Jon, you have written a particularly good one here, and your assumptions are on the mark... so I won't flame you this time (Okay, I try to stay out of the Jon Katz Flame War thing on/. anyway)
Every now and then I get a call from my local newspaper asking me if I would like to subscribe, and I always give them the same answer: I get my news of the Internet, so leave me alone.
It is true. I don't follow the traditional media (and to think, in my past life I was a journalist for the U.S. Navy!) By the time a newspaper has been printed, delivered and picked up by the reader, that news is already old. And television broadcast news does not allow me to skip over information that is irrelevant to me or investigate relevant information further.
In fact, the only "traditional media" that I consider still viable is good old radio. And that is only because it's irrelevance is negated by the fact that it is just so damn convienient. (If I had a computer that would pull news off the internet in accordance to my tastes and then use a text to speech engine to read it to me while I drive, I wouldn't have a need for radio either.
We live in an age where not only can we get information from around the globe in a very timely fashion, but we can have that information tailored to meet our individual preferences. TV, Newspapers and ultimately Radio just cannot keep up with interactive media.
How hard can it be to plan a trip? I just kind of get on the road and head toward my destination. I can get to practically any location in the Continental US in 32hours or less. Sometimes I do use a road atlas (hard copy). I find that this method is more efficient than any of the software packages that I have seen or used.
Your right. Slashdot is editorial biased against Windows and just about anything Microsoft. There is a "reason" for this (however "unreasonable" it may be.)
Just as the Macintosh was built around a backround of "beating the enemy, IBM", Linux is kind of being built around a background of "beating the enemy, Microsoft."
This makes Linux an interesting candidate for sucess. I agree, a lot of the anti-microsoft clamor that we so often hear is based more on emotion than on pure fact (what you refered to as "FUD".) I work primarily on Windows NT based workstations, and for the most part they have proven to be very stable (the biggest drawback is the numerous reboots that I have to do when installing new software.)
I disagree with your statement about installing '98. I have had more problems installing '98 then with any other operating system. While not necessarily a "difficult" install, it is one that tries my patience. I find the installation Windows NT 4.0 and RedHat Linux (text mode install) to both be way more intuitive and user-friendly.
My preference for Linux does not abound from a feeling that Linux is technically superior. It stims from the political side of the open source movement. I like the idea of software that is free (as in both beer and speech.)
It may be that the reason why Mainsoft has a copy of the Winnt source code is to assist them in porting Office. Sure, everbody is denying it. Maybe Microsoft has hired mainsoft only to port IE and MediaPlayer, but they might have still given them the source to NT and Office and unofficially stated "If you can get this ported, we will make it very much worth your while." After all, with the impending opening of StarOffice, Microsoft has to be feeling a crunch to get Office out cross-platform so that they can stop SUN cold.
Personally, benchmarks have never been my reason for switching to Linux. I could care less if Windows is faster or better.
I use Linux because it is FREE (as in speech AND beer.)
I Linux NEVER catches up or surpases Windows (which it WILL) I would still use Linux.
I downloaded a copy of AOLforlinux beta. But now that I have downloaded it, I don't know what to do with it. I'm afraid that if I install it, I'll be screwing something up REAL bad.
Even when it's out of beta, I'll be feeling the same way.
So if AOL is such a nightmare, what browser do you use?
Most of us Linux users are using the AOL-owned netscape browser. Maybe AOL has already taken over?
You say:
"I built my Linux machines to have a choice..."
Okay. Now you have another choice: To use AOL or not to use it.
AOL for Linux is NOT bad news. It's just not necessarily good news either.
This will do a number of good things:
1. It will speed Linux's acceptance as a desktop operating system.
2. It will give computer dealers (particularly the Mom & Pop computer stores) a greater incentive to bundle Linux with their computers rather than MS Windows.
3. Not only will more Windows users be more inclined to run Linux, but more Macintosh users will be inclined to switch as well (Yes, there are a lot of macheads who run AOL also.)
On the downside,
1. New Linux users tend to leave their computer in it's default security configuration (i.e. all sorts of services and ports running WIDE open) These folks will get onto AOL and find themselves under constant attack from script kiddies.
2. Running IRC as root is stupid. Can you imagine what running AOL as root will leave you open to? **GASP**!!
3. A lot of people who are used to Windows will try Linux and decide that it sucks simply because a lot of the media clips that they download are in formats that can't be displayed on Linux (ASF, Quicktime 4.0, etc.)
AOL for Linux has a lot of potential. I just hope that they do this right.
I also live in a rural area that does not have high-speed access. The name of my community is, quite literally, "Slapout, Alabama". Yes. Someone really named the place "Slapout."
I have looked at several options in the past (ISDN, DirecPC, etc.) and have not found an option that is totally agreeable.
However, there is some good news for me. Recently, our cable television service was interupted and we had the pleasure of watching several hours of beautiful "snow" instead of the History Channel (the only thing that my cable company provides that is worth watching.) When we called the cable company (Time Warner), we were informed that they were upgrading our cable service and we would soon have the option of both Digital Cable service and, of course, Cable Modem internet access.
So the answer might be to forego spending too much money on a solution that you won't be happy with and just waiting for the access to come to you. 56Kbps dialup connections aren't the greatest thing in the world, but at least it's not too pricey.
Okay. But how many supermarkets are willing to sell information about you to product manufacturers? "The holder of Credit Card 4000500060007000 purchased your product five times over the course of four months."
You won't be sending a little robot to the local store anytime soon, and it is a lot easier to track you down that way then it is via the web.
But you are right. Writing your little robot would be the/correct/ response to this invasion of privacy. Writing a browser plug-in to reject such bits of information would be another.
Legislating it out of existance or banning it/would not/ be the correct form of action. I see way too many people who would look at this type of thing as "something that should be regulated" and yet those same person's take offense at the government regulating Napster.
The internet has a way of policing itself. If we keep the government from interfering, than this kind of intrusion will meet it's own extinction at the hands of people like you. People who will write software that makes their software obsolete.
Let's face it. The days of the Internet being a free-for-all are over. Corporations are going to find ways to collect demographic and personal data. Trying to legislate this out of existance is like trying to legislate Napster and Gnutella out of existance: It isn't going to happen.
The best you can do is write a browser plug-in that will reject such data and prevent the corporation from gaining any valuable data from your visit.
No amount of legislation can stop this kind of thing. If you ban companies from collecting data like this in the United States, they will simply move their servers outside the border and continue to do business as usual.
In the information age, it is no longer the job of government to protect our privacy - they can't, it's an insermountable job. The only way to protect online privacy is to do it yourself.
1. a.A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president.
b.A nation that has such a political order.
2. a.A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them. b.A nation that has such a political order.
democracy n., pl. democracies.
1.Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2.A political or social unit that has such a government.
3.The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4.Majority rule.
5.The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.
It seems to me that the term democracy has fewer similarities to our current government than republic. Defintion 2a of Republic hits our form of government right on the head. We elect officials who make decisions on our behalf. In a democracy, the people make all such decisions and then the representatives carry out the decisions of the people (every issue before congress would have to be first decided in state elections. The representatives would then vote according to the outcome of their state elections.) What we do is contrary to this. We elect an official that we feel will vote along similar lines to ourselves, but the people do not have control of the representative's vote (not directly), thus a senator could cast a vote in congress that goes completely against his/her constituent's wishes.
Majority does not rule in the United States, and thank God for it. A true democracy would result in the minority citizen's being trampled under the majority's feet. Our representative (republic) form of government insures that minority opinions have at least some weight.
First of all, I disagree with Mr. Katz' use of the term "Democracy" at the end of this article. The VAST majority of those reading this article (and who are part of the Techno-Elite) do not live and work in democratic societies. Point-in-case: The United States of America is NOT a democracy. We are a Republic (in a democracy, majority rules. In a republic, the majority elects representatives and those representatives do all the decision making).
I for one am highly aware of my political surroundings. And I care about people more than I do technology. Acheiving "prosperity" is not primary goal in life.
The book in question (and hence Jon's article here on Slashdot) is too quick to make hasty generalizations about the geek culture. If one were to read some of the more decent books concerning personality types, I think that you would find that the majority of the "geek-types" fall into the realm of the "NT" temperament type (the initials stand for iNtuitive, Thinking). This personality type has difficulty communicating depth of feeling and thus outsiders often label them as cold-hearted. (if you want to find out what personality type YOU are, try the Keirsey Character Sorter.
I think that in truth, geeks are very aware of their political situations. We are just less-likely to talk about it.
The ABC Friday lineup simply SUCKS. They have nothing good (in the way of post-adolescent) programming on Friday nights. I guess they are hoping that someone is going to listen to their answering machine and somehow come away saying "...must... watch... Sabrina the Teenage Witch..." or "Gee, let me listen to that most annoying theme song to 'Boy Meets World' JUST ONE MORE TIME!"
Give it up ABC. Why not take friday nights and put on back to back episodes of the Drew Carey Show and Who's Line is it Anyway? like you did all week long during the last few months?
Or howabout a new "reality television" show called "Who Wants to be a Pauper?" where we watch failed contestants from "Who Wants to be a Millionare" try to survive among the nations homeless eating rats and fishing street drains for cigarette butts? (Each week one of the contestants would be voted out and forced to play "Big Brother" - a fate worse than "MTV's Real World". The final contestant gets a chance to slap Regis and choke him with his monocrome tie.
Yes. I am pale. That's genetic. I am a white american with an Irish background. Both my Gradfathers and my father suffered from skin cancer and I burn quickly so I have spent most of my life playing/working indoors or wearing clothing that protects my skin (long sleaves and a hat).
As far as being a "fat loser." You are wrong. I am six feet tall and weigh 185 pounds. I am not fat, although it is obvious that I do not go without eating a couple of good meals every day. As far as the loser side, you can judge that based on whatever criteria yoo use to make yourself feel more important or worthy of others. Since I feel that even the guy on the street begging for a cigarette is worth something, I tend not to peg people as "winners" and "losers." - However, I do not make slanderous statements about other people and their children while hiding behind anonynmity, and that would place me outside of the "loser" category in a lot of people's books.
What's wrong with putting a restriction on the game? Of course, I'm turning 30 this September, so you will have to take my opinion with a grain of salt. I guess if I were 16 and someone were telling me that I couldn't play Zork because the written depiction of the death of a troll is too graphic (or how about that fantastic altar sacrafice scene from Infocom's Enchanter?) I would be VERY pissed and ready to fight for the right to play the game. Content ratings are a good thing, if they are used by PARENTS as tools to make sure that their children are playing games that are suited to the child's age. They are bad when they are used by governments and businesses to ban content to individuals (If my daughter rents a movie or game that I find offensive, as a parent, I can just tell her that she cannot watch or play it.) The problem is that too many people want to use these kinds of ratings as a replacement for responsible parenting. Parents who take an interest in their kids lives have more than enough opportunity to direct their kid's viewing and game playing habits.
Oh, and I am not a vegetarian. If meat is murder, then murder makes good cookin'.
Don't be silly. Since the Human Body is composed of DNA, all you really have to do is make modifications to the source code and then do a./configure, make, make install - SHAZAM! The new DNA would then be transmitted to each cell to upgrade you to the latest version.
Wow! just think of this! if we could make a DNA strand like the Linux Kernel, just think how resistant we would be to Virii!
Me very bad man. Did not preview my comment and so I misspeled the word "responsible". And yes... I do know about the spelling error in this post also.
Maybe they are terming it as a "Grass Roots Effort" Because you would have to be smoking that grass in order to assume that Microsoft is respomisible for innovation.
On a more serious note: Perhaps it is "Grass Roots" because the effort is being led by Microsoft employees and not directly by the corporation's management?
I think that my respect for Microsoft would triple if they would just drop the "Freedom to Innovate" charade and start up a "Freedom to Capitalize" movement.
Absolutely correct. Since I found out about slashdot 2 and a half years ago, my web surfing has been reduced greatly as slashdot presents the vast majority of the kinds of news that I would have otherwise been searching for on my own.
You are absolutely right on this account. Perhaps "plugs a major gaping hole in GNU software..." would have been better way to put it. I personally use the Linux kernal myself, but if it can compile on one of the BSDs, then certainly it runs on more than just Linux.
I think that the reason why you see this Linux bias so often on Slashdot is pretty obvious and is actually understandable. GnuCash is, of course, GNU software and is governed by the GPL. Linux is also governed by the GPL. NetBSD is not, it is the BSD license. GNU is intended to be a *NIX replacement operating system/environment. Because of this, when a new piece of software or software version is released as part of the GNU project, it is going to be associated with a GNU operating system kernal (either Linux or HURD.)
I think you are going to have to get used to it... it's a Stallman thing.
If you have ghostscript installed on your computer, you probably already have this (most, if not all), linux distributions have this (okay, maybe not the "micro-distributions") by default to allow postscript files to be filtered to your printer port for output. Try typing "ps2pdf" at the command line and see if you get anything. Also, you can try www.ps2pdf.com, an online engine that lets you upload the ps file and then download the pdf file. Ghostscript is also available for Windows, and you will have to search the installed subdirectories to find the "ps2pdf.bat" batch file that will do this same thing.
I like to think of the "old west" in America as kind of a metaphor to what is happening with the internet in the past, present and future.
At first the internet was only available to the researchers and the educational facilities that were instrumental to the building of the protocols and basic infrastructure - they were the natives.
As home computers became more and more affordable, and ISPs became widely available, these new users began the migration to the internet - from places like AOL, CompuServ, Prodigy, etc. These were the settlers... people who often found themselves in huge "flame wars" with the aboriginal internet community.
Right now, we are in the "California Gold Rush" stage of the internet... everyone and every business is eyeing the internet as the great cash cow of the 21st Century.
What this article is pointing to is a opening up of the internet to broadband access, much like the first highways - often marked with toll roads and bridges. If you can't pay to take the shortcut to get the information you are looking for, you are going to have to go around.
I think we're going to see a major corporatization of the internet, with major ISPs creating VPNs that will only allow their customers access to their own resources. And the AOL mentality of the masses is going to prefer this to today's free-for-all.
Of course, I'm no psychic. Call Dionne Warwick for that. With any luck, I'm totally wrong.
Mettalica is part of the old world of popular music, in which teenage kids worship rock stars because they are marketed to them as being larger than life. Though Mettalica continues to exist, they will see their emphasis on the minds of the masses wane as MP3 (or the next generation of multimedia compressed file format) turns the traditional recording industry on it's ear.
The beauty of MP3 is not that it allows people to bootleg and distribute copyrighted material. The beauty is MP3 is now making music available that would otherwise never be heard. Real musical art has found it's greatest medium... the internet.
So quit downloading those illegal Brittney Spears M3s. Forget bootlegging Mettalica's precious recordings. Those artists were created for mass consumption. Find those MP3s created by all those garage bands around the world. Sure. Some of it may suck, but there is some good music out there... and it's free.
Slashdot Mirror
Jon, you have written a particularly good one here, and your assumptions are on the mark... so I won't flame you this time (Okay, I try to stay out of the Jon Katz Flame War thing on /. anyway)
Every now and then I get a call from my local newspaper asking me if I would like to subscribe, and I always give them the same answer: I get my news of the Internet, so leave me alone.
It is true. I don't follow the traditional media (and to think, in my past life I was a journalist for the U.S. Navy!) By the time a newspaper has been printed, delivered and picked up by the reader, that news is already old. And television broadcast news does not allow me to skip over information that is irrelevant to me or investigate relevant information further.
In fact, the only "traditional media" that I consider still viable is good old radio. And that is only because it's irrelevance is negated by the fact that it is just so damn convienient. (If I had a computer that would pull news off the internet in accordance to my tastes and then use a text to speech engine to read it to me while I drive, I wouldn't have a need for radio either.
We live in an age where not only can we get information from around the globe in a very timely fashion, but we can have that information tailored to meet our individual preferences. TV, Newspapers and ultimately Radio just cannot keep up with interactive media.
How hard can it be to plan a trip? I just kind of get on the road and head toward my destination. I can get to practically any location in the Continental US in 32hours or less. Sometimes I do use a road atlas (hard copy). I find that this method is more efficient than any of the software packages that I have seen or used.
Your right. Slashdot is editorial biased against Windows and just about anything Microsoft. There is a "reason" for this (however "unreasonable" it may be.) Just as the Macintosh was built around a backround of "beating the enemy, IBM", Linux is kind of being built around a background of "beating the enemy, Microsoft." This makes Linux an interesting candidate for sucess. I agree, a lot of the anti-microsoft clamor that we so often hear is based more on emotion than on pure fact (what you refered to as "FUD".) I work primarily on Windows NT based workstations, and for the most part they have proven to be very stable (the biggest drawback is the numerous reboots that I have to do when installing new software.) I disagree with your statement about installing '98. I have had more problems installing '98 then with any other operating system. While not necessarily a "difficult" install, it is one that tries my patience. I find the installation Windows NT 4.0 and RedHat Linux (text mode install) to both be way more intuitive and user-friendly. My preference for Linux does not abound from a feeling that Linux is technically superior. It stims from the political side of the open source movement. I like the idea of software that is free (as in both beer and speech.)
It may be that the reason why Mainsoft has a copy of the Winnt source code is to assist them in porting Office. Sure, everbody is denying it. Maybe Microsoft has hired mainsoft only to port IE and MediaPlayer, but they might have still given them the source to NT and Office and unofficially stated "If you can get this ported, we will make it very much worth your while." After all, with the impending opening of StarOffice, Microsoft has to be feeling a crunch to get Office out cross-platform so that they can stop SUN cold.
Personally, benchmarks have never been my reason for switching to Linux. I could care less if Windows is faster or better. I use Linux because it is FREE (as in speech AND beer.) I Linux NEVER catches up or surpases Windows (which it WILL) I would still use Linux.
I downloaded a copy of AOLforlinux beta. But now that I have downloaded it, I don't know what to do with it. I'm afraid that if I install it, I'll be screwing something up REAL bad. Even when it's out of beta, I'll be feeling the same way.
So if AOL is such a nightmare, what browser do you use? Most of us Linux users are using the AOL-owned netscape browser. Maybe AOL has already taken over?
You say: "I built my Linux machines to have a choice..." Okay. Now you have another choice: To use AOL or not to use it. AOL for Linux is NOT bad news. It's just not necessarily good news either. This will do a number of good things: 1. It will speed Linux's acceptance as a desktop operating system. 2. It will give computer dealers (particularly the Mom & Pop computer stores) a greater incentive to bundle Linux with their computers rather than MS Windows. 3. Not only will more Windows users be more inclined to run Linux, but more Macintosh users will be inclined to switch as well (Yes, there are a lot of macheads who run AOL also.) On the downside, 1. New Linux users tend to leave their computer in it's default security configuration (i.e. all sorts of services and ports running WIDE open) These folks will get onto AOL and find themselves under constant attack from script kiddies. 2. Running IRC as root is stupid. Can you imagine what running AOL as root will leave you open to? **GASP**!! 3. A lot of people who are used to Windows will try Linux and decide that it sucks simply because a lot of the media clips that they download are in formats that can't be displayed on Linux (ASF, Quicktime 4.0, etc.) AOL for Linux has a lot of potential. I just hope that they do this right.
I also live in a rural area that does not have high-speed access. The name of my community is, quite literally, "Slapout, Alabama". Yes. Someone really named the place "Slapout." I have looked at several options in the past (ISDN, DirecPC, etc.) and have not found an option that is totally agreeable. However, there is some good news for me. Recently, our cable television service was interupted and we had the pleasure of watching several hours of beautiful "snow" instead of the History Channel (the only thing that my cable company provides that is worth watching.) When we called the cable company (Time Warner), we were informed that they were upgrading our cable service and we would soon have the option of both Digital Cable service and, of course, Cable Modem internet access. So the answer might be to forego spending too much money on a solution that you won't be happy with and just waiting for the access to come to you. 56Kbps dialup connections aren't the greatest thing in the world, but at least it's not too pricey.
Okay. But how many supermarkets are willing to sell information about you to product manufacturers? "The holder of Credit Card 4000500060007000 purchased your product five times over the course of four months."
/correct/ response to this invasion of privacy. Writing a browser plug-in to reject such bits of information would be another.
/would not/ be the correct form of action. I see way too many people who would look at this type of thing as "something that should be regulated" and yet those same person's take offense at the government regulating Napster.
You won't be sending a little robot to the local store anytime soon, and it is a lot easier to track you down that way then it is via the web.
But you are right. Writing your little robot would be the
Legislating it out of existance or banning it
The internet has a way of policing itself. If we keep the government from interfering, than this kind of intrusion will meet it's own extinction at the hands of people like you. People who will write software that makes their software obsolete.
Let's face it. The days of the Internet being a free-for-all are over. Corporations are going to find ways to collect demographic and personal data. Trying to legislate this out of existance is like trying to legislate Napster and Gnutella out of existance: It isn't going to happen.
The best you can do is write a browser plug-in that will reject such data and prevent the corporation from gaining any valuable data from your visit.
No amount of legislation can stop this kind of thing. If you ban companies from collecting data like this in the United States, they will simply move their servers outside the border and continue to do business as usual.
In the information age, it is no longer the job of government to protect our privacy - they can't, it's an insermountable job. The only way to protect online privacy is to do it yourself.
I have attached the following definitions.
republic
n. Abbr. rep., Rep., Repub.
1.
a.A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president.
b.A nation that has such a political order.
2.
a.A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.
b.A nation that has such a political order.
democracy
n., pl. democracies.
1.Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2.A political or social unit that has such a government.
3.The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4.Majority rule.
5.The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.
It seems to me that the term democracy has fewer similarities to our current government than republic. Defintion 2a of Republic hits our form of government right on the head. We elect officials who make decisions on our behalf. In a democracy, the people make all such decisions and then the representatives carry out the decisions of the people (every issue before congress would have to be first decided in state elections. The representatives would then vote according to the outcome of their state elections.) What we do is contrary to this. We elect an official that we feel will vote along similar lines to ourselves, but the people do not have control of the representative's vote (not directly), thus a senator could cast a vote in congress that goes completely against his/her constituent's wishes.
Majority does not rule in the United States, and thank God for it. A true democracy would result in the minority citizen's being trampled under the majority's feet. Our representative (republic) form of government insures that minority opinions have at least some weight.
First of all, I disagree with Mr. Katz' use of the term "Democracy" at the end of this article. The VAST majority of those reading this article (and who are part of the Techno-Elite) do not live and work in democratic societies. Point-in-case: The United States of America is NOT a democracy. We are a Republic (in a democracy, majority rules. In a republic, the majority elects representatives and those representatives do all the decision making).
I for one am highly aware of my political surroundings. And I care about people more than I do technology. Acheiving "prosperity" is not primary goal in life.
The book in question (and hence Jon's article here on Slashdot) is too quick to make hasty generalizations about the geek culture. If one were to read some of the more decent books concerning personality types, I think that you would find that the majority of the "geek-types" fall into the realm of the "NT" temperament type (the initials stand for iNtuitive, Thinking). This personality type has difficulty communicating depth of feeling and thus outsiders often label them as cold-hearted. (if you want to find out what personality type YOU are, try the Keirsey Character Sorter.
I think that in truth, geeks are very aware of their political situations. We are just less-likely to talk about it.
The ABC Friday lineup simply SUCKS. They have nothing good (in the way of post-adolescent) programming on Friday nights. I guess they are hoping that someone is going to listen to their answering machine and somehow come away saying "...must ... watch ... Sabrina the Teenage Witch..." or "Gee, let me listen to that most annoying theme song to 'Boy Meets World' JUST ONE MORE TIME!"
Give it up ABC. Why not take friday nights and put on back to back episodes of the Drew Carey Show and Who's Line is it Anyway? like you did all week long during the last few months?
Or howabout a new "reality television" show called "Who Wants to be a Pauper?" where we watch failed contestants from "Who Wants to be a Millionare" try to survive among the nations homeless eating rats and fishing street drains for cigarette butts? (Each week one of the contestants would be voted out and forced to play "Big Brother" - a fate worse than "MTV's Real World". The final contestant gets a chance to slap Regis and choke him with his monocrome tie.
Yes. I am pale. That's genetic. I am a white american with an Irish background. Both my Gradfathers and my father suffered from skin cancer and I burn quickly so I have spent most of my life playing/working indoors or wearing clothing that protects my skin (long sleaves and a hat).
As far as being a "fat loser." You are wrong. I am six feet tall and weigh 185 pounds. I am not fat, although it is obvious that I do not go without eating a couple of good meals every day. As far as the loser side, you can judge that based on whatever criteria yoo use to make yourself feel more important or worthy of others. Since I feel that even the guy on the street begging for a cigarette is worth something, I tend not to peg people as "winners" and "losers." - However, I do not make slanderous statements about other people and their children while hiding behind anonynmity, and that would place me outside of the "loser" category in a lot of people's books.
Have a nice day.
I am a parent, and I have a clue. My daughter will learn to frag... when she's old enough.
What's wrong with putting a restriction on the game? Of course, I'm turning 30 this September, so you will have to take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I guess if I were 16 and someone were telling me that I couldn't play Zork because the written depiction of the death of a troll is too graphic (or how about that fantastic altar sacrafice scene from Infocom's Enchanter?) I would be VERY pissed and ready to fight for the right to play the game.
Content ratings are a good thing, if they are used by PARENTS as tools to make sure that their children are playing games that are suited to the child's age. They are bad when they are used by governments and businesses to ban content to individuals (If my daughter rents a movie or game that I find offensive, as a parent, I can just tell her that she cannot watch or play it.) The problem is that too many people want to use these kinds of ratings as a replacement for responsible parenting. Parents who take an interest in their kids lives have more than enough opportunity to direct their kid's viewing and game playing habits.
Oh, and I am not a vegetarian. If meat is murder, then murder makes good cookin'.
Don't be silly. Since the Human Body is composed of DNA, all you really have to do is make modifications to the source code and then do a ./configure, make, make install - SHAZAM! The new DNA would then be transmitted to each cell to upgrade you to the latest version.
Wow! just think of this! if we could make a DNA strand like the Linux Kernel, just think how resistant we would be to Virii!
Me very bad man. Did not preview my comment and so I misspeled the word "responsible". And yes... I do know about the spelling error in this post also.
Maybe they are terming it as a "Grass Roots Effort" Because you would have to be smoking that grass in order to assume that Microsoft is respomisible for innovation.
On a more serious note: Perhaps it is "Grass Roots" because the effort is being led by Microsoft employees and not directly by the corporation's management?
I think that my respect for Microsoft would triple if they would just drop the "Freedom to Innovate" charade and start up a "Freedom to Capitalize" movement.
Absolutely correct. Since I found out about slashdot 2 and a half years ago, my web surfing has been reduced greatly as slashdot presents the vast majority of the kinds of news that I would have otherwise been searching for on my own.
You are absolutely right on this account. Perhaps "plugs a major gaping hole in GNU software..." would have been better way to put it. I personally use the Linux kernal myself, but if it can compile on one of the BSDs, then certainly it runs on more than just Linux.
I think that the reason why you see this Linux bias so often on Slashdot is pretty obvious and is actually understandable. GnuCash is, of course, GNU software and is governed by the GPL. Linux is also governed by the GPL. NetBSD is not, it is the BSD license. GNU is intended to be a *NIX replacement operating system/environment. Because of this, when a new piece of software or software version is released as part of the GNU project, it is going to be associated with a GNU operating system kernal (either Linux or HURD.)
I think you are going to have to get used to it... it's a Stallman thing.
If you have ghostscript installed on your computer, you probably already have this (most, if not all), linux distributions have this (okay, maybe not the "micro-distributions") by default to allow postscript files to be filtered to your printer port for output. Try typing "ps2pdf" at the command line and see if you get anything. Also, you can try www.ps2pdf.com, an online engine that lets you upload the ps file and then download the pdf file. Ghostscript is also available for Windows, and you will have to search the installed subdirectories to find the "ps2pdf.bat" batch file that will do this same thing.
I like to think of the "old west" in America as kind of a metaphor to what is happening with the internet in the past, present and future.
At first the internet was only available to the researchers and the educational facilities that were instrumental to the building of the protocols and basic infrastructure - they were the natives.
As home computers became more and more affordable, and ISPs became widely available, these new users began the migration to the internet - from places like AOL, CompuServ, Prodigy, etc. These were the settlers... people who often found themselves in huge "flame wars" with the aboriginal internet community.
Right now, we are in the "California Gold Rush" stage of the internet... everyone and every business is eyeing the internet as the great cash cow of the 21st Century.
What this article is pointing to is a opening up of the internet to broadband access, much like the first highways - often marked with toll roads and bridges. If you can't pay to take the shortcut to get the information you are looking for, you are going to have to go around.
I think we're going to see a major corporatization of the internet, with major ISPs creating VPNs that will only allow their customers access to their own resources. And the AOL mentality of the masses is going to prefer this to today's free-for-all.
Of course, I'm no psychic. Call Dionne Warwick for that. With any luck, I'm totally wrong.
The good news is this:
Mettalica is part of the old world of popular music, in which teenage kids worship rock stars because they are marketed to them as being larger than life. Though Mettalica continues to exist, they will see their emphasis on the minds of the masses wane as MP3 (or the next generation of multimedia compressed file format) turns the traditional recording industry on it's ear.
The beauty of MP3 is not that it allows people to bootleg and distribute copyrighted material. The beauty is MP3 is now making music available that would otherwise never be heard. Real musical art has found it's greatest medium... the internet.
So quit downloading those illegal Brittney Spears M3s. Forget bootlegging Mettalica's precious recordings. Those artists were created for mass consumption. Find those MP3s created by all those garage bands around the world. Sure. Some of it may suck, but there is some good music out there... and it's free.