That said, it's not fair for a woman with a genetic abnormality that gives her to the build of a man and allows her to set records that are unbeatable by women without the abnormality.
yeah, that's unfair. almost as unfair as freaks with the genetic abnormality of being able to run fast or be good at weight-lifting or great hand-eye co-ordination winning all the damn time.
freaks (or to use the politically-correct euphemism "winners") shouldn't be allowed to compete against normal people. it's not fair that they're good at something.
what kind of idiot uses a spreadsheet rather than a database with mac address, ip address, hostname, domain name, and any other data that can be used to generate config files for dns, dhcp, firewall/nat, and anything else that needs it?
at some stage, manufacturers will realize the hidden cost of using GNU/Linux in their embedded platforms..
what hidden cost?
it couldn't be more fucking obvious what the "cost" of using GPL software is - release the source under the same conditions (GPL) that you got it under.
these companies just want to reap the benefits of GPL software without living up their part part of the bargain.
they are parasites.
ps: you're right. linux is not "freeware". freeware is proprietary garbage that happens to cost nothing. linux is Free Software instead - high quality open source.
> Encryption is useless if you don't know who is at the other end.
rubbish. almost all of my use of encryption is to prevent casual snooping on the traffic. very rarely do i care exactly WHO the other end is, and it's even rarer for me to rely on a third-party (and a commercial one at that) to provide identity verification.
>SSL and TLS are designed to stop man-in-the-middle attacks,
that's one of the purposes of SSL & TLS. another is, as i said, just plain encryption of data over untrusted networks with who-knows-how-many snoops and/or spooks running sniffers on any one of the networks between source and destination.
1. I've never had to provide ANY such proof whenever i've bought a cert from thawte or verisign or anyone else. not once. and they've certainly made no attempt to ever verify any of the details i've provided to them.
the closest i've ever seen to anything that might be called 'verification' is that ISPCA wanted email confirmation from hostmaster@ my university's domain when i ordered a cert for a subdomain of that university.
2. do you really think it would be that difficult to print a fake utility bill or any other "documentation" that might be required?
commercial CAs provide no real identity verification and anyone who relies on them to do so is a fool.
mozilla didn't start this, their ancestor Netscape did. they're the ones who tried to bootstrap and cash-in on a PKI market by creating a bogus scarcity (browser recognised Certificate Authorities) on an infinite supply (Certificates), and deliberately blurred the distinction between encryption (which is all that many or even most sites need, and for which self-signed certs are good enough) and authentication (which very few sites need, banks and so on for which the ONLY real solution is certs signed by government agencies with responsibility for banks in each country, not some private company).
every mainstream browser since then has continued the trend.
there are, however, some reasons where it is right(*). for example, choosing a painless dignified death over an agonising death like cancer or a living hell like final stage motor neurone disease.
(*) or, at least, a perfectly valid, legitimate, and understandable choice for an individual to make regardless of what you and your black-and-white view of the world say.
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
To me, the problem is the professional photographers' restrictions on public re-use of their work. If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site then they'd release the image under an appropriate open license.
ps: i have no idea what "elevate the image on the site" means either. but if someone as smart enough to be a celebrity photographer says it, it must mean something really clever and important.
If you've got four hard drives, I would use two in a RAID-1 for the live system, and rotate the other two, using rsync to copy the changes. Don't mirror your backups; it's a waste (compared to the benefits of having twice as many snapshots available).
that's similar to what i've been doing on my home network since my tape drive died (and disk drives are so much bigger than affordable tape drives that it's not worth the cost of replacing it). my main machine (combined workstation/server), and all other machines (workstations, mythbox, etc) all have RAID-1 as their boot drives. the server also has two hot-swappable drives which are used for backup, labelled backup1 and backup2. all the machines on the network are backed up by rsync every 4 hours to backup1 which is, in turn, rsynced up once per week to backup2. they are umounted when not in use, and can be hot-swapped easily.
it's kind of ugly, but it works OK....I'm not entirely convinced that hard disks make a GOOD backup medium (as opposed to a servicable hack), but this is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying an LTO-3 or LTO-4 tape drive plus auto-changer robot.
it has occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to add a backup3 drive, so i can have 4-hourly, daily, and weekly backups. and i probably should use rdiff-backup rather than plain rsync as that would give me versioned backups. i'm planning the next reorganisation/upgrade of my disk/storage space now, so i'll probably make those changes at the same time.
If you think the typical user can pickup C++, then you are confining Linux to a very small universe.
you don't need to know how to program in C++ or any other language to be able to USE linux.
if you want to program, though, you need to know how. you need to know at least one programming language, you need to know how computers actually work, you need to know how the operating system works, you need to have a good understanding of programming principles, and you need to have some talent or skill.
none of this is optional or avoidable. it can't be made "easier" because the hard part of programming isn't learning the language(s), it's thinking like a programmer. most people do not think like a programmer, just like most people do not think like an artist or a musician.
you can give someone a box of art supplies or a guitar, but that isn't going to magically turn them into artists or musicians no matter how easy they are to use. same with programming tools.
Actually, i came to my own conclusions about so-called "intellectual property" long before I read Stallman's ideas about it, triggered by my concerns about corporations claiming to "own" certain words and phrases, the perpetual evergreening of pharma patents, corporate attempts to patent DNA and other factual discoveries about the world, and finally by the issue of software patents. He just expresses it quite clearly.
Stallman isn't trying to redefine what copyrights, patents, trademarks mean - he's one of the people at the forefront of the resistance to corporations trying to redefine what these things mean so that they can lock up all intellectual output - including words, ideas, expressions of ideas, inventions, even specific colours and the languages that we speak and write - as their perpetual exclusive property.
They've been pushing this agenda for decades. And one of their most successful projects was the creation of the meme of "intellectual property". it helps to keep the general public placid and quiet while they lobby governments around the world to steal the intellectual commons from under our noses.
i don't know why you think there can be a property right in an invention when patents are quite explicitly NOT property rights.
they are short-term government granted limited monopolies over specific actions which can be done with or to or by an invention. actions such as "build" or "implement".
i'll try rephrasing my original point again: the patent grant itself can be property (in that you can possess it, sell it, transfer it to another, etc). the thing being patented, the invention or the idea, is not property and never can be because "property" is an impossible attribute for an idea or invention to have.
this just highlights the truth behind Stallman's point that the phrase "Intellectual Property" is a bogus propaganda term designed to make you think about patents, copyrights, and trademarks in terms of property, in the *same* ways that you think about things that actually are property. it also highlights that it is a very effective propaganda term, that is insidiously influential in manipulating how people think about such things. even people who should know better.
sorry, you have a property right in the patent grant (in that you can possess it, trade it, use it as collateral, etc). you do NOT have a property right in the invention itself. that is a subtle but crucial difference.
and, BTW, "35 U.S.C. s. 261" only applies in a small part of the world.
... or you're completely and utterly mistaken about what makes a socialist a socialist.
he's an american. *of course* he's completely and utterly mistaken about socialism. americans are brain-washed in school to believe that socialism is some perverse and more evil form of satanism hell bent on raping mom and her apple pies. and that brain-washing has been going on for so long now that it starts even before school as the parents for the last few generations were also brainwashed as children.
most americans don't even know that their country had a strong and progressive socialist movement up until the 1940s that was responsible for legislating many of the basic rights that they now take for granted.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, that's unfair. almost as unfair as freaks with the genetic abnormality of being able to run fast or be good at weight-lifting or great hand-eye co-ordination winning all the damn time.
freaks (or to use the politically-correct euphemism "winners") shouldn't be allowed to compete against normal people. it's not fair that they're good at something.
yeah, you need a "beware of the doorbell" sign as well to make it legal.
what kind of idiot uses a spreadsheet rather than a database with mac address, ip address, hostname, domain name, and any other data that can be used to generate config files for dns, dhcp, firewall/nat, and anything else that needs it?
what hidden cost?
it couldn't be more fucking obvious what the "cost" of using GPL software is - release the source under the same conditions (GPL) that you got it under.
these companies just want to reap the benefits of GPL software without living up their part part of the bargain.
they are parasites.
ps: you're right. linux is not "freeware". freeware is proprietary garbage that happens to cost nothing. linux is Free Software instead - high quality open source.
"Not news. Fark."
you appear to have a buggy and very limited definition of what constitutes "News".
to start with, News includes more than just product announcements.
is to ask yourself "Is my computer running Microsoft Windows?"
if the answer to that is "yes", then your computer is either already running a botnet or will be soon.
"Ha ha"
proprietary code. what else would you expect?
> Encryption is useless if you don't know who is at the other end.
rubbish. almost all of my use of encryption is to prevent casual snooping on the traffic. very rarely do i care exactly WHO the other end is, and it's even rarer for me to rely on a third-party (and a commercial one at that) to provide identity verification.
>SSL and TLS are designed to stop man-in-the-middle attacks,
that's one of the purposes of SSL & TLS. another is, as i said, just plain encryption of data over untrusted networks with who-knows-how-many snoops and/or spooks running sniffers on any one of the networks between source and destination.
1. I've never had to provide ANY such proof whenever i've bought a cert from thawte or verisign or anyone else. not once. and they've certainly made no attempt to ever verify any of the details i've provided to them.
the closest i've ever seen to anything that might be called 'verification' is that ISPCA wanted email confirmation from hostmaster@ my university's domain when i ordered a cert for a subdomain of that university.
2. do you really think it would be that difficult to print a fake utility bill or any other "documentation" that might be required?
commercial CAs provide no real identity verification and anyone who relies on them to do so is a fool.
mozilla didn't start this, their ancestor Netscape did. they're the ones who tried to bootstrap and cash-in on a PKI market by creating a bogus scarcity (browser recognised Certificate Authorities) on an infinite supply (Certificates), and deliberately blurred the distinction between encryption (which is all that many or even most sites need, and for which self-signed certs are good enough) and authentication (which very few sites need, banks and so on for which the ONLY real solution is certs signed by government agencies with responsibility for banks in each country, not some private company).
every mainstream browser since then has continued the trend.
> I'd just like to be able to start up a torrent and get WindowsXP or Office 2003 any time I want it.
that's easy. just make "any time i want it" = "never" and you can already do it.
works for me. YMMV.
WTF would you, or anyone, *want* XP or MS Office anyway?
yes, suicide IS wrong for many reasons.
there are, however, some reasons where it is right(*). for example, choosing a painless dignified death over an agonising death like cancer or a living hell like final stage motor neurone disease.
(*) or, at least, a perfectly valid, legitimate, and understandable choice for an individual to make regardless of what you and your black-and-white view of the world say.
To me, the problem is the professional photographers' restrictions on public re-use of their work. If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site then they'd release the image under an appropriate open license.
ps: i have no idea what "elevate the image on the site" means either. but if someone as smart enough to be a celebrity photographer says it, it must mean something really clever and important.
that's similar to what i've been doing on my home network since my tape drive died (and disk drives are so much bigger than affordable tape drives that it's not worth the cost of replacing it). my main machine (combined workstation/server), and all other machines (workstations, mythbox, etc) all have RAID-1 as their boot drives. the server also has two hot-swappable drives which are used for backup, labelled backup1 and backup2. all the machines on the network are backed up by rsync every 4 hours to backup1 which is, in turn, rsynced up once per week to backup2. they are umounted when not in use, and can be hot-swapped easily.
it's kind of ugly, but it works OK....I'm not entirely convinced that hard disks make a GOOD backup medium (as opposed to a servicable hack), but this is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying an LTO-3 or LTO-4 tape drive plus auto-changer robot.
it has occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to add a backup3 drive, so i can have 4-hourly, daily, and weekly backups. and i probably should use rdiff-backup rather than plain rsync as that would give me versioned backups. i'm planning the next reorganisation/upgrade of my disk/storage space now, so i'll probably make those changes at the same time.
you don't need to know how to program in C++ or any other language to be able to USE linux.
if you want to program, though, you need to know how. you need to know at least one programming language, you need to know how computers actually work, you need to know how the operating system works, you need to have a good understanding of programming principles, and you need to have some talent or skill.
none of this is optional or avoidable. it can't be made "easier" because the hard part of programming isn't learning the language(s), it's thinking like a programmer. most people do not think like a programmer, just like most people do not think like an artist or a musician.
you can give someone a box of art supplies or a guitar, but that isn't going to magically turn them into artists or musicians no matter how easy they are to use. same with programming tools.
IMO, overclocking is only of interest to Windows users - they're already used to their computers randomly crashing or locking up for no good reason.
for people who prefer to count system uptime in units of months or years rather than hours or, at best, days, overclocking is irrelevant.
not 'tunnels'. the word you're looking for is 'tubes'.
as in the famous revelation about teh internet: "My god, it's full of tubes!"
Actually, i came to my own conclusions about so-called "intellectual property" long before I read Stallman's ideas about it, triggered by my concerns about corporations claiming to "own" certain words and phrases, the perpetual evergreening of pharma patents, corporate attempts to patent DNA and other factual discoveries about the world, and finally by the issue of software patents. He just expresses it quite clearly.
Stallman isn't trying to redefine what copyrights, patents, trademarks mean - he's one of the people at the forefront of the resistance to corporations trying to redefine what these things mean so that they can lock up all intellectual output - including words, ideas, expressions of ideas, inventions, even specific colours and the languages that we speak and write - as their perpetual exclusive property.
They've been pushing this agenda for decades. And one of their most successful projects was the creation of the meme of "intellectual property". it helps to keep the general public placid and quiet while they lobby governments around the world to steal the intellectual commons from under our noses.
i don't know why you think there can be a property right in an invention when patents are quite explicitly NOT property rights.
they are short-term government granted limited monopolies over specific actions which can be done with or to or by an invention. actions such as "build" or "implement".
i'll try rephrasing my original point again: the patent grant itself can be property (in that you can possess it, sell it, transfer it to another, etc). the thing being patented, the invention or the idea, is not property and never can be because "property" is an impossible attribute for an idea or invention to have.
this just highlights the truth behind Stallman's point that the phrase "Intellectual Property" is a bogus propaganda term designed to make you think about patents, copyrights, and trademarks in terms of property, in the *same* ways that you think about things that actually are property. it also highlights that it is a very effective propaganda term, that is insidiously influential in manipulating how people think about such things. even people who should know better.
sorry, you have a property right in the patent grant (in that you can possess it, trade it, use it as collateral, etc). you do NOT have a property right in the invention itself. that is a subtle but crucial difference.
and, BTW, "35 U.S.C. s. 261" only applies in a small part of the world.
correction: "A patent gives some short-term extremely limited monopoly rights over an invention".
a patent does not make an invention "property", it merely grants some exclusive rights over the invention to the inventor for a period of time.
you are illegally using my patented invention of granting a discount for early purchase or registration.
i think the Act should be called "The Megan Meier Dead Teenager Political Exploitation Act".
he's an american. *of course* he's completely and utterly mistaken about socialism. americans are brain-washed in school to believe that socialism is some perverse and more evil form of satanism hell bent on raping mom and her apple pies. and that brain-washing has been going on for so long now that it starts even before school as the parents for the last few generations were also brainwashed as children.
most americans don't even know that their country had a strong and progressive socialist movement up until the 1940s that was responsible for legislating many of the basic rights that they now take for granted.
what's this "surrounded by water" nonsense? some sort of overly poetic kind of tortured english??
the correct phrase is "girt by sea"!