> 5) these die-offs have been happening since people have been watching, long before there was any RF except for lightening
And then add in this paragraph in the story in TFA:
"Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives."
This tells volumes to anyone with a hint of a clue about biology. It says that whatever is happening is natural, and has happened enough for Nature to have built in defenses against whatever it is. The only time in nature you leave food untouched is when your instincts tell you it is BAD. For that to happen takes evolution a longtime to perfect, thus this crap isn't new. It tells me it is something very nasty but very old, older than H. sapiens and certainly cell phones.
But cell phone scares are all the rage these days so...... Not saying cell phones don't pose some major risks, but that has nothing to do with a media bandwagon. They start for reasons totally unrelated to science and then in the chase for funding, marginal scientists hook up to the bandwagon and make it self sustaining.
The original poster got modded troll but there is truth in it. The Democrats need the net crazies like Kos and Moveon. But they equally need the big sacks of filthy cash that they can raise from Hollywierd and drug addled rock stars. They are betting that dealing in the RIAA will bring in enough cold hard cash to offset the negative effects from some disgruntled netheads. After all, what are they going to do, vote for a Republican? They might donate less, but who cares when you have huge sacks of money and when the race gets serious does anyone really believe Kos & Co. won't be fired up and frothing at the mouth to destroy "Evil Republicans!"?
Same sort of cold calculation that makes both parties pay lots of lip service to core groups but dis em in their quest for the magical middle. Rove totally broke with that in '04 and by concentrating more on getting his base out pulled out a win, but 'everyone' realizes now that stategy is dangerous and probably won't work too many times.
So now we all go back to courting the 'middle.' And by middle it is generally understood we mean the clueless nitwits who know nothing about politics, policy, issues or any of that stuff. No, they want telegenic, charismatic people who talk in platitudes. So we on the road to getting an Empty Suit vs. a TV star.
> So when Intel decides that it's time to implement new architectures and force new methods of coding it's an awesome thing,....
Except when it ain't. Lemme see, entire new programming model..... haven't we heard this song before? Something about HP & Intel going down on the Itanic? Ok, Intel survived the experience but HP is pretty much out of the processor game and barely hanging in otherwise.
Yes it would be great if we could finally escape the legacy baggage of x86, but it ain't going to happen anytime soon. The pain isn't there yet that would convince people to migrate.
> Why not spend the money on text books or library books or classrooms or teachers? Or all four?
Well if ya are committed to pissing away $30 mil when you already have a deficit I guess what you say makes sense.
And I want to know how Apple manages to get their product specced in legilation, avoiding bidding them out. Of course Apple, being by far the most expensive vendor, would never win the contract and some no name digital player wouldn't have the buzz for the bill's backers. This stinks of corruption, we need an investigation. At least an investigation would cost less and scuttle the project at least until it finished.
[sarcasm] You Apple fans should be opposed as well. If every kid is walking around with YOUR beloved fashion accessory just how the hell does your self esteem get boosted by being better than everyone else? [/sarcasm]
> Haven't phone companies been running phone calls over digital networks for ages?
Yes they have, and in a sane world that would in itself have ended the discussion at the USPTO. Since the first telco stuff was crude circuit switched equipment a better example would be ATM, which also easily predates the patent. But apparently the USPTO and the courts are still allowing a fresh patent for doing ordinary old things by simply adding "over the Internet" to them. We seriously need a law of one single paragraph:
"No patent may be issued or upheld if the only thing unique about it is that it extending an existing practice to the Internet. This is one of the designed purposes for the Internet; using something for it's designed purpose is NOT original or difficult for one skilled in the art so knock it off you idiots. This law is intended both as an order to the USPTO and binding guidance for the Judicary."
Yea, it says that. But I don't see that piece of paper kicking the ass of politicians who wipe their asses on it. Here in the US we had the fabled 1st Amendment that also made certain promises in that regard but I didn't see it, or the enraged ghosts of the signers, kicking John McCain in the nuts when he ripped it out of our Constituition. Although on a slightly hopeful note it appears the American people (at least the Republicans) appear to be denying McCain a run at the Presidency in repayment for his sins.
In the end paper cannot protect us, only WE can protect us. The paper only represents a contract amongst us as to what we are supposed to put up with before we start shooting the bastards. If we don't uphold our end of that bargain we lose representitive government and get what we have now in most western countries, rule by an elite nobility unbound by any rule of law.
If anyone is still in doubt as to the wisdom of "Campaign Finance Reform" or "Government financing of campaigns" look well upon Japan and see the end product of your logic at it's conclusion. For certain definitions ofthe word it is "Fair" but it is not Free by any definition. There is a wider lesson here regarding the relationship between "Fair" and "Free."
> Especially since most players are used in gyms, cars, walking, etc., where ambient noise rules > and non-monitor quality headphones and/or speakers are the norm.
Agreed, in those environments quality isn't much of an issue. Now explain why I want to buy all of my music multiple times. Or am I supposed to NEVER listen to my music under better listening conditions?
If it is a ripped mp3 I really don't have any room to bitch about it sounding like crap if I try playing it on the main amp in the living room. But I'd never PAY (ok, maybe if it was really cheep, say $0.10/track) for only that low quality version. Try it some time, play a 128K-160K mp3 on a medium quality system and cringe. Unless you have blown your hearing already, guess it wouldn't matter to ya anymore then. Don't really have an easy way to try AAC at 256K but I'd bet it is still distinguishable from a CD/flac.
> There are no online stores that have been able to sell DRM-free MP3's, at least not if they are > selling music from the larger labels.
Which is exactly the only thing new here, but some asshat wanted to spin it pro Apple. If EMI is willing to A) give up DRM and B) allow non-Apple retailers in the deal why would they mandate AAC? No, when Yahoo, Walmart, etc enter the DRM Free game they will be selling whatever format(s) customers demand since they have no motive to help Apple lockup the hardware market.
Of course if EMI and the other labels only allow Apple to sell without DRM then yea, Apple wins.
> Lets bring on the rights for chimps, but with right comes responsibilities.
Exactly. It is intellectual dishonesty to speak of "Rights" for any of the lesser orders (and a non trivial number of humans these days, rant for another day) in the same way as we speak of them for us. Every Right has an equal and opposite set of Obligations, no chimp I have heard of is capable of fulfilling said obligations. At a minimum they must respect the same Rights for fellow citizens. There is a reason we keep em in zoos and other highly supervised environments when they live in human settings.
Stretched to the most extreme a chimp can have similar Rights as a small child, i.e. as a dependent of a full Citizen who assumes responsibility for the actions of a minor child and makes decisions in its name. But even that doesn't make total sense because in the case of a child it is assumed the child will eventually assume all of the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship and those rights are only being held in trust until that time.
If as a society we decide that inflicting medical experiments, etc on em is a bad thing, so be it. But lets recognize that is it is US making the decision and it has nothing whatsoever with any daft notions that semi intelligent species have "Human Rights" because it does not a damned thing for them while the intellectual dishonesty can only lead to a reduction in what the term means for us in the long run.
Besides it is obvious what the real agenda is, get chimps "Rights" and then groups like PETA will use that thin end of the wedge to extend the flawed logic behind it to all animals and then all living things. These days PETA and the US Humane Society (National, not the local unrelated groups doing good works running the local animal shelter) are nothing more than front groups for terrorist groups like ALF anyway, if we ignored and defunded em they would go away.
> The story mode for Gears of War is kinda short and not that interesting, but the multiplayer is a lot of fun.
Translation:
Hot ingame graphics are a requirement to get reviewers and teens to buy, gotta pay those guys. With the popularity of online the equally expensive cut scenes, hollywood actors doing voices and paying somebody who can actually write a half baked plot can all be cut to the bone.
Multiplayer is pretty much multiplayer, regardless of the game, because the PLAYERS are the most important thing and they are fairly constant even across widely different game genres..... and lame.
> So, to the hell with HP, and Toshiba... and Dell... fuck, we need a good Notebook/Laptop manufacturer > (with worldwide distribution of course... and not costing an arm and a leg).
Lenovo/IBM. Thinkpads don't cost that much more than lesser gear anymore. They have worldwide support, they are solid machines and I haven't had em give us any crap about installing Linux.
Especially on the ones where you can yank the hard drive before shipping em back.:) Not that I'm hiding the fact we run Linux on ours, it is good to know the HDD and the data won't be molested by some idiot wanting to make sure the unused Windows partition has the latest set of updates.
> Food is not a given for everyone in the world yet, so we shouldn't start using food as fuel.
Not a problem. There isn't any shortage of food. Think about it. Here in the US, even with the BS of the government meddling in the marketplace with subsidies, tariffs and paying other people NOT to grow stuff the US not only grows enough to make us all obese we export a lot of food. Same in most other civilized nations with the exception of a couple of very dense populations such as Japan. So why are people starving?
Lack of civilization and liberty. In North Korea they starve while across the DMZ life is good. Cuba can barely feed itself where it used to export. All it took was one asshat in Zimbabwe [sp?] (and a few million idiots to put him in power) to turn a nation from exporting food to having a few million starving kids with flies in their eyes for Sally Struthers to throw into our faces in desperate pleas for us to throw money down a rathole. Sure I'd donate money.. if it was for buying guns to overthow a despotic tyrant AND educating the people how to avoid installing yet another charismatic socialist.
And at any rate, getting a low level product like sugar is fairly easy, often with marginal crops or tailings from stuff raised for human consumption. Biofuel is pretty much the last word in green power, carbon neutral almost by definition, few exotic chemicals required, etc. Whats not to love?
> What does this have to do with corruption? It's about spying on a bunch of misfits and hooligans.
But you don't understand! If they are trying to blow up Republicans they are patriots and heros. Shame on the NYPD for aiding and abetting BusHitler.
Seriously though; read the whole article and reading through the painfully obvious bias the NYT put on it it looked like a textbook example of good police work. They didn't tap any phones or break the law, they read open sourses like webpages and they put boots on the ground at meetings open to the public to collect human intelligence. Yes they kept files on threats and non threats, who wants to have each team investigate the same harmless nuts? Then when the convention hit they knew which ones were the small hardcore fringe most likely to commit crimes and they culled em out of the herd while allowing several hundred thousand (misguided fools in my humble opinion, but I respect their right to BE fools) protesters to peacefully assemble and petition their government for redress of their idiot grievences.
Bottom line people, the right to protest DOES not include the right to anarchy, terror and violence. A million or so of the diehard socialist/progressive/green side need to learn the difference, including it appears 75% of slashdot's readership.
What makes this joke especially funny is that, despite the fervent belief of most of the crazy elements on the left, George W, Bush CAN'T sign the Kyoto Treaty even if he wanted to. So their carping for him to sign only reveals their ignorance.
Huh? What can I possibly mean? Am I trolling? Nope. Shrubbie can't sign Kyoto because there is already a signature on it for the US. President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton has already signed the Kyoto Treaty. Knowing it wouldn't have a chance in the Senate of being ratified he simply tossed it in a desk drawer after the ceremony to avoid the humiliation of seeing it voted down. You see, the Senate had already passed a non-binding resolution condemning Kyoto by a 90+ overwhelming vote.
> The world would be a better place with ReactOS. What we need is a fat ass investor with loads of cash > and a grudge against Microsoft to donate to this thing.
Nobody with that sort of cash is likely to be stupid enough to piss it away without a little thought. Just what problem is ReactOS trying to solve?
Is it running Windows executables on a Free platform? Then just toss the money upstream to the Wine developers, they are making most of the progress anyway. Wine is already running major 3D games and the closed forks adding in closed/patented bits are even farther along.
A Free platform able to run Windows device drivers? Huh? That just doesn't make sense. A platform that depends on closed drivers intended for a different (even if related) platform has no future. Especially as closed platforms are going to DRM Hell. ReactOS isn't ever going to be able to run DRM device drivers so wave goodbye to video, sound and probably mass storage.
A Windows clone that doesn't cost anything? Ask a hundred Dell owners how much Windows costs, bet 99 of em say it was "free".
And remember, Linux went from a tool to learn about interrupt driven programming to a viable OS kernel in a year or so. Drop the GNU tools and X on and bang, an operating system was born. ReactOS has been struggling for years and doesn't have a working kernel yet and Wine isn't nearly as feature complete as GNU and X were to plunk atop it.
Remember also the chasing taillights problem. DosEMU did eventually have a 1.0 release. It even made it into a RedHat distro.... but was dropped because nobody gave a damn anymore. FreeDOS had it's 1.0 release even more recently.... and except for a few people nursing old industrial automation and some embedded folk, nobody cared anymore. 8086 hardware and DOS are far simpler designs than Win32 and aren't in constant motion. ReactOS never caught up to NT before XP shipped and are again trying to leapfrog to Vista without ever getting XP emulation stable. Anyone care to wager whether they will reimplement Vista's massive API before the next version lumbers forth from the bowels of Microsoft and moves the goalposts yet again?
> It's always a lot easier to sit back, do nothing, and criticize, isn't it? Tell you what, > if you're riding a bike to work every day, then you can make fun of hybrid owners.
Nope, don't own a bike. Most days I just walk, that was one of the factors that influenced buying the house I did; being.33 miles from work means that unless the weather is crappy there isn't much of a reason to drive.
>...that Hummer owners by comparison are always so modest and unpretentious.
Oh no. But that's a rant for another day.
Forget the comparision to a Hummer. If the Pius - Hummer comparison is even in the same ballpark the total energy footprint of a Prius to any other sane vehicle in the same size class as itself isn't going to be close.
> but how are they supposed to make you feel morally superior to others?
Exactly. The primary purpose of the current generation of hybrids is to make their smug owners FEEL like they are helping the environment. And since there was apparently a pretty big untapped market selling feel good cars to pompous greens, Toyota has made a killing with the Prius. Looks like good marketing to me.
And who knows, perhaps enough will be learned by the widespread deployment of these current hybrids that future generations of them will actually BE more efficient. If so we should all be sure to thank their local hippie for donating to Big Evil Corporations R&D efforts be field testing their 1st generation products for them.. and paying a big price premium for the privledge.
What is a Microsoft sales troll supposed to do about the missing entries:
FSF True believer: If it ain't Free it isn't an option.
Disgusted Ex Microsoft customer: Experienced Microsoft products since they were in ROM chips and hasn't found one yet that wasn't a roach motel. Doesn't plan on wasting money on more of the crap until they manage to get several in a row right... i.e. never.
Political MS hater: Hates evil corporations in general, believes Microsoft more evil than Exxon-Mobil, AT&T, IBM or the MPAA. Believes Microsoft is an unrepentant monopolist hellbent on enslaving the world.
Then there is me, a little bit of all three.:) Come on, come try and sell me some Windows Server 2003 licenses.
Not really. Nothing wrong with being a starving student. But being too thick to realize that there is a whole world outside the hobbiest/student demographic is kinda lame.
And wouldn't want to give the impression even that a student running Gentoo is less important than a corporate install. After all, the Gentoo users at least exercise the portability of a lot of packages that wouldn't otherside get it. There probably aren't two Gentoo build/install environments exactly alike.
> But who's actually foolish enough to use RHEL for a desktop OS?
Anyone who needs a SUPPORTED system, say anyone deploying in Corporate America. Anyone who wants to run a commercial application. Remember, Free/Open hasn't conquered the world yet. World Domination IS coming... but it is just taking a little longer than some of us had hoped.
> You can get support for less retarded distributions (those, for example, which eschew rpm.)
You see folks, this is why Debian hasn't taken over, the OS is just fine; but the users/fanboys seem to be Team Amiga rejects. This package format flaming is just so 20th Century, these days there really isn't any practical advantage between them since.deb packages finally gained support for gpg signing and the rpm world got higher level package management sorted out by giving a choice of either apt-get OR yum/pup/etc.
> Unless you're getting the licenses for free, using RHEL on your desktops is a huge mistake.
Unless you are setting up an Animation studio and your preferred app is supported on RHEL. Or you are rolling out a CRM solution that is supported on RHEL. Or you are developing an application you intend to deploy on RHEL. Etc. Or in other words, if the desktops are making you money and you need supported software you should evaluate the cost/benefit of buying a RHEL support contract, exactly like any other product a vendor offers you.
But if you are a student living in mom's basement, you are quite correct that RHEL isn't for you. Keep right on with the server in the corner running Sid and your desktop on Gentoo.
I wouldn't recommend that one. Don't get me wrong, I loved it but it is very 'inside baseball' in that it was written more as a professional fanfic (contradiction in terms I know) than anything else. If you aren't A) a long time SciFi fan and B) either a convention going fan or have studied enough to follow most of the inside jokes you aren't likely to enjoy the book. And the politically incorrect themes pervading the book would get any teacher recommending it sacked in most jurisdictions.
Giving away the boxes makes perfect sense when one has all of the facts. The government wants to SELL the VHF spectrum and can't do that until they can move the current occupants out. I'd guess they will get more than a billion from selling off the spectrum so they are going to buy off the last holdouts.
> I don't think that prosecuting more piraters is really going to have an effect. If people haven't > come running for Linux and the rest of it already, they're never going to.
Getting caught has never been a realistic threat. So lets make it one. I'm saying that so long as the choice is Pirate Office or suffer the minor inconviences of OO.o people will take the pirate deal so long as it has no negative consequences. They will reason that MS Office is a valuable product that they are getting for free due to their cleverness/willingness to skirt the law. So it must be better than something being given away.
But if we could raise the threat of punishment for being a pirate enough take that option off the table, to make people instead have to decide between writing a check for Office vs downloading OO.o for free, most who currently pirate would invest the time to learn to love OO.o. Because almost nobody who pirates is a heavy user most would find OO.o more than adequate for their needs.
Slashdot Mirror
> 5) these die-offs have been happening since people have been watching, long before there was any RF except for lightening
And then add in this paragraph in the story in TFA:
"Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives."
This tells volumes to anyone with a hint of a clue about biology. It says that whatever is happening is natural, and has happened enough for Nature to have built in defenses against whatever it is. The only time in nature you leave food untouched is when your instincts tell you it is BAD. For that to happen takes evolution a longtime to perfect, thus this crap isn't new. It tells me it is something very nasty but very old, older than H. sapiens and certainly cell phones.
But cell phone scares are all the rage these days so...... Not saying cell phones don't pose some major risks, but that has nothing to do with a media bandwagon. They start for reasons totally unrelated to science and then in the chase for funding, marginal scientists hook up to the bandwagon and make it self sustaining.
> Birds of a feather...
The original poster got modded troll but there is truth in it. The Democrats need the net crazies like Kos and Moveon. But they equally need the big sacks of filthy cash that they can raise from Hollywierd and drug addled rock stars. They are betting that dealing in the RIAA will bring in enough cold hard cash to offset the negative effects from some disgruntled netheads. After all, what are they going to do, vote for a Republican? They might donate less, but who cares when you have huge sacks of money and when the race gets serious does anyone really believe Kos & Co. won't be fired up and frothing at the mouth to destroy "Evil Republicans!"?
Same sort of cold calculation that makes both parties pay lots of lip service to core groups but dis em in their quest for the magical middle. Rove totally broke with that in '04 and by concentrating more on getting his base out pulled out a win, but 'everyone' realizes now that stategy is dangerous and probably won't work too many times.
So now we all go back to courting the 'middle.' And by middle it is generally understood we mean the clueless nitwits who know nothing about politics, policy, issues or any of that stuff. No, they want telegenic, charismatic people who talk in platitudes. So we on the road to getting an Empty Suit vs. a TV star.
> So when Intel decides that it's time to implement new architectures and force new methods of coding it's an awesome thing, ....
Except when it ain't. Lemme see, entire new programming model..... haven't we heard this song before? Something about HP & Intel going down on the Itanic? Ok, Intel survived the experience but HP is pretty much out of the processor game and barely hanging in otherwise.
Yes it would be great if we could finally escape the legacy baggage of x86, but it ain't going to happen anytime soon. The pain isn't there yet that would convince people to migrate.
> Why not spend the money on text books or library books or classrooms or teachers? Or all four?
Well if ya are committed to pissing away $30 mil when you already have a deficit I guess what you say makes sense.
And I want to know how Apple manages to get their product specced in legilation, avoiding bidding them out. Of course Apple, being by far the most expensive vendor, would never win the contract and some no name digital player wouldn't have the buzz for the bill's backers. This stinks of corruption, we need an investigation. At least an investigation would cost less and scuttle the project at least until it finished.
[sarcasm]
You Apple fans should be opposed as well. If every kid is walking around with YOUR beloved fashion accessory just how the hell does your self esteem get boosted by being better than everyone else?
[/sarcasm]
> Haven't phone companies been running phone calls over digital networks for ages?
Yes they have, and in a sane world that would in itself have ended the discussion at the USPTO. Since the first telco stuff was crude circuit switched equipment a better example would be ATM, which also easily predates the patent. But apparently the USPTO and the courts are still allowing a fresh patent for doing ordinary old things by simply adding "over the Internet" to them. We seriously need a law of one single paragraph:
"No patent may be issued or upheld if the only thing unique about it is that it extending an existing practice to the Internet. This is one of the designed purposes for the Internet; using something for it's designed purpose is NOT original or difficult for one skilled in the art so knock it off you idiots. This law is intended both as an order to the USPTO and binding guidance for the Judicary."
> Also, looking at Japan's constitution:
Yea, it says that. But I don't see that piece of paper kicking the ass of politicians who wipe their asses on it. Here in the US we had the fabled 1st Amendment that also made certain promises in that regard but I didn't see it, or the enraged ghosts of the signers, kicking John McCain in the nuts when he ripped it out of our Constituition. Although on a slightly hopeful note it appears the American people (at least the Republicans) appear to be denying McCain a run at the Presidency in repayment for his sins.
In the end paper cannot protect us, only WE can protect us. The paper only represents a contract amongst us as to what we are supposed to put up with before we start shooting the bastards. If we don't uphold our end of that bargain we lose representitive government and get what we have now in most western countries, rule by an elite nobility unbound by any rule of law.
If anyone is still in doubt as to the wisdom of "Campaign Finance Reform" or "Government financing of campaigns" look well upon Japan and see the end product of your logic at it's conclusion. For certain definitions ofthe word it is "Fair" but it is not Free by any definition. There is a wider lesson here regarding the relationship between "Fair" and "Free."
> Especially since most players are used in gyms, cars, walking, etc., where ambient noise rules
> and non-monitor quality headphones and/or speakers are the norm.
Agreed, in those environments quality isn't much of an issue. Now explain why I want to buy all of my music multiple times. Or am I supposed to NEVER listen to my music under better listening conditions?
If it is a ripped mp3 I really don't have any room to bitch about it sounding like crap if I try playing it on the main amp in the living room. But I'd never PAY (ok, maybe if it was really cheep, say $0.10/track) for only that low quality version. Try it some time, play a 128K-160K mp3 on a medium quality system and cringe. Unless you have blown your hearing already, guess it wouldn't matter to ya anymore then. Don't really have an easy way to try AAC at 256K but I'd bet it is still distinguishable from a CD/flac.
> There are no online stores that have been able to sell DRM-free MP3's, at least not if they are
> selling music from the larger labels.
Which is exactly the only thing new here, but some asshat wanted to spin it pro Apple. If EMI is willing to A) give up DRM and B) allow non-Apple retailers in the deal why would they mandate AAC? No, when Yahoo, Walmart, etc enter the DRM Free game they will be selling whatever format(s) customers demand since they have no motive to help Apple lockup the hardware market.
Of course if EMI and the other labels only allow Apple to sell without DRM then yea, Apple wins.
> Lets bring on the rights for chimps, but with right comes responsibilities.
Exactly. It is intellectual dishonesty to speak of "Rights" for any of the lesser orders (and a non trivial number of humans these days, rant for another day) in the same way as we speak of them for us. Every Right has an equal and opposite set of Obligations, no chimp I have heard of is capable of fulfilling said obligations. At a minimum they must respect the same Rights for fellow citizens. There is a reason we keep em in zoos and other highly supervised environments when they live in human settings.
Stretched to the most extreme a chimp can have similar Rights as a small child, i.e. as a dependent of a full Citizen who assumes responsibility for the actions of a minor child and makes decisions in its name. But even that doesn't make total sense because in the case of a child it is assumed the child will eventually assume all of the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship and those rights are only being held in trust until that time.
If as a society we decide that inflicting medical experiments, etc on em is a bad thing, so be it. But lets recognize that is it is US making the decision and it has nothing whatsoever with any daft notions that semi intelligent species have "Human Rights" because it does not a damned thing for them while the intellectual dishonesty can only lead to a reduction in what the term means for us in the long run.
Besides it is obvious what the real agenda is, get chimps "Rights" and then groups like PETA will use that thin end of the wedge to extend the flawed logic behind it to all animals and then all living things. These days PETA and the US Humane Society (National, not the local unrelated groups doing good works running the local animal shelter) are nothing more than front groups for terrorist groups like ALF anyway, if we ignored and defunded em they would go away.
> The story mode for Gears of War is kinda short and not that interesting, but the multiplayer is a lot of fun.
Translation:
Hot ingame graphics are a requirement to get reviewers and teens to buy, gotta pay those guys. With the popularity of online the equally expensive cut scenes, hollywood actors doing voices and paying somebody who can actually write a half baked plot can all be cut to the bone.
Multiplayer is pretty much multiplayer, regardless of the game, because the PLAYERS are the most important thing and they are fairly constant even across widely different game genres..... and lame.
> So, to the hell with HP, and Toshiba... and Dell... fuck, we need a good Notebook/Laptop manufacturer
:) Not that I'm hiding the fact we run Linux on ours, it is good to know the HDD and the data won't be molested by some idiot wanting to make sure the unused Windows partition has the latest set of updates.
> (with worldwide distribution of course... and not costing an arm and a leg).
Lenovo/IBM. Thinkpads don't cost that much more than lesser gear anymore. They have worldwide support, they are solid machines and I haven't had em give us any crap about installing Linux.
Especially on the ones where you can yank the hard drive before shipping em back.
> Food is not a given for everyone in the world yet, so we shouldn't start using food as fuel.
Not a problem. There isn't any shortage of food. Think about it. Here in the US, even with the BS of the government meddling in the marketplace with subsidies, tariffs and paying other people NOT to grow stuff the US not only grows enough to make us all obese we export a lot of food. Same in most other civilized nations with the exception of a couple of very dense populations such as Japan. So why are people starving?
Lack of civilization and liberty. In North Korea they starve while across the DMZ life is good. Cuba can barely feed itself where it used to export. All it took was one asshat in Zimbabwe [sp?] (and a few million idiots to put him in power) to turn a nation from exporting food to having a few million starving kids with flies in their eyes for Sally Struthers to throw into our faces in desperate pleas for us to throw money down a rathole. Sure I'd donate money.. if it was for buying guns to overthow a despotic tyrant AND educating the people how to avoid installing yet another charismatic socialist.
And at any rate, getting a low level product like sugar is fairly easy, often with marginal crops or tailings from stuff raised for human consumption. Biofuel is pretty much the last word in green power, carbon neutral almost by definition, few exotic chemicals required, etc. Whats not to love?
> What does this have to do with corruption? It's about spying on a bunch of misfits and hooligans.
But you don't understand! If they are trying to blow up Republicans they are patriots and heros. Shame on the NYPD for aiding and abetting BusHitler.
Seriously though; read the whole article and reading through the painfully obvious bias the NYT put on it it looked like a textbook example of good police work. They didn't tap any phones or break the law, they read open sourses like webpages and they put boots on the ground at meetings open to the public to collect human intelligence. Yes they kept files on threats and non threats, who wants to have each team investigate the same harmless nuts? Then when the convention hit they knew which ones were the small hardcore fringe most likely to commit crimes and they culled em out of the herd while allowing several hundred thousand (misguided fools in my humble opinion, but I respect their right to BE fools) protesters to peacefully assemble and petition their government for redress of their idiot grievences.
Bottom line people, the right to protest DOES not include the right to anarchy, terror and violence. A million or so of the diehard socialist/progressive/green side need to learn the difference, including it appears 75% of slashdot's readership.
> For future reference, you are too stupid and uninformed to be allowed an opinion.
> Please forfeit yours and refrain from posting.
No, I don't care if the original poster rants on the Internet; I hope the asshat doesn't VOTE.
> Um, I think you mean "George W. Bush's impact".
What makes this joke especially funny is that, despite the fervent belief of most of the crazy elements on the left, George W, Bush CAN'T sign the Kyoto Treaty even if he wanted to. So their carping for him to sign only reveals their ignorance.
Huh? What can I possibly mean? Am I trolling? Nope. Shrubbie can't sign Kyoto because there is already a signature on it for the US. President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton has already signed the Kyoto Treaty. Knowing it wouldn't have a chance in the Senate of being ratified he simply tossed it in a desk drawer after the ceremony to avoid the humiliation of seeing it voted down. You see, the Senate had already passed a non-binding resolution condemning Kyoto by a 90+ overwhelming vote.
> The world would be a better place with ReactOS. What we need is a fat ass investor with loads of cash
> and a grudge against Microsoft to donate to this thing.
Nobody with that sort of cash is likely to be stupid enough to piss it away without a little thought. Just what problem is ReactOS trying to solve?
Is it running Windows executables on a Free platform? Then just toss the money upstream to the Wine developers, they are making most of the progress anyway. Wine is already running major 3D games and the closed forks adding in closed/patented bits are even farther along.
A Free platform able to run Windows device drivers? Huh? That just doesn't make sense. A platform that depends on closed drivers intended for a different (even if related) platform has no future. Especially as closed platforms are going to DRM Hell. ReactOS isn't ever going to be able to run DRM device drivers so wave goodbye to video, sound and probably mass storage.
A Windows clone that doesn't cost anything? Ask a hundred Dell owners how much Windows costs, bet 99 of em say it was "free".
And remember, Linux went from a tool to learn about interrupt driven programming to a viable OS kernel in a year or so. Drop the GNU tools and X on and bang, an operating system was born. ReactOS has been struggling for years and doesn't have a working kernel yet and Wine isn't nearly as feature complete as GNU and X were to plunk atop it.
Remember also the chasing taillights problem. DosEMU did eventually have a 1.0 release. It even made it into a RedHat distro.... but was dropped because nobody gave a damn anymore. FreeDOS had it's 1.0 release even more recently.... and except for a few people nursing old industrial automation and some embedded folk, nobody cared anymore. 8086 hardware and DOS are far simpler designs than Win32 and aren't in constant motion. ReactOS never caught up to NT before XP shipped and are again trying to leapfrog to Vista without ever getting XP emulation stable. Anyone care to wager whether they will reimplement Vista's massive API before the next version lumbers forth from the bowels of Microsoft and moves the goalposts yet again?
> It's always a lot easier to sit back, do nothing, and criticize, isn't it? Tell you what,
.33 miles from work means that unless the weather is crappy there isn't much of a reason to drive.
> if you're riding a bike to work every day, then you can make fun of hybrid owners.
Nope, don't own a bike. Most days I just walk, that was one of the factors that influenced buying the house I did; being
> ...that Hummer owners by comparison are always so modest and unpretentious.
Oh no. But that's a rant for another day.
Forget the comparision to a Hummer. If the Pius - Hummer comparison is even in the same ballpark the total energy footprint of a Prius to any other sane vehicle in the same size class as itself isn't going to be close.
> but how are they supposed to make you feel morally superior to others?
Exactly. The primary purpose of the current generation of hybrids is to make their smug owners FEEL like they are helping the environment. And since there was apparently a pretty big untapped market selling feel good cars to pompous greens, Toyota has made a killing with the Prius. Looks like good marketing to me.
And who knows, perhaps enough will be learned by the widespread deployment of these current hybrids that future generations of them will actually BE more efficient. If so we should all be sure to thank their local hippie for donating to Big Evil Corporations R&D efforts be field testing their 1st generation products for them.. and paying a big price premium for the privledge.
What is a Microsoft sales troll supposed to do about the missing entries:
:) Come on, come try and sell me some Windows Server 2003 licenses.
FSF True believer: If it ain't Free it isn't an option.
Disgusted Ex Microsoft customer: Experienced Microsoft products since they were in ROM chips and hasn't found one yet that wasn't a roach motel. Doesn't plan on wasting money on more of the crap until they manage to get several in a row right... i.e. never.
Political MS hater: Hates evil corporations in general, believes Microsoft more evil than Exxon-Mobil, AT&T, IBM or the MPAA. Believes Microsoft is an unrepentant monopolist hellbent on enslaving the world.
Then there is me, a little bit of all three.
> Hello, Pot? I'd like you to meet kettle.
Not really. Nothing wrong with being a starving student. But being too thick to realize that there is a whole world outside the hobbiest/student demographic is kinda lame.
And wouldn't want to give the impression even that a student running Gentoo is less important than a corporate install. After all, the Gentoo users at least exercise the portability of a lot of packages that wouldn't otherside get it. There probably aren't two Gentoo build/install environments exactly alike.
> But who's actually foolish enough to use RHEL for a desktop OS?
.deb packages finally gained support for gpg signing and the rpm world got higher level package management sorted out by giving a choice of either apt-get OR yum/pup/etc.
Anyone who needs a SUPPORTED system, say anyone deploying in Corporate America. Anyone who wants to run a commercial application. Remember, Free/Open hasn't conquered the world yet. World Domination IS coming... but it is just taking a little longer than some of us had hoped.
> You can get support for less retarded distributions (those, for example, which eschew rpm.)
You see folks, this is why Debian hasn't taken over, the OS is just fine; but the users/fanboys seem to be Team Amiga rejects. This package format flaming is just so 20th Century, these days there really isn't any practical advantage between them since
> Unless you're getting the licenses for free, using RHEL on your desktops is a huge mistake.
Unless you are setting up an Animation studio and your preferred app is supported on RHEL. Or you are rolling out a CRM solution that is supported on RHEL. Or you are developing an application you intend to deploy on RHEL. Etc. Or in other words, if the desktops are making you money and you need supported software you should evaluate the cost/benefit of buying a RHEL support contract, exactly like any other product a vendor offers you.
But if you are a student living in mom's basement, you are quite correct that RHEL isn't for you. Keep right on with the server in the corner running Sid and your desktop on Gentoo.
> I'd also recommend Fallen Angels.
I wouldn't recommend that one. Don't get me wrong, I loved it but it is very 'inside baseball' in that it was written more as a professional fanfic (contradiction in terms I know) than anything else. If you aren't A) a long time SciFi fan and B) either a convention going fan or have studied enough to follow most of the inside jokes you aren't likely to enjoy the book. And the politically incorrect themes pervading the book would get any teacher recommending it sacked in most jurisdictions.
Giving away the boxes makes perfect sense when one has all of the facts. The government wants to SELL the VHF spectrum and can't do that until they can move the current occupants out. I'd guess they will get more than a billion from selling off the spectrum so they are going to buy off the last holdouts.
> I don't think that prosecuting more piraters is really going to have an effect. If people haven't
> come running for Linux and the rest of it already, they're never going to.
Getting caught has never been a realistic threat. So lets make it one. I'm saying that so long as the choice is Pirate Office or suffer the minor inconviences of OO.o people will take the pirate deal so long as it has no negative consequences. They will reason that MS Office is a valuable product that they are getting for free due to their cleverness/willingness to skirt the law. So it must be better than something being given away.
But if we could raise the threat of punishment for being a pirate enough take that option off the table, to make people instead have to decide between writing a check for Office vs downloading OO.o for free, most who currently pirate would invest the time to learn to love OO.o. Because almost nobody who pirates is a heavy user most would find OO.o more than adequate for their needs.