several different config files for one setting. That's the problem.
As far as I know, most programs check for a config in $HOME, then
And you're right, I didn't fully understand what you meant. Sorry.
SealBeater
The sole purpose of the dot file system seems to be to not confuse the configuration files with the user files. This could simply be achieved by using a ~/config/ directory. It would make things clear for everyone at first sight.
So, what does that achieve? You still have all the files in your home dir, only now you have them in a dir in $HOME, instead of in $HOME. I thought the whole point was to make things simpler. Everyone who uses *nix knows that a dotfile is a user config file. Their hidden so you don't have to see them all the time, if you want to, alias ls -a to ls. My only complaint with dotfiles is that there isn't a central information site that has what all the dotfiles are and what they do. The fact remains however, that your solution does nothing, as far as I can see. All you have done is move normally hidden files into an unhidden dir. Half of the dotfiles you have to actually put there, like
SealBeater
Where we differ is that I desperately want more Unix-friendly work environments
I am actually not sure where I stand on that. I would like a more unix friendly work environment in which I can either use *nix myself or have a *nix infrastucture in place. I have been lucky in that that has not been too uncommon, but from a user standpoint, I don't know. I came from an enviromnent were if someone asked if they should use *nix, the answer was no. I thought at the time that that was elitest and repungnant, but after having tried twice to teach people, I can understand. If you're interested, you'll get it, if not, you won't.
My main objection to making things easy is that often, the student, for lack of a better word, doesn't ever feel the need to progress. It works well enough so why should I learn more, is the previlant attitude. Argh, what's the use?
My main thing is, a unified configuration system is not a *nix thing, for lack of a better word. Every app out there would have to adopt it, it would be an additional overhead, and what would happen in terms of security holes, updates, etc?
If I updated the xml lib, would that render my config unusable? World-readable? What about some hard-core customization? A one-off, if you will. What about a brand new module or app? Will I have to wait for the "configurator" app to catch up? What if I update an app and not the config, and the app parses configs differently? I just think it would create more problems then it solves.
SealBeater