There is a philosophical question under all this. Do people have an inherent right to have any and all information free? I don't think anyone wants ALL information floating around free. What most would consider freedom advocates will still want all spam shut down.
Spam is not information. Spam is unsolicited bulk email. The information disseminated through spam could be put on a webpage or emailed to subscribers only, and it wouldn't be spam. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with cramming speech down people's throats.
Imagine if the patient had AIDs/HIV, and the nurse who had gloves touches the keyboard. Would you want to be the next patient in line - when the nurse touches the keyboard and then touches you?
Sure, no problem -- provided the nurse hasn't had sex with the keyboard.
Yeah, there really needs to be a public comment period for patents before they are granted, but I think that the patent office is more interested in collecting fees than being correct.
IMO, the fees should be due whether the patent is granted or not. It should be the applicant's risk to take, not the patent office's.
I meant the CD/RW drive in the Dell cannot handle DVD's. In the Apple there is a CD/RW+DVD combo. Sorry for being unclear.
What neck of the woods do you live in? As far as I know, the majority of Internet access still occurs through dial-up, so I don't agree with your assertion that modems are hardly used anymore. Nor have I heard of any ISP that includes a modem with a dial-up account.
In any case, you seem to be arguing that the Dell costs less, with which I was not disagreeing. What I disagreed with is that the Mac mini is not cheap. In fact I think it's very cheap for what you get. That it may not be what some (or maybe even most) people want doesn't change that.
$500 for a plain, low end box is not cheap. A Dell 2.8 GHz P4 with a 19" LCD, keyboard, and mouse for $529 [gotapex.com] is cheap.
No DVD player in the Dell, nor FireWire, nor a modem, nor a stack of bundled software, nor 90 days of free telephone support. Nor is it small, or silent. Laptop technology, which is what the Mini uses, is more expensive.
Just because the Dell costs less doesn't mean the Mac Mini isn't cheap, especially since the box contains more in less space.
The fact that no due process has taken place does not mean the license has not been terminated; it just means that such termination has not yet been legally proven. That's not the same thing. The recovation still takes place at the moment of the infraction.
In other words, if the termination gets legally proven, then the termination has confirmed legal force from the moment of the first infraction of the GPL.
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License."
No, because what they're saying is that the IP
belongs to an ISP that harbors spammers. Which
is (presumably) true.
Many people do like to block
on such a criterion, arguments being that spammer-harboring
ISPs should be boycotted by the rest of the Internet
or that blocking single spammer IPs is ineffective
because the ISP just moves them to another IP to get
around the block.
These arguments are certainly
open for debate, but that doesn't make it libel.
The reasons so many users behave like that is because of the kind of attitude that you are exhibiting here. Treat your users with respect and most of the time you'll be treated with respect in return, and even be listened to.
(cough) Sorry to get offtopic, but no, it really doesn't. Spam has everything to do with volume and unsolicitedness and nothing with content; therefore, it has nothing to do with speech.
Putting all these thoughts together, I come to the depressing conclusion that we will never, ever be able to make spam go away, no matter what we do.
True enough, but that doesn't mean that taking out spammers by legal means is useless. It does somewhat limit the problem, and is one of many kinds of defenses against spam. All of them combined will hopefully keep our e-mail usable./p
"Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
What exactly is the article in the U.S. Constitution that guarantees privacy? Maybe I'm an ignorant foreigner (Dutchman), but I was always under the impression that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee privacy. Am I wrong?
The referenced website talks about the "First Amendment rights to privacy", but I was always under the impression that the First Amendment concerns freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Smells a bit fishy.
Re:Original file may ONLY play on Macs...
on
Apple Easter Egg
·
· Score: 1
Unfortunately the file is compressed using Mac OS X 10.3's lame zip utility which splits the resource fork off into a completely incompatible __MACOSX directory, so that only other users of Mac OS X can decompress it and get a usable file! (Sheesh, you'd have thought they'd encode it with MacBinary instead.)
So the summary claims that Mac OS X is technically more secure than Windows. Then why has this well-known root exploit in iSync not been fixed even after several security updates and one system update, and despite that Apple has apparently been notified?
That worries me -- this bug is trivial to exploit from any user account (just compile and run). It smells like Microsoft-esque security practices.
FWIW, my temporary fix was to revoke the vulnerable file's setuid and execute permissions:
Not only that, it's not a sig - it's just something that looks like a sig, inserted into the message. I know this becasue I turned off the sigs precisely to avoid nonsense like this!
English is the most unpure language and suprisingly the most popular language because of its ease.
Nonsense. English is the most popular language because of the political, economic and cultural power of a number of English-speaking countries, including the United States. It is actually notoriously difficult to learn for non-native speakers, but ease was never a factor in how popular a language becomes.
Reminds me of the history of cars. When they first came out, you brought your own mechanic with you. If they had stayed the same way, nobody would bother with them - a horse is better.
If you still need "training" to do basic shit with a computer, then the problem is with the box and the user accpting such a situation.
Are you implying by contrast that you don't need "training" to do "basic shit" with a car? Gee, I'm sure glad I don't have to be your passenger.
I, for one, favor the introduction of an Internet driver's license so that all those zombie PC's will stop flooding my mailbox with spam and viruses.
No matter how smart you make the boxen, you can never keep up with end-user stupidity. The problem is that, otherwise than with cars, we live in a computer culture in which end-users are not encouraged to take responsibility for their own stupidity.
If businesses switch to the 'thin client' model, or anything similar, then this will be a step backwards, technologically speaking, and it will be a decision which is based entirely on financial motives.
As someone who recently switched over an office's mixed Windows network to a thin-client setup based on Slackware and the excellent Linux Terminal Server Project, I claim that this is not a step backwards (technologically or otherwise), but simply a step in a different direction. Yes, it's a lot cheaper all right, but that is not the only motive. It's also:
a lot faster for the users: the thin clients boot up in no time and everything else doesn't need to boot because it's already up. Also, because Linux caches everything and uses shared memory, programs start up very fast after the first user has started them up for the first time. Finally, everyone gets to profit from the big fat server's execution speed (no, it doesn't degrade significantly from being shared; load is usually under 0.20).
more flexible for the users: their own user environment is available from any office computer, instead of being tied to one PC, and can even be accessed remotely via SSH.
a lot more practical for the sysadmin: everything needs to be upgraded only once and everyone immediately uses the new version. No need for manual client installation or risky and expensive central upgrade distribution systems. With SSH, everything can even be safely managed remotely.
quite extensible: nothing says you are limited to one server. You can either distribute tasks over different servers (programs can run on different computers and be displayed on the same terminal screen, and users won't even notice), or you can combine LTSP with OpenMOSIX and make the server and all the clients participate in a big happy cluster! Imagine running The GIMP and having twenty computers transparently divide the rendering work among them...
In short, the thin client model is highly underrated. It has a lot of possibilities, some of which are either hard to realize or plainly not available on traditional PC setups. It's not universally the best solution but for offices they are typically very suitable.
And no, the PC is not dead and is not about to die. With that I agree entirely.
Administration costs are insane for large corporations. Thin clients make that task a little more manageable. Only problem is when the main servers go down you're killing not just one user but a whole organization.
The solution to that problem is called "regular back-ups".
After all, even with a thick-client model, files are usually stored centrally, so when the server goes down, people still have their applications but no files to work with. That's not that great of a difference.
Of course, a smart thin-client admin will make a Plan B to restore all the back-ups on another machine (perhaps one that is normally in use as a thin client but has more RAM and a HD), whether it's a thin or thick client setup.
Having a good Latin vocabulary will let people studying Spanish or French or Italian recognize words that used Latin roots, and the grammar concepts do carry over some.
Actually they don't carry over at all. The subject-object-verb structure is a Romance development which replaces the classical Latin complex inflection system in which word order is almost entirely irrelevant. Grammatically, the Romance languages and Latin couldn't be much further apart than they are.
Also, word recognition based on classical Latin is overrated: the meanings of words have shifted dramatically over two thousand years, so it's misleading as often as it is helpful.
If there is any one language that serves as a good introduction to the common body of Latin (and Greek) words present in the European languages, it would be Interlingua, which was specifically designed for that purpose. It's also much simpler to learn. Plus, anyone knowing any Romance language can actually understand you if you speak it!
There is a very good, if not essential point in your post somewhere. Too bad it gets entirely snowed under by your repetitive use of the inflammatory and incorrect terms "theft" and "stealing".
Slashdot Mirror
Spam is not information. Spam is unsolicited bulk email. The information disseminated through spam could be put on a webpage or emailed to subscribers only, and it wouldn't be spam. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with cramming speech down people's throats.
Sure, no problem -- provided the nurse hasn't had sex with the keyboard.
IMO, the fees should be due whether the patent is granted or not. It should be the applicant's risk to take, not the patent office's.
So are you really happy spending your hard-earned money on that kind of "support"?
I meant the CD/RW drive in the Dell cannot handle DVD's. In the Apple there is a CD/RW+DVD combo. Sorry for being unclear.
What neck of the woods do you live in? As far as I know, the majority of Internet access still occurs through dial-up, so I don't agree with your assertion that modems are hardly used anymore. Nor have I heard of any ISP that includes a modem with a dial-up account.
In any case, you seem to be arguing that the Dell costs less, with which I was not disagreeing. What I disagreed with is that the Mac mini is not cheap. In fact I think it's very cheap for what you get. That it may not be what some (or maybe even most) people want doesn't change that.
No DVD player in the Dell, nor FireWire, nor a modem, nor a stack of bundled software, nor 90 days of free telephone support. Nor is it small, or silent. Laptop technology, which is what the Mini uses, is more expensive.
Just because the Dell costs less doesn't mean the Mac Mini isn't cheap, especially since the box contains more in less space.
Bah... I prefer Lin-Lin situations any day.
I doubt a judge would agree with that line of reasoning.
Did you know that you just proved Bruce's point in your attempt to refute it?
In other words, if the termination gets legally proven, then the termination has confirmed legal force from the moment of the first infraction of the GPL.
RTFL:
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License."
Many people do like to block on such a criterion, arguments being that spammer-harboring ISPs should be boycotted by the rest of the Internet or that blocking single spammer IPs is ineffective because the ISP just moves them to another IP to get around the block.
These arguments are certainly open for debate, but that doesn't make it libel.
The reasons so many users behave like that is because of the kind of attitude that you are exhibiting here. Treat your users with respect and most of the time you'll be treated with respect in return, and even be listened to.
(cough) Sorry to get offtopic, but no, it really doesn't. Spam has everything to do with volume and unsolicitedness and nothing with content; therefore, it has nothing to do with speech.
True enough, but that doesn't mean that taking out spammers by legal means is useless. It does somewhat limit the problem, and is one of many kinds of defenses against spam. All of them combined will hopefully keep our e-mail usable./p
What exactly is the article in the U.S. Constitution that guarantees privacy? Maybe I'm an ignorant foreigner (Dutchman), but I was always under the impression that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee privacy. Am I wrong?
The referenced website talks about the "First Amendment rights to privacy", but I was always under the impression that the First Amendment concerns freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Smells a bit fishy.
Unfortunately the file is compressed using Mac OS X 10.3's lame zip utility which splits the resource fork off into a completely incompatible __MACOSX directory, so that only other users of Mac OS X can decompress it and get a usable file! (Sheesh, you'd have thought they'd encode it with MacBinary instead.)
So the summary claims that Mac OS X is technically more secure than Windows. Then why has this well-known root exploit in iSync not been fixed even after several security updates and one system update, and despite that Apple has apparently been notified?
That worries me -- this bug is trivial to exploit from any user account (just compile and run). It smells like Microsoft-esque security practices.
FWIW, my temporary fix was to revoke the vulnerable file's setuid and execute permissions:
(Note: omit any spurious spaces and linebreaks Slashdots inserts here.)
Not only that, it's not a sig - it's just something that looks like a sig, inserted into the message. I know this becasue I turned off the sigs precisely to avoid nonsense like this!
Nonsense. English is the most popular language because of the political, economic and cultural power of a number of English-speaking countries, including the United States. It is actually notoriously difficult to learn for non-native speakers, but ease was never a factor in how popular a language becomes.
Are you implying by contrast that you don't need "training" to do "basic shit" with a car? Gee, I'm sure glad I don't have to be your passenger.
I, for one, favor the introduction of an Internet driver's license so that all those zombie PC's will stop flooding my mailbox with spam and viruses.
No matter how smart you make the boxen, you can never keep up with end-user stupidity. The problem is that, otherwise than with cars, we live in a computer culture in which end-users are not encouraged to take responsibility for their own stupidity.
As someone who recently switched over an office's mixed Windows network to a thin-client setup based on Slackware and the excellent Linux Terminal Server Project, I claim that this is not a step backwards (technologically or otherwise), but simply a step in a different direction. Yes, it's a lot cheaper all right, but that is not the only motive. It's also:
In short, the thin client model is highly underrated. It has a lot of possibilities, some of which are either hard to realize or plainly not available on traditional PC setups. It's not universally the best solution but for offices they are typically very suitable.
And no, the PC is not dead and is not about to die. With that I agree entirely.
___________ ;)
* Yes, I'm being civilized.
The solution to that problem is called "regular back-ups".
After all, even with a thick-client model, files are usually stored centrally, so when the server goes down, people still have their applications but no files to work with. That's not that great of a difference.Of course, a smart thin-client admin will make a Plan B to restore all the back-ups on another machine (perhaps one that is normally in use as a thin client but has more RAM and a HD), whether it's a thin or thick client setup.
Actually they don't carry over at all. The subject-object-verb structure is a Romance development which replaces the classical Latin complex inflection system in which word order is almost entirely irrelevant. Grammatically, the Romance languages and Latin couldn't be much further apart than they are.
Also, word recognition based on classical Latin is overrated: the meanings of words have shifted dramatically over two thousand years, so it's misleading as often as it is helpful.
If there is any one language that serves as a good introduction to the common body of Latin (and Greek) words present in the European languages, it would be Interlingua, which was specifically designed for that purpose. It's also much simpler to learn. Plus, anyone knowing any Romance language can actually understand you if you speak it!
There is a very good, if not essential point in your post somewhere. Too bad it gets entirely snowed under by your repetitive use of the inflammatory and incorrect terms "theft" and "stealing".