> However, in terms of the OLPC goal, they should of gotten on their knees and begged for Windows XP.
No, that is a loser. Enslaving another generation to Redmond's crappy insecure products isn't doing anyone a favor. But anyone with a room temp IQ could have told ya Sugar was a sure loser.
1. It LOOKED like something Fisher Price (or perhaps VTech) would sell. Now FP does know a thing or two about building products for children so that isn't totally meant as an insult. But it made it damned hard to pitch the thing as a 'real' laptop.
2. It is only now approaching a stable state. Long after it's window of opportunity (at least in the OLPC project) is closed. The lesson here is that building a laptop 'from scratch' is a lot simpler than building an entire new user inteface and applications suite from scratch.
Then there were the additional mistakes of OLPC:
1. As others have noted, pitching a "$100 laptop' and then failing to deliver anywhere in the ballpark is an instant credibility killer.
2. Failing to understand that cutting both Intel and Microsoft out was going to make it all but impossible to sell to corrupt third world governments. It doesn't mean you can't do it but you damned well better have a real plan for dealing with that reality. If OLPC had any such plan it was to wave the Penguin banner to force Microsoft to give cut rate pricing. But it isn't even clear they were even thinking that much.
> God damn you catholics/jews/hindus/protestants/daoists/etc are full of crap.
I note the omission of the one religion that would actually kill you for criticizing it. Come on nancy boy, man up and back the lofty words up. I'll even go first.
FUCK ALLAH AND HIS PEDOPHILE PROPHET SQUARELY IN THE EYEHOLES.
The day saying that is a crime is the day I grab my sporting goods and 'recall' every faithless Congresscritter who voted on the bill.
There, now I'm on pretty much everybody's list. Now come on ya pansies and join me. Too many of 'yall talk a good 1st Amendment defense but can't be bothered to actually defend it if it might have any actual risk involved.
> If you give the Bible-thumping idiots an inch, they will take the field.
What a fool. Do you really think these laws will EVER be enforced against those who insult any religion other than Islam? But you just go on ranting about bible thumpers (suprised you didn't use the more insulting 'bible humpers') just trying to start the inquisitions up again. Just remember that when the real enemy of modern civilization eventually gets it way they don't just talk. They execute all who they disapprove of. Athiests DEAD. Homosexuals DEAD. New age gaia and wiccans, DEAD. Women who refuse to wear a burka, DEAD. And so on.
> Placing complex issues into such (non)absolute terms is what I might consider crazy.
Ok, I'll bite. The problem is you consider them 'complex issues'.
> Just because someone does something you disagree with doesn't make them evil.
Ok, let this narrow minded idiot throw out some politicians, ideas, etc. that I call evil and see how far we can both agree and where you start seeing 'complexity.'
1. Nazism, Fascism and Communism are all Evil. Right?
2. The Klan, racism and other mindless intolerance is Evil. Right?
3. Any ideology that can support putting bombs on children and exploding them amongst civilians is Evil.
Now we will probably start to diverge.
4. The people who champion the above Evil causes are themselves Evil.
5. Stalin was Evil. Lenin was Evil. Hitler was Evil. Mao was evil. Arafat was Evil. Che was Evil. Castro is Evil. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Evil. Hugo Chavez is Evil. Kim Jung Il is Evil. UBL is Evil.
6. Anyone who makes excuses for any of the above evil is either criminally stupid or themselves Evil. Anyone who knows what any of those people stand for and lends them material or moral support is Evil.
7. Thus every celebutard with enough brain cells to actually know what is what who goes to Cuba to stand with Castro is Evil.
8. Every celebutard who stands with Chavez is Evil.
9. William Ayers is, by both word and deed, a Communist (although he seems to think being a 'small c communist' makes it better) Revolutionary dedicated to the overthrow of our Republic. He has attended events with Chavez and spoken well of him. Thus by Rule 1 and 6 William Ayers is Evil.
10. Saul Alinsky was a Communist. Mr. Obama's 'Community Organizing' (more honest to say "Communist agitator") was working in the field for an Alinsky group and later as a trainer.
11. Rev. wright is at best a Socialist and probably a Communist. At any rate he associates and lends aid and comfort to them. He is also a bigot. So Rules 1, 2 and 6 condemn him as Evil.
12. President Obama has extensive ties to Alinsky's organizations, worked at high levels in Ayers biggest cash grab (the Annenburg Challenge Grant) and launched his political career in Ayers' home. He warmed a pew in Wright's church for over twenty years. So he has associated with and lent Communists aid for the entirety of his adult life.
It may come, but it will come over my cold dead body.
>..every voter must have its own private key... [lots of useless tech details clipped]
The problem is with the tech. You, me and at least 10% of the nerds here on Slashdot could design an evoting system that would be technically perfect. And still spell the final death of our Republic because of the non-technical flaws that can't be fixed with tech.
Problem one. Take away the secret ballot (i.e. the voting booth) and it is 100% certain that vote buying, voter intimidation and many other evils will follow. No ballot cast over the Internet can be proven to be secret. Note that this defect exists with absentee and general mail in balloting as well. Mailed in absentee ballots generally don't decide elections and can be accepted as a compromise. General mail in elections are inherently corrupt.
Problem two. You will never design an electronic system that is 100% proof against fraud. It is doubtful one can be designed as resistant to fraud as paper ballot counted in the open with observers from all camps present.
> Voting could then be extended to government actions that currently skip the peoples' opinion.
You are describing Democracy. And the Founders were aware of this system of government and rightly rejected it as proven by history to be madness. We were instead given a Constitutional Republic. I have seen nothing to indicate the current government educated masses possess such an advanced level of civic virtue as to justify a reevaluation of their verdict on the subject.
> This was different from what one normally thinks of as a junta.
True enough. But it must be a 'coup' or 'junta' to justify what the US and the rest of the axis of evil is going to end up doing there. Which is use political, economic and if all else fails military power to abolish a lawful government and put a tyrant on an iron throne.
Yes I went there. The US government is now part of the Axis of Evil. It supports Castro, Chavez, Ortega, Iamanutjob, Hamas, Crazy Kim and every other member of the Axis of Evil. We oppose oppose every friend of Liberty. No the American People don't support the insanity but then the people in most of the rest of the Axis powers don't either. The big question is whether we will get one more shot a real election to fix this mess or whether the 08 elections were our One Man, One Vote, One last Time.
Before you Obot twits mindlessly mark me flamebait or troll why not try rebutting my assertion? If I'm as crazy as you think you shouldn't have a problem showing some cases where the current administration has opposed evil or supported good.
> Hey, if there's THAT much blubber to cut from the US private healthcare industry, then clearly, > that's a massive misallocation of resources that needs to be put to better use, like investing in education.
You misunderstand. What I'm talking about is the headwind small business is heading into. Break it down. You run a small business, here is your future. Your major source of financing just went out, payroll taxes are about to go up a minimum of 8% (play or pay provision in the health 'reform' bill) on your entry level employees... on top of the recent bump in the minimum wage and the prospect they will soon unionize. Another major hit will be coming to your bottom line when all energy sources jump. And if you manage to keep your door open your income is about to taxed at over 50% when you take this new 5+% surtax into account. And more tax increases are coming, including the return of the dreaded death tax. Meanwhile consumers (your customers) are also losing jobs, pulling back spending and generally hunkering down for a long downturn. So how many new employees will you be hiring in that environment? That is why I'm predicting unemployment will keep going up.
For unemployment to start dropping somebody has to start hiring beyond replacement. Large business is shedding workers, small business is currently in a holding pattern and will probably start dropping people. The only sector adding jobs is government and every government job is a net drain on the economy. Hate on business all you want pal, but good luck asking a homeless guy to hire you.
As for education, we can waste twice what we currently spend and gain nothing. Break the union and we can get improvement with current or even lower funding. Break the entire system of government schools and we can be #1 again.
> The Obama administration are wise enough to allow them to be destroyed by the > remorseless logic of the free market when they are too weak to survive.
Being of the Libertarian bent I have to like the idea of failure being reintroduced to the market. But I'm also a bit queasy when the current anti-market administration bails out it's friends (look at his economic team) on Wall Street and then allows CIT to fail. The question I instantly asked myself was Why? And why was it's failure so under reported?
Like probably everyone else here I didn't know anything about CIT till I was channel surfing last nite and heard a nasty little factoid. Yes it was the hyperactive Glenn Beck but once I had the idea it didn't take long to confirm it in the more reputable WSJ:
"The company is a source of funding for thousands of small and midsize businesses. It's also a big player providing cash advances to clothing manufacturers and suppliers, and credit to retailers to pay off invoices. The impact could be especially acute in California because of the state's large apparel-import business."
So mega industries and financial titans (who caused the economic mess along with Congress) get bailed out and the major financier to small business, where most new jobs come from, goes out. Folks, don't expect the recession to be ending any time soon. And I'd be shocked if unemployment doesn't hit 15% nationwide. 20% if we pass cap and trade and nationalize the medical industry.
> People grouping together, however arbitrarily, is a very basic part of human nature.
Yes, it is all too human. During all too brief periods we get a few people who can rise above that sort of thing and inspire the rest to follow them.... for a while... then we fall back.
The Founders did it with ideas like "All Men are created Equal..." Of course, being such a shocking new idea it was only imperfectly implemented.
So a few generations later we had the abolitionist movement, culminating in a war. But though it did great violence against the ideas of the Republic the earlier generation had built, it did achieve it's goal; on paper. Unfortunately Democrats were there to pervert it. (Remember, Democrats were as active in undermining their country during war then as they have been now. Bush isn't the first Republican POTUS to inspire blind hatred and fury amongst Democrats. And remember every politician doing the 'Jim Crow' laws, turning firehoses on protestors, proclaiming "Segregation Today, Segregation Forever", fillibustering the Civil Rights Act, etc. was a lifelong member of the Democratic Party. Ex Grand Kleagle of the KKK Robert C Byrd (D-WV) is the grand old porkbarrelling poobah of the Senate right now.)
Finally we had the Civil Rights Movement and MLK calling for everyone to be judged by their character and ideas, not skin color and other superficial stuff. He wasn't in the dirt five minutes before his words were forgotten and we were right back to the group identity politics. Today only radical right wingers like Newt Gingrich quote MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech and get called intolerant bigots for their trouble.
It has been obvious that Sun was a zombie since the dot com bubble burst. That their corpse was going to be bought by someone was equally obvious. So of the available suitors was Oracle the best the Sun shareholders could hope for? Probably. Which explains they vote.
> The judge should not be changing rules mid stream.
You got it in one.:)
Judges don't make laws or decide which ones to use. That is what We The People elect a legislature for. They make the laws constrained by the limits spelled out in a Constitution. The Constitution (State or Federal) isn't sacrosanct, but it is designed to be hard enough to change that it provides some protection against poorly thought through changes made in response to momentary passions.
So if enough folks can be convinced that trial by jury creates more problems than it solves just go in and strike those parts of the 6th and 7th Amendments. I won't be joining that movement any more than I join the perennial calls to abolish the Electoral College. I understand why those things are important, in spite of their downsides.
> jury nullification is something we inherited from English common law, and was never really codified
Well yes and no. It is sorta implicit. Combine "no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined" with jurors being immune to retribution by the courts for their verdicts (barring jury tampering, etc) and jury nullification kinda falls out as a consequence. If the jury decides you are guilty according to the law but that law is stupid they are free to return not guilty. It is then pretty much impossible to try the perp a second time (unless it is a civil rights case... then the feds can have a second try. grr.) and the jury is in no fear of consequences for their actions even when they do something really infamous like set OJ free.
This judge obviously fears exactly such a thing so is attempting to bypass the jury. The correct response is impeachment. Anything less sends a signal to other judges that this sort of thing is acceptable, even if some higher judge rules she can't do it in this particular case. Violating the right to a trial by jury is something no judge should be allowed to even contemplate.
> This is just another example of Judges emasculating juries, dis-empowering them.
Exactly. Judges these days want to rule. They don't want to be constrained by having to bother with juries, legislatures, laws, constitutions, and certainly not the executive. This case is a poster child for judicial activism.
So the 6th and 7th Amendments go into the toilet now... to join the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th, big parts of the 4th and 5th and the 8th. But we still have the 3rd Amendment inviolate!
Folks, when do we say ENOUGH! These idiots only get away with this foolishness because we just bitch and moan and don't make them pay a political price.
Barely any sites use Silverlight, period. Pretty much the only ones doing at are being paid to do so, thus it is fairly safe to say they will all be showcasing the very most recent features.
> Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux:
There is one more. A major PR campaign to induce Microsoft to cooperate with more early information. They need Silverlight to be thought of as cross platform a lot more than we currently need them. This should be leveraged; Especially if the other choice is to always be stuck with a version that isn't very useful. Witness the results of the RMS open letter on the Mono issue.
There is also a downside to option c you might not be thinking of. An always broken Moonlight offers the worst of all options. They can use it's existence to blow cross platform sunshine up the wazoos of pointy haired bosses who don't know better and still get the lock in of forcing people who want to access the actual content to buy a Windows license.
> But Silverlight is a large project, and we are a small team compared to the task at hand,
Yes, we have seen this scenario many times and if you expect to do the same things over and over and expect a different result........ Lets review:
1) Linux & *BSD reimplemented POSIX. Success. POSIX is an open spec that changes slowly.
2) DOSEMU. Achieved 1.0 then vanished. More an emulation of the x86 PC than DOS, but as it only really ran DOS. DOS was dead when they started. By the time they finished nobody cared. RedHat packaged dosemu-1.0 for exactly one release before dropping the package.
3) FREEDOS cloned DOS. Finally achieved 1.0, a few in the embedded space cared as it was the only option left. Another long stern chase that finally managed to catch a dead product after most people forgot it existed.
4) WINE is trying to implement WIN{16|32|64} on Linux/UNIX. After fifteen years they can run a fair number of five year old applications, usually with 'minor' issues. Some more recent games run, especially with the commercial fork. IE 6 still isn't fully supported.
5) ReactOS is trying to clone Windows. No practical use is known for this project after a decade of effort.
The only way I see to get the large volume of developers you acknowledge you will need to be able to keep up is to demonstrate a reasonable chance of having a useful product in a reasonable timeframe. If you can't start on the current version until flagship websites are already deployed on it that isn't going to be an easy pitch to make. While a WINE that only runs Office 2003 is useful to enough people CodeWeavers can make a living from it, that doesn't work in the web space where sites don't keep an old version of their content posted. If you can't view the current release NOW, it isn't useful later.
> Moonlight will have H.264, but we are working towards our first beta of Moonlight 2.0
You do realize that this is why you have failed. The only point(?) of Moonlight is to allow Linux/Unix users to access Silverlight content. So how many sites are still using Silverlight 1.0? And you might get 2.0 out the door and be working on 3.0 before Microsoft releases 4.0. Chasing the taillights of a corporation with an unlimited development budget is a losing game. If they aren't going to give you guys an inside track (under NDA perhaps?) so that you can release within a few months of a new 'upstream' release there isn't a lot of point to the effort. Or am I missing something?
> The 64b alpha Linux Flash player from Adobe Labs crashes about every ten minutes, bringing FireFox down with it.
So what? That is why it an ALPHA. Next will be a beta and perhaps an RC or two before a production release. Which is still better than the situation with Windows where there isn't anything for 64bit. Not that it matters since our tech is so much better we can run the 32bit Flash in a 64bit Firefox cleanly. That is what I have done for the last few years.
Now what is the {silver|moon}light situation? I tried the Novell plugin on a 32bit FF on Fedora. Fail. And it it won't be compatible with Silverlight 3 for another year or two.... assuming it actually works on anything but Suse by then. So Flash works everywhere, Silverlight works on Windows. Yea, everybody should be redesigning their sites for the latest closed Microsoft tech.
> Sounds like Windows NT 3.5, wonder if it will get moved back into kernel > space for performance reasons just like NT4 moved video back into kernel space.
Not the same thing. The video hardware belongs in the kernel in exactly the same way as sound, mass storage and the keyboard/mouse do. *NIX and Windows are now alike in that and it is good.
What Windows did was bring most of the next layer up the chain into kernel space. This would be more like putting the whole X server and bits of GTK and/or Qt into the kernel, not just running it as root. Yes it improved performance some, but the security implications are horrific.
> Yeah, the submitter is clearly clueless as is timothy since he couldn't notice such a glaring error.
Well the Slashdot editors went to the Grey Side (Mac) a decade ago so what the hell would they know about X. The/. servers are still *NIX so they know and care about that side a bit.
> Which basically makes it harder for someone to get root access since they have to find another exploit to gain it.
Sure, this move is a win for security because X was big complicated and running as root, but not cause for great rejoicing as at any point in time there is usually an unpatched local root exploit or two out in the underworld. We really need to worry more about security before we start hitting the lamestream media every few weeks..
> Can someone spare me reading the article and let me know if DRI is still possible without root?
Yup, this whole thing rests on the new kernel modesetting. That was the last thing that required root to be able to directly frob bits on the video card. DRI also goes into the kernel as it should. The kernel is supposed to own all of the hardware and expose safe APIs for user apps to access it. For historical reasons video has been the exception to that rule. No longer.
> it seems like this could lead to an X-hosting renaissance of sorts, > since you wouldn't be risking the whole system just to open up a > specific user's account to remote X servers.
What a clueless statement. Somebody doesn't understand how X works. The server part that runs SUID root has never ran on the app server.
What this does do is stop a random remote app getting to root on your workstation but any local exploit of the X server gets them your user account and that can cause a lot of mischief and only needs a different local root exploit to get the rest of the way to 0wn1ng your local desktop machine.
> Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!
You do know how the votes went on Porkulus, right? Or could you be bothered to actually, ya know, know what the hell you are talking about?
Porkulus got zero Republican votes in the House and three RINOs in the Senate. Senator Arlen Specter received so much heat from his vote he finally came out of the closet and became the moderate Democrat he has always voted as. Senators Collins and Snowe are both from Maine, and aren't really Republicans in any modern meaning of the word. So yes, Party did matter.
I'm with ya as far as wishing a pox on both their houses, but it is for very different reasons. Democrats are essentially an enemy of liberty these days, period. Republicans are wishy washy, unprincipled and frightened of their shadows. However, except for the old country club Republicans and east coast RINOs, most Republicans would like to do the right thing, at least when first elected.... but they need some balls... and to avoid the temptations of Washington. That is an easier problem to fix than making Democrats not be evil.
> This is not a partisan issue, I hope you weren't trying to make it into one.
Agreed. It is a general problem.
> This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US,
Here is where we part company. It has exactly zero with campaign finance. You are upset about a symptom of the problem. The problem is the size and scope of government. A Congresscritter makes a lot more than an average slob but compare the 535 members of the legislative branch with the 500 leaders of the 'corporate branch' (CEOs of the Fortune 500) of our society and ponder. But at those levels it is about POWER as much as MONEY. Which group has more power? Now you begin to understand why a seat that pays so little is worth spending several million every two years to keep. And why the corporations will invest so much into politicians.
When the corporations very survival depends on the whims of political class it would be stupid not to invest as much time and energy into controlling that factor as they spend on any other aspect of success with so much potential to affect the bottom line. Take the example everyone here loves to hate, MSFT. Until the government took such an intense interest in their operations their Washington DC office was vestigial, now it is a major presence. Just like every other major corporation, they either want to deflect the government's gaze or get their snout into the public treasury.
And it will be ever thus until we put the government back into it's proper place. Make the government small enough that a House seat isn't worth millions and the money will go away. Nothing else will work, no law will stop clever people who have so much at stake. At least no law that leaves the 1st Amendment intact and do we really want to go there?
> Mythic would change the quest so that solution no longer worked...
Don't know anything about the game you are talking about but I can still guess what happened. They changed the solution, not when somebody came up with something clever but when someone POSTED the clever solution. That is the problem with static content that thousands of players are expected to play through. Some idiot posts a walkthrough.
In the end the current MMORPG is doomed to failure because of the current limitations in design. Currrent tech demands a limited content with every player playing and replaying that content... from walkthroughs they find on the net. In the end we need more real worlds where there are few NPCs and items/monsters don't just respawn. This means the big lair is created and controlled by a powerful high level character owned by another player. The treasure is the character's loot taken in previous battles or crafted by him/her. This will imply a lot less hack and slay and a lot more plotting, planning and maybe even actual role playing. The trick is to avoid turning it into Second Life, i.e. a big clusterfsck of furries chatting and cybersexing instead of questing. The solution is to have the game devels/GM putting problems into the world any time the factions among the paying players aren't creating enough drama so that players don't just sit around and bugger each other all day.
> You forgot the part where the crazy probable child molester pushed the > coverage of the struggle in Iran off the front pages.......
Only because they wanted a reason to stop covering Iran anyway. The administration clearly didn't want to be talking about Iran. Because it is becoming increasingly clear that they are on the other side of that issue from where the civilized world is and know it is a losing issue for them.
Think I'm being extreme by implying we are now part of the Axis of Evil? Well consider the available evidence. Our government supports the Mad Mullahs in Iran. We support Castro, Chavez and Danny Ortega in trying to put a tyrant back in Honduras. We have accepted the Nork's Nuke ambitions as a fait accompli[1] and have all but admitted we can't/won't stop Iran from getting the Bomb. And on today's topic we still deal with Russia as if they were still the Soviet Union... as if they still mattered; when in reality petty Evil is about all they are good for these days. The Russians are going to reduce their nuke stockpiles anyway, they can't afford to maintain their old stockpiles, have few resources to devote to designing new ones, etc.
It is clear the average Iranian no longer wants to be a part of the Axis of Evil, I'd bet good money the average Nork wishes Kim would frickin' die and they could reunify with the South and get a square meal once in awhile. Cubans vote with their boats even though many die trying to escape. The Hondurans are pretty much unified in their desire to keep their Republic but will almost certainly end up being invaded while we either stand silent or actually help oppress them. So now we join the list of Axis members whose people don't approve of the evil being done in their name but are apparently powerless to change their regime.
> If the definition of a "pointless" language/framework is that it's applications can be ported > to C++, then Java, Perl, Python etc are pointless too.
True enough. What would settle the question is if someone wrote an automated tool to machine translate C# to C++. With a tool to make native binaries from any C# source it might then be safe to say C# was pointless... except then the question would be which one was easier to write and maintain. If the C# were easier AND could be efficiently translated via C++ into a native executable it still wouldn't be pointless. The CLR would then be pointless.
And of course even if the C# to C++ translator never happens you can bet somebody will do a C# to Parrot implementation.
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> However, in terms of the OLPC goal, they should of gotten on their knees and begged for Windows XP.
No, that is a loser. Enslaving another generation to Redmond's crappy insecure products isn't doing anyone a favor. But anyone with a room temp IQ could have told ya Sugar was a sure loser.
1. It LOOKED like something Fisher Price (or perhaps VTech) would sell. Now FP does know a thing or two about building products for children so that isn't totally meant as an insult. But it made it damned hard to pitch the thing as a 'real' laptop.
2. It is only now approaching a stable state. Long after it's window of opportunity (at least in the OLPC project) is closed. The lesson here is that building a laptop 'from scratch' is a lot simpler than building an entire new user inteface and applications suite from scratch.
Then there were the additional mistakes of OLPC:
1. As others have noted, pitching a "$100 laptop' and then failing to deliver anywhere in the ballpark is an instant credibility killer.
2. Failing to understand that cutting both Intel and Microsoft out was going to make it all but impossible to sell to corrupt third world governments. It doesn't mean you can't do it but you damned well better have a real plan for dealing with that reality. If OLPC had any such plan it was to wave the Penguin banner to force Microsoft to give cut rate pricing. But it isn't even clear they were even thinking that much.
> God damn you catholics/jews/hindus/protestants/daoists/etc are full of crap.
I note the omission of the one religion that would actually kill you for criticizing it. Come on nancy boy, man up and back the lofty words up. I'll even go first.
FUCK ALLAH AND HIS PEDOPHILE PROPHET SQUARELY IN THE EYEHOLES.
The day saying that is a crime is the day I grab my sporting goods and 'recall' every faithless Congresscritter who voted on the bill.
There, now I'm on pretty much everybody's list. Now come on ya pansies and join me. Too many of 'yall talk a good 1st Amendment defense but can't be bothered to actually defend it if it might have any actual risk involved.
> If you give the Bible-thumping idiots an inch, they will take the field.
What a fool. Do you really think these laws will EVER be enforced against those who insult any religion other than Islam? But you just go on ranting about bible thumpers (suprised you didn't use the more insulting 'bible humpers') just trying to start the inquisitions up again. Just remember that when the real enemy of modern civilization eventually gets it way they don't just talk. They execute all who they disapprove of. Athiests DEAD. Homosexuals DEAD. New age gaia and wiccans, DEAD. Women who refuse to wear a burka, DEAD. And so on.
> Placing complex issues into such (non)absolute terms is what I might consider crazy.
Ok, I'll bite. The problem is you consider them 'complex issues'.
> Just because someone does something you disagree with doesn't make them evil.
Ok, let this narrow minded idiot throw out some politicians, ideas, etc. that I call evil and see how far we can both agree and where you start seeing 'complexity.'
1. Nazism, Fascism and Communism are all Evil. Right?
2. The Klan, racism and other mindless intolerance is Evil. Right?
3. Any ideology that can support putting bombs on children and exploding them amongst civilians is Evil.
Now we will probably start to diverge.
4. The people who champion the above Evil causes are themselves Evil.
5. Stalin was Evil. Lenin was Evil. Hitler was Evil. Mao was evil. Arafat was Evil. Che was Evil. Castro is Evil. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Evil. Hugo Chavez is Evil. Kim Jung Il is Evil. UBL is Evil.
6. Anyone who makes excuses for any of the above evil is either criminally stupid or themselves Evil. Anyone who knows what any of those people stand for and lends them material or moral support is Evil.
7. Thus every celebutard with enough brain cells to actually know what is what who goes to Cuba to stand with Castro is Evil.
8. Every celebutard who stands with Chavez is Evil.
9. William Ayers is, by both word and deed, a Communist (although he seems to think being a 'small c communist' makes it better) Revolutionary dedicated to the overthrow of our Republic. He has attended events with Chavez and spoken well of him. Thus by Rule 1 and 6 William Ayers is Evil.
10. Saul Alinsky was a Communist. Mr. Obama's 'Community Organizing' (more honest to say "Communist agitator") was working in the field for an Alinsky group and later as a trainer.
11. Rev. wright is at best a Socialist and probably a Communist. At any rate he associates and lends aid and comfort to them. He is also a bigot. So Rules 1, 2 and 6 condemn him as Evil.
12. President Obama has extensive ties to Alinsky's organizations, worked at high levels in Ayers biggest cash grab (the Annenburg Challenge Grant) and launched his political career in Ayers' home. He warmed a pew in Wright's church for over twenty years. So he has associated with and lent Communists aid for the entirety of his adult life.
> eVoting CAN and WILL happen.
It may come, but it will come over my cold dead body.
> ..every voter must have its own private key... [lots of useless tech details clipped]
The problem is with the tech. You, me and at least 10% of the nerds here on Slashdot could design an evoting system that would be technically perfect. And still spell the final death of our Republic because of the non-technical flaws that can't be fixed with tech.
Problem one. Take away the secret ballot (i.e. the voting booth) and it is 100% certain that vote buying, voter intimidation and many other evils will follow. No ballot cast over the Internet can be proven to be secret. Note that this defect exists with absentee and general mail in balloting as well. Mailed in absentee ballots generally don't decide elections and can be accepted as a compromise. General mail in elections are inherently corrupt.
Problem two. You will never design an electronic system that is 100% proof against fraud. It is doubtful one can be designed as resistant to fraud as paper ballot counted in the open with observers from all camps present.
> Voting could then be extended to government actions that currently skip the peoples' opinion.
You are describing Democracy. And the Founders were aware of this system of government and rightly rejected it as proven by history to be madness. We were instead given a Constitutional Republic. I have seen nothing to indicate the current government educated masses possess such an advanced level of civic virtue as to justify a reevaluation of their verdict on the subject.
> This was different from what one normally thinks of as a junta.
True enough. But it must be a 'coup' or 'junta' to justify what the US and the rest of the axis of evil is going to end up doing there. Which is use political, economic and if all else fails military power to abolish a lawful government and put a tyrant on an iron throne.
Yes I went there. The US government is now part of the Axis of Evil. It supports Castro, Chavez, Ortega, Iamanutjob, Hamas, Crazy Kim and every other member of the Axis of Evil. We oppose oppose every friend of Liberty. No the American People don't support the insanity but then the people in most of the rest of the Axis powers don't either. The big question is whether we will get one more shot a real election to fix this mess or whether the 08 elections were our One Man, One Vote, One last Time.
Before you Obot twits mindlessly mark me flamebait or troll why not try rebutting my assertion? If I'm as crazy as you think you shouldn't have a problem showing some cases where the current administration has opposed evil or supported good.
> Hey, if there's THAT much blubber to cut from the US private healthcare industry, then clearly,
> that's a massive misallocation of resources that needs to be put to better use, like investing in education.
You misunderstand. What I'm talking about is the headwind small business is heading into. Break it down. You run a small business, here is your future. Your major source of financing just went out, payroll taxes are about to go up a minimum of 8% (play or pay provision in the health 'reform' bill) on your entry level employees... on top of the recent bump in the minimum wage and the prospect they will soon unionize. Another major hit will be coming to your bottom line when all energy sources jump. And if you manage to keep your door open your income is about to taxed at over 50% when you take this new 5+% surtax into account. And more tax increases are coming, including the return of the dreaded death tax. Meanwhile consumers (your customers) are also losing jobs, pulling back spending and generally hunkering down for a long downturn. So how many new employees will you be hiring in that environment? That is why I'm predicting unemployment will keep going up.
For unemployment to start dropping somebody has to start hiring beyond replacement. Large business is shedding workers, small business is currently in a holding pattern and will probably start dropping people. The only sector adding jobs is government and every government job is a net drain on the economy. Hate on business all you want pal, but good luck asking a homeless guy to hire you.
As for education, we can waste twice what we currently spend and gain nothing. Break the union and we can get improvement with current or even lower funding. Break the entire system of government schools and we can be #1 again.
> The Obama administration are wise enough to allow them to be destroyed by the
> remorseless logic of the free market when they are too weak to survive.
Being of the Libertarian bent I have to like the idea of failure being reintroduced to the market. But I'm also a bit queasy when the current anti-market administration bails out it's friends (look at his economic team) on Wall Street and then allows CIT to fail. The question I instantly asked myself was Why? And why was it's failure so under reported?
Like probably everyone else here I didn't know anything about CIT till I was channel surfing last nite and heard a nasty little factoid. Yes it was the hyperactive Glenn Beck but once I had the idea it didn't take long to confirm it in the more reputable WSJ:
"The company is a source of funding for thousands of small and midsize businesses. It's also a big player providing cash advances to clothing manufacturers and suppliers, and credit to retailers to pay off invoices. The impact could be especially acute in California because of the state's large apparel-import business."
So mega industries and financial titans (who caused the economic mess along with Congress) get bailed out and the major financier to small business, where most new jobs come from, goes out. Folks, don't expect the recession to be ending any time soon. And I'd be shocked if unemployment doesn't hit 15% nationwide. 20% if we pass cap and trade and nationalize the medical industry.
> People grouping together, however arbitrarily, is a very basic part of human nature.
Yes, it is all too human. During all too brief periods we get a few people who can rise above that sort of thing and inspire the rest to follow them.... for a while... then we fall back.
The Founders did it with ideas like "All Men are created Equal..." Of course, being such a shocking new idea it was only imperfectly implemented.
So a few generations later we had the abolitionist movement, culminating in a war. But though it did great violence against the ideas of the Republic the earlier generation had built, it did achieve it's goal; on paper. Unfortunately Democrats were there to pervert it. (Remember, Democrats were as active in undermining their country during war then as they have been now. Bush isn't the first Republican POTUS to inspire blind hatred and fury amongst Democrats. And remember every politician doing the 'Jim Crow' laws, turning firehoses on protestors, proclaiming "Segregation Today, Segregation Forever", fillibustering the Civil Rights Act, etc. was a lifelong member of the Democratic Party. Ex Grand Kleagle of the KKK Robert C Byrd (D-WV) is the grand old porkbarrelling poobah of the Senate right now.)
Finally we had the Civil Rights Movement and MLK calling for everyone to be judged by their character and ideas, not skin color and other superficial stuff. He wasn't in the dirt five minutes before his words were forgotten and we were right back to the group identity politics. Today only radical right wingers like Newt Gingrich quote MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech and get called intolerant bigots for their trouble.
It has been obvious that Sun was a zombie since the dot com bubble burst. That their corpse was going to be bought by someone was equally obvious. So of the available suitors was Oracle the best the Sun shareholders could hope for? Probably. Which explains they vote.
> The judge should not be changing rules mid stream.
You got it in one. :)
Judges don't make laws or decide which ones to use. That is what We The People elect a legislature for. They make the laws constrained by the limits spelled out in a Constitution. The Constitution (State or Federal) isn't sacrosanct, but it is designed to be hard enough to change that it provides some protection against poorly thought through changes made in response to momentary passions.
So if enough folks can be convinced that trial by jury creates more problems than it solves just go in and strike those parts of the 6th and 7th Amendments. I won't be joining that movement any more than I join the perennial calls to abolish the Electoral College. I understand why those things are important, in spite of their downsides.
> jury nullification is something we inherited from English common law, and was never really codified
Well yes and no. It is sorta implicit. Combine "no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined" with jurors being immune to retribution by the courts for their verdicts (barring jury tampering, etc) and jury nullification kinda falls out as a consequence. If the jury decides you are guilty according to the law but that law is stupid they are free to return not guilty. It is then pretty much impossible to try the perp a second time (unless it is a civil rights case... then the feds can have a second try. grr.) and the jury is in no fear of consequences for their actions even when they do something really infamous like set OJ free.
This judge obviously fears exactly such a thing so is attempting to bypass the jury. The correct response is impeachment. Anything less sends a signal to other judges that this sort of thing is acceptable, even if some higher judge rules she can't do it in this particular case. Violating the right to a trial by jury is something no judge should be allowed to even contemplate.
> This is just another example of Judges emasculating juries, dis-empowering them.
Exactly. Judges these days want to rule. They don't want to be constrained by having to bother with juries, legislatures, laws, constitutions, and certainly not the executive. This case is a poster child for judicial activism.
So the 6th and 7th Amendments go into the toilet now... to join the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th, big parts of the 4th and 5th and the 8th. But we still have the 3rd Amendment inviolate!
Folks, when do we say ENOUGH! These idiots only get away with this foolishness because we just bitch and moan and don't make them pay a political price.
> barely any sites used Silverlight 1.0.
Barely any sites use Silverlight, period. Pretty much the only ones doing at are being paid to do so, thus it is fairly safe to say they will all be showcasing the very most recent features.
> Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux:
There is one more. A major PR campaign to induce Microsoft to cooperate with more early information. They need Silverlight to be thought of as cross platform a lot more than we currently need them. This should be leveraged; Especially if the other choice is to always be stuck with a version that isn't very useful. Witness the results of the RMS open letter on the Mono issue.
There is also a downside to option c you might not be thinking of. An always broken Moonlight offers the worst of all options. They can use it's existence to blow cross platform sunshine up the wazoos of pointy haired bosses who don't know better and still get the lock in of forcing people who want to access the actual content to buy a Windows license.
> But Silverlight is a large project, and we are a small team compared to the task at hand,
Yes, we have seen this scenario many times and if you expect to do the same things over and over and expect a different result........ Lets review:
1) Linux & *BSD reimplemented POSIX. Success. POSIX is an open spec that changes slowly.
2) DOSEMU. Achieved 1.0 then vanished. More an emulation of the x86 PC than DOS, but as it only really ran DOS. DOS was dead when they started. By the time they finished nobody cared. RedHat packaged dosemu-1.0 for exactly one release before dropping the package.
3) FREEDOS cloned DOS. Finally achieved 1.0, a few in the embedded space cared as it was the only option left. Another long stern chase that finally managed to catch a dead product after most people forgot it existed.
4) WINE is trying to implement WIN{16|32|64} on Linux/UNIX. After fifteen years they can run a fair number of five year old applications, usually with 'minor' issues. Some more recent games run, especially with the commercial fork. IE 6 still isn't fully supported.
5) ReactOS is trying to clone Windows. No practical use is known for this project after a decade of effort.
The only way I see to get the large volume of developers you acknowledge you will need to be able to keep up is to demonstrate a reasonable chance of having a useful product in a reasonable timeframe. If you can't start on the current version until flagship websites are already deployed on it that isn't going to be an easy pitch to make. While a WINE that only runs Office 2003 is useful to enough people CodeWeavers can make a living from it, that doesn't work in the web space where sites don't keep an old version of their content posted. If you can't view the current release NOW, it isn't useful later.
> Moonlight will have H.264, but we are working towards our first beta of Moonlight 2.0
You do realize that this is why you have failed. The only point(?) of Moonlight is to allow Linux/Unix users to access Silverlight content. So how many sites are still using Silverlight 1.0? And you might get 2.0 out the door and be working on 3.0 before Microsoft releases 4.0. Chasing the taillights of a corporation with an unlimited development budget is a losing game. If they aren't going to give you guys an inside track (under NDA perhaps?) so that you can release within a few months of a new 'upstream' release there isn't a lot of point to the effort. Or am I missing something?
> The 64b alpha Linux Flash player from Adobe Labs crashes about every ten minutes, bringing FireFox down with it.
So what? That is why it an ALPHA. Next will be a beta and perhaps an RC or two before a production release. Which is still better than the situation with Windows where there isn't anything for 64bit. Not that it matters since our tech is so much better we can run the 32bit Flash in a 64bit Firefox cleanly. That is what I have done for the last few years.
Now what is the {silver|moon}light situation? I tried the Novell plugin on a 32bit FF on Fedora. Fail. And it it won't be compatible with Silverlight 3 for another year or two.... assuming it actually works on anything but Suse by then. So Flash works everywhere, Silverlight works on Windows. Yea, everybody should be redesigning their sites for the latest closed Microsoft tech.
> Sounds like Windows NT 3.5, wonder if it will get moved back into kernel
> space for performance reasons just like NT4 moved video back into kernel space.
Not the same thing. The video hardware belongs in the kernel in exactly the same way as sound, mass storage and the keyboard/mouse do. *NIX and Windows are now alike in that and it is good.
What Windows did was bring most of the next layer up the chain into kernel space. This would be more like putting the whole X server and bits of GTK and/or Qt into the kernel, not just running it as root. Yes it improved performance some, but the security implications are horrific.
> Yeah, the submitter is clearly clueless as is timothy since he couldn't notice such a glaring error.
Well the Slashdot editors went to the Grey Side (Mac) a decade ago so what the hell would they know about X. The /. servers are still *NIX so they know and care about that side a bit.
> Which basically makes it harder for someone to get root access since they have to find another exploit to gain it.
Sure, this move is a win for security because X was big complicated and running as root, but not cause for great rejoicing as at any point in time there is usually an unpatched local root exploit or two out in the underworld. We really need to worry more about security before we start hitting the lamestream media every few weeks..
> Can someone spare me reading the article and let me know if DRI is still possible without root?
Yup, this whole thing rests on the new kernel modesetting. That was the last thing that required root to be able to directly frob bits on the video card. DRI also goes into the kernel as it should. The kernel is supposed to own all of the hardware and expose safe APIs for user apps to access it. For historical reasons video has been the exception to that rule. No longer.
> it seems like this could lead to an X-hosting renaissance of sorts,
> since you wouldn't be risking the whole system just to open up a
> specific user's account to remote X servers.
What a clueless statement. Somebody doesn't understand how X works. The server part that runs SUID root has never ran on the app server.
What this does do is stop a random remote app getting to root on your workstation but any local exploit of the X server gets them your user account and that can cause a lot of mischief and only needs a different local root exploit to get the rest of the way to 0wn1ng your local desktop machine.
So which is it?
> Party doesn't matter,
and
> Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!
You do know how the votes went on Porkulus, right? Or could you be bothered to actually, ya know, know what the hell you are talking about?
Porkulus got zero Republican votes in the House and three RINOs in the Senate. Senator Arlen Specter received so much heat from his vote he finally came out of the closet and became the moderate Democrat he has always voted as. Senators Collins and Snowe are both from Maine, and aren't really Republicans in any modern meaning of the word. So yes, Party did matter.
I'm with ya as far as wishing a pox on both their houses, but it is for very different reasons. Democrats are essentially an enemy of liberty these days, period. Republicans are wishy washy, unprincipled and frightened of their shadows. However, except for the old country club Republicans and east coast RINOs, most Republicans would like to do the right thing, at least when first elected.... but they need some balls... and to avoid the temptations of Washington. That is an easier problem to fix than making Democrats not be evil.
> This is not a partisan issue, I hope you weren't trying to make it into one.
Agreed. It is a general problem.
> This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US,
Here is where we part company. It has exactly zero with campaign finance. You are upset about a symptom of the problem. The problem is the size and scope of government. A Congresscritter makes a lot more than an average slob but compare the 535 members of the legislative branch with the 500 leaders of the 'corporate branch' (CEOs of the Fortune 500) of our society and ponder. But at those levels it is about POWER as much as MONEY. Which group has more power? Now you begin to understand why a seat that pays so little is worth spending several million every two years to keep. And why the corporations will invest so much into politicians.
When the corporations very survival depends on the whims of political class it would be stupid not to invest as much time and energy into controlling that factor as they spend on any other aspect of success with so much potential to affect the bottom line. Take the example everyone here loves to hate, MSFT. Until the government took such an intense interest in their operations their Washington DC office was vestigial, now it is a major presence. Just like every other major corporation, they either want to deflect the government's gaze or get their snout into the public treasury.
And it will be ever thus until we put the government back into it's proper place. Make the government small enough that a House seat isn't worth millions and the money will go away. Nothing else will work, no law will stop clever people who have so much at stake. At least no law that leaves the 1st Amendment intact and do we really want to go there?
> Mythic would change the quest so that solution no longer worked...
Don't know anything about the game you are talking about but I can still guess what happened. They changed the solution, not when somebody came up with something clever but when someone POSTED the clever solution. That is the problem with static content that thousands of players are expected to play through. Some idiot posts a walkthrough.
In the end the current MMORPG is doomed to failure because of the current limitations in design. Currrent tech demands a limited content with every player playing and replaying that content... from walkthroughs they find on the net. In the end we need more real worlds where there are few NPCs and items/monsters don't just respawn. This means the big lair is created and controlled by a powerful high level character owned by another player. The treasure is the character's loot taken in previous battles or crafted by him/her. This will imply a lot less hack and slay and a lot more plotting, planning and maybe even actual role playing. The trick is to avoid turning it into Second Life, i.e. a big clusterfsck of furries chatting and cybersexing instead of questing. The solution is to have the game devels/GM putting problems into the world any time the factions among the paying players aren't creating enough drama so that players don't just sit around and bugger each other all day.
> You forgot the part where the crazy probable child molester pushed the
> coverage of the struggle in Iran off the front pages.......
Only because they wanted a reason to stop covering Iran anyway. The administration clearly didn't want to be talking about Iran. Because it is becoming increasingly clear that they are on the other side of that issue from where the civilized world is and know it is a losing issue for them.
Think I'm being extreme by implying we are now part of the Axis of Evil? Well consider the available evidence. Our government supports the Mad Mullahs in Iran. We support Castro, Chavez and Danny Ortega in trying to put a tyrant back in Honduras. We have accepted the Nork's Nuke ambitions as a fait accompli[1] and have all but admitted we can't/won't stop Iran from getting the Bomb. And on today's topic we still deal with Russia as if they were still the Soviet Union... as if they still mattered; when in reality petty Evil is about all they are good for these days. The Russians are going to reduce their nuke stockpiles anyway, they can't afford to maintain their old stockpiles, have few resources to devote to designing new ones, etc.
It is clear the average Iranian no longer wants to be a part of the Axis of Evil, I'd bet good money the average Nork wishes Kim would frickin' die and they could reunify with the South and get a square meal once in awhile. Cubans vote with their boats even though many die trying to escape. The Hondurans are pretty much unified in their desire to keep their Republic but will almost certainly end up being invaded while we either stand silent or actually help oppress them. So now we join the list of Axis members whose people don't approve of the evil being done in their name but are apparently powerless to change their regime.
> If the definition of a "pointless" language/framework is that it's applications can be ported
> to C++, then Java, Perl, Python etc are pointless too.
True enough. What would settle the question is if someone wrote an automated tool to machine translate C# to C++. With a tool to make native binaries from any C# source it might then be safe to say C# was pointless... except then the question would be which one was easier to write and maintain. If the C# were easier AND could be efficiently translated via C++ into a native executable it still wouldn't be pointless. The CLR would then be pointless.
And of course even if the C# to C++ translator never happens you can bet somebody will do a C# to Parrot implementation.