The ASUS K8N-DL is a dual Opteron motherboard which officially supports up to 24GB RAM in 6 DIMMs. It costs only about $300, too. Not sure of current availability, it's pretty new.
Agreed. Linus made a mistake to start with, by adopting Bitkeeper for the kernel. Current events prove that it was a mistake. What we're seeing now is Linus being reluctant to say "I screwed up, let's try to move on" -- instead, he's still acting as though his original decision made sense. In a situation like this, Linus does need a strong response to point out to him that he's in the wrong on this, and has been for a while. Bruce is doing what has to be done.
In any case, they were familiar with the idea that it is possible to have spiritual belief without subscribing to an institutionalized system of religion.
Then perhaps they were familiar with the idea that such spiritual belief did not have to involve a "god". Buddhism is a prominent example, but many people have spiritual beliefs which don't involve a god.
We know for a fact that the term "god" doesn't apply to everyone's spiritual beliefs. The question is simple: should the pledge of allegiance be something for all U.S. citizens, or something that's only for those with monotheist beliefs? Should, as George Bush senior apparently believes, atheists not be considered citizens? What about Buddhists?
If so, then as I wrote in an earlier post, the battle lines are drawn and it's "us vs. them". Christians -- who in America, are primarily to blame for this attitude -- can wail all they want about removing religion from the public sphere, but they're the ones trying to impose their beliefs on others, just like any fascist Ayatollah in a mideast theocracy. Talk about un-American!
It calls for Automatic Updates to be disabled because "users should update Windows manually, though regularly, paying attention to the various update options and their relevance to one's system," which we know siginificant portions of the installed userbase do not do, and have no knowledge to do so. It is a mechanism that, while potentially abusable by Microsoft, is by far the lesser evil when compared to worms running rampant because some patch from eight months prior wasn't installed.
Right, so responsible users have to put up with inappropriately-designed patches so that Microsoft can make sure that the company next door with the clueless|lazy|overworked admin doesn't become a virus vector. Unfortunately, one size doesn't fit all (XP Pro being the only relevant version here), and the economies of scale that Microsoft gets from acting as though that's good enough are something it couldn't get away with if it weren't a monopoly.
Why is it that people complain more about the excesses of the 1950s, when something was added to the Pledge, than they do about the 1890s, when the freaky proto-fascist idea of reciting the Pledge was dreamed up in the first place?
Good point. But there are a few reasons, I think.
For a start, there's no constitutional injunction against patriotic pledges; there is, however, one against the state getting involved in religion. So there's a stronger reason to argue that "under god" doesn't belong in the pledge, than there is to argue that the pledge shouldn't be used, or shouldn't be forced down schoolchildren's throats.
Also, the 1950s are more recent -- living memory for many people, who also remember what a bad time it was in terms of political repression in the U.S., what with blacklists, people tattling on each other, etc. That makes for a useful reminder of exactly what mentality was involved in turning the pledge into a prayer. The 1890s don't have the same connotations.
Finally, it's easier to treat the pledge as a quaint historical artifact, partly because of its age, but also because of the very fact that it was not originally religious. If it had been religous from the start, I suspect there would have been plenty of objections to it. The guy who originally wrote it was, or had been, a minister; the fact that it wasn't overtly religious is, I think, a clue to what was considered acceptable, for something intended for public use, at that time.
The current America-as-incipient-theocracy is a relatively new phenomenon, and one which disturbs many people who see the dangers inherent in encouraging the idea that the U.S. is indeed "one nation under god".
No anger, just a dislike for illogical arguments, particularly about sensitive issues. I was responding to a point which another poster raised. He acknowledged that his example may not have been so great. I agree we're off-topic -- that's what the OT in the subject line stands for. Now you'll know for next time!;)
When I said "covered", I was referring to articles that have appeared on the front page, like Professor Eben Moglen Replies.
In that interview, Moglen mentions that "the GPL is not addressed to lawyers in a single legal system, but to developers in every legal system around the world". Some other law professor's opinion might be interesting if he was pointing out serious flaws, but if the conclusion was, as I think you put it, that it's "probably OK", that's not terribly interesting. What would the headline be -- "Random Law Professor Thinks GPL Probably OK?"
What would be much more interesting would be a case in which the issues were argued, and wouldn't you know, one just appeared today.
I know which one may be cited if it ever came up in court. And they wouldn't need a UID to so...
And the relevance of that to the newsworthiness of the paper in question is...?
Your first point, about "forcing" people to think, has some validity -- there can be times when it's appropriate to force people to think, perhaps because some injustice is taking place which needs to be called to people's attention, but there may be other times when such forcing may be less justifiable.
However, that has little to do with the pledge of allegiance issue which you raise. The issue there is that the pledge is something that is supposed to be shared by all US citizens, and even more pertinently, said by children under the direction of teachers in public schools. In that situation, significant coercion is being applied, on multiple levels, to children to have them say "under god", no matter what their beliefs on the matter, or, for that matter, the beliefs of their parents. Their only alternative, to refuse to say it, is likely to be a socially costly exercise -- the sort of thing that is going to raise people to have strong, even radical feelings on the matter.
This is precisely one of the reasons behind the principle of separation of church and state. You don't want to apply coercion to your own citizens on matters of deep personal belief -- it's only going to get you in trouble.
For 62 years from the time it was written, the pledge was something which could be shared by all citizens, until Congress stepped in and hijacked it in the name of religion. In so doing, they expressly violated the Constitutional clause which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Congress could get away with that because it happened during the McCarthy era, when religion was seen as a bastion against communism, which was associated with atheism.
Today, there's no excuse for it, and even those of religious faith should recognize that it's not in their own interests to impose such a thing on their fellow citizens. If they refuse to acknowledge that, they are merely setting up an "us against them" situation, and relying on their majority status to be able to have their way. Such people should be ashamed of themselves, especially considering that most of them are Christians, since they are certainly not following the spirit of Jesus Christ on this matter.
No, it has no bearing on the validity of shrink wrap licenses in general. I said "use" when I should have said "distribute". Nothing gives you the right to distribute copyrighted GPL software, but the GPL itself. To distribute GPL software, you have to accept the GPL.
I would further add that, if it really had been "covered over and over" it probably wouldn't need to be published in a journal!
It's been covered over and over on Slashdot. That's probably why Slashdot didn't accept your submission.
Of course, it's much more fun to act the aggrieved party in a game of "why did Slashdot accept this article but not my own wonderfully relevant and insightful submission". Carry on, then...
The GPL is valid because nothing else gives you rights to use copyrighted, GPL'd software -- your choice is to accept the license and use the software, or not use the software. This has been covered over and over. Did the article you submitted add anything to this?
Was there ever any doubt? CowboyNeal doesn't have time for fact-checking, he has his hands full trying to hang on to his relevance as a viable poll option!
One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate submissions to "fake" conferences; that is, conferences with no quality standards, which exist only to make money. A prime example, which you may recognize from spam in your inbox, is SCI/IIIS and its dozens of co-located conferences (for example, check out the gibberish on the WMSCI 2005 website). Using SCIgen to generate submissions for conferences like this gives us pleasure to no end. In fact, one of our papers was accepted to SCI 2005!
I'm the only one who shows up when googling for my real name (not disclosed here). So, I can't get away with saying "no, that was a different me!" if I want to disown something I've said or done online. Accountability sucks...
You made my day. Of course, it could be argued that the IDF is excluding people who have room in their brains for fantasies other than the officially approved fantasy. Naturally, they can't state the real reason for granting them a lower security clearance is that they feel threatened by such people's capacity for ideas and questioning official lines of thought, and that they want to marginalize them because of that.
On the subject of the flood, though, the wikipedia article referenced by another poster points out the widely-accepted idea that "the near-universality of the story in all cultures and times makes it much more likely that it originated in an actual, historical event." That doesn't mean the myth of Noah's ark has any basis in reality, that could simply be the mythologizing of a major flood event.
One interesting candidate for a flood event which I didn't notice in Wikipedia's Noah article is the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. Wikipedia has a separate article about the Toba catastrophe theory. The eruption of that supervolcano about 75,000 years ago would have created a tsunami which would have made the recent tsunami pale in comparison.
Genetic evidence seems to confirm a major die-off of humans around this time. That could certainly explain the widespread flood myths. The fantastical aspects of those stories need no explanation; creative humans interpreted the event in ways that the Israeli army would not approve of, if those interpretations weren't a fait accompli that are already embedded in accepted fantasies, and which are sometimes used to justify their army's existence and mission.
I wish someone had shown me SML 15 years ago, I would have wasted less of my career churning out code in crappy languages where the rationale for language design decisions is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, and/or could be marketed with a cool buzzphrase.
Don't be so quick to assume that something isn't your cup of tea - it could just be because it's unfamiliar.
Anything beyond a superficial study of programming leads to formal principles which underly all programming languages. The functional languages are the most powerful and well-designed expression of those principles. Other languages are watered-down imitations that at best have borrowed a few formal features on an ad-hoc basis, mostly secondhand from the functional languages anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I sense a disturbance in the force... as if a thousand Slashdotters suddenly all had the same idea for a joke...
Here. Retail, looks like you can get these intended for Compaq servers. They even sell them at CompUSA.
This isn't just a proof-of-concept, it was successfully beta-tested a few years ago - they even made a movie about it!
---
(Mod -5, Poor Taste)
The ASUS K8N-DL is a dual Opteron motherboard which officially supports up to 24GB RAM in 6 DIMMs. It costs only about $300, too. Not sure of current availability, it's pretty new.
Agreed. Linus made a mistake to start with, by adopting Bitkeeper for the kernel. Current events prove that it was a mistake. What we're seeing now is Linus being reluctant to say "I screwed up, let's try to move on" -- instead, he's still acting as though his original decision made sense. In a situation like this, Linus does need a strong response to point out to him that he's in the wrong on this, and has been for a while. Bruce is doing what has to be done.
Then perhaps they were familiar with the idea that such spiritual belief did not have to involve a "god". Buddhism is a prominent example, but many people have spiritual beliefs which don't involve a god.
We know for a fact that the term "god" doesn't apply to everyone's spiritual beliefs. The question is simple: should the pledge of allegiance be something for all U.S. citizens, or something that's only for those with monotheist beliefs? Should, as George Bush senior apparently believes, atheists not be considered citizens? What about Buddhists?
If so, then as I wrote in an earlier post, the battle lines are drawn and it's "us vs. them". Christians -- who in America, are primarily to blame for this attitude -- can wail all they want about removing religion from the public sphere, but they're the ones trying to impose their beliefs on others, just like any fascist Ayatollah in a mideast theocracy. Talk about un-American!
...warskiing.
And your point is? Presidents inject their personal views into their speeches?
..."
Here's a quote from the Treaty of Tripoli, approved by President John Adams and ratified by the U.S. Senate:
"As the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;
That's an official document, not mere Presidential prose.
Good point. But there are a few reasons, I think.
For a start, there's no constitutional injunction against patriotic pledges; there is, however, one against the state getting involved in religion. So there's a stronger reason to argue that "under god" doesn't belong in the pledge, than there is to argue that the pledge shouldn't be used, or shouldn't be forced down schoolchildren's throats.
Also, the 1950s are more recent -- living memory for many people, who also remember what a bad time it was in terms of political repression in the U.S., what with blacklists, people tattling on each other, etc. That makes for a useful reminder of exactly what mentality was involved in turning the pledge into a prayer. The 1890s don't have the same connotations.
Finally, it's easier to treat the pledge as a quaint historical artifact, partly because of its age, but also because of the very fact that it was not originally religious. If it had been religous from the start, I suspect there would have been plenty of objections to it. The guy who originally wrote it was, or had been, a minister; the fact that it wasn't overtly religious is, I think, a clue to what was considered acceptable, for something intended for public use, at that time.
The current America-as-incipient-theocracy is a relatively new phenomenon, and one which disturbs many people who see the dangers inherent in encouraging the idea that the U.S. is indeed "one nation under god".
No anger, just a dislike for illogical arguments, particularly about sensitive issues. I was responding to a point which another poster raised. He acknowledged that his example may not have been so great. I agree we're off-topic -- that's what the OT in the subject line stands for. Now you'll know for next time! ;)
When I said "covered", I was referring to articles that have appeared on the front page, like Professor Eben Moglen Replies.
In that interview, Moglen mentions that "the GPL is not addressed to lawyers in a single legal system, but to developers in every legal system around the world". Some other law professor's opinion might be interesting if he was pointing out serious flaws, but if the conclusion was, as I think you put it, that it's "probably OK", that's not terribly interesting. What would the headline be -- "Random Law Professor Thinks GPL Probably OK?"
What would be much more interesting would be a case in which the issues were argued, and wouldn't you know, one just appeared today.
And the relevance of that to the newsworthiness of the paper in question is...?Your first point, about "forcing" people to think, has some validity -- there can be times when it's appropriate to force people to think, perhaps because some injustice is taking place which needs to be called to people's attention, but there may be other times when such forcing may be less justifiable.
However, that has little to do with the pledge of allegiance issue which you raise. The issue there is that the pledge is something that is supposed to be shared by all US citizens, and even more pertinently, said by children under the direction of teachers in public schools. In that situation, significant coercion is being applied, on multiple levels, to children to have them say "under god", no matter what their beliefs on the matter, or, for that matter, the beliefs of their parents. Their only alternative, to refuse to say it, is likely to be a socially costly exercise -- the sort of thing that is going to raise people to have strong, even radical feelings on the matter.
This is precisely one of the reasons behind the principle of separation of church and state. You don't want to apply coercion to your own citizens on matters of deep personal belief -- it's only going to get you in trouble.
For 62 years from the time it was written, the pledge was something which could be shared by all citizens, until Congress stepped in and hijacked it in the name of religion. In so doing, they expressly violated the Constitutional clause which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Congress could get away with that because it happened during the McCarthy era, when religion was seen as a bastion against communism, which was associated with atheism.
Today, there's no excuse for it, and even those of religious faith should recognize that it's not in their own interests to impose such a thing on their fellow citizens. If they refuse to acknowledge that, they are merely setting up an "us against them" situation, and relying on their majority status to be able to have their way. Such people should be ashamed of themselves, especially considering that most of them are Christians, since they are certainly not following the spirit of Jesus Christ on this matter.
No, it has no bearing on the validity of shrink wrap licenses in general. I said "use" when I should have said "distribute". Nothing gives you the right to distribute copyrighted GPL software, but the GPL itself. To distribute GPL software, you have to accept the GPL.
It's been covered over and over on Slashdot. That's probably why Slashdot didn't accept your submission.
Of course, it's much more fun to act the aggrieved party in a game of "why did Slashdot accept this article but not my own wonderfully relevant and insightful submission". Carry on, then...
Yeah, I should have said "distribute" instead of "use".
The GPL is valid because nothing else gives you rights to use copyrighted, GPL'd software -- your choice is to accept the license and use the software, or not use the software. This has been covered over and over. Did the article you submitted add anything to this?
I'm the only one who shows up when googling for my real name (not disclosed here). So, I can't get away with saying "no, that was a different me!" if I want to disown something I've said or done online. Accountability sucks...
I guess you didn't get out much while you were in Alabama. Timothy's obviously talking about Mobile, Alabama. Geddit?
You made my day. Of course, it could be argued that the IDF is excluding people who have room in their brains for fantasies other than the officially approved fantasy. Naturally, they can't state the real reason for granting them a lower security clearance is that they feel threatened by such people's capacity for ideas and questioning official lines of thought, and that they want to marginalize them because of that.
On the subject of the flood, though, the wikipedia article referenced by another poster points out the widely-accepted idea that "the near-universality of the story in all cultures and times makes it much more likely that it originated in an actual, historical event." That doesn't mean the myth of Noah's ark has any basis in reality, that could simply be the mythologizing of a major flood event.
One interesting candidate for a flood event which I didn't notice in Wikipedia's Noah article is the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. Wikipedia has a separate article about the Toba catastrophe theory. The eruption of that supervolcano about 75,000 years ago would have created a tsunami which would have made the recent tsunami pale in comparison.
Genetic evidence seems to confirm a major die-off of humans around this time. That could certainly explain the widespread flood myths. The fantastical aspects of those stories need no explanation; creative humans interpreted the event in ways that the Israeli army would not approve of, if those interpretations weren't a fait accompli that are already embedded in accepted fantasies, and which are sometimes used to justify their army's existence and mission.
REST web services via Google
I wish someone had shown me SML 15 years ago, I would have wasted less of my career churning out code in crappy languages where the rationale for language design decisions is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, and/or could be marketed with a cool buzzphrase.
Don't be so quick to assume that something isn't your cup of tea - it could just be because it's unfamiliar.
Anything beyond a superficial study of programming leads to formal principles which underly all programming languages. The functional languages are the most powerful and well-designed expression of those principles. Other languages are watered-down imitations that at best have borrowed a few formal features on an ad-hoc basis, mostly secondhand from the functional languages anyway.