Well, not to be picking nits, but the Java language/platform isn't quite comparable to OpenOffice.org: There are many implementations that run Java software (Sun's, IBM's, and that of the OpenJDK project to name a few); likewise, there are many editors for the OASIS Open Document Format (Abiword, GoogleDocs, KOffice, and yes, OpenOffice.org). OpenOffice.org is probably the most visible, most widely recognized, and possibly the most complete reference implementation. For that reason, the name change is a big deal.
I was never fond of.org being officially part of the name, so a name change could become an opportunity, provided that the new name is short and catchy. Thus, I like "TopOffice" (suggested by roman_mir above; it rises above the rest, to the lofty top floor, or something like that). But, as others have pointed out already, LibreOffice isn't going to fly, at least no further than turds do.;-)
No, real nerds have never run Windows, not as their primary O/S at least. Their nerd cred would be forever shot if they did, and the smiling face of billg would haunt them in their sleep forever.
Sounds like you're saying that the stupid natives just didn't seem to understand how much more superior our ways are, so it's all their own damn fault.
Me, I think they were just looking at our culture and saying, these people blew themselves up, had to leave their polluted home and roam for decades in search of a new one, and now we're supposed to learn their ways?!
Native Americans really didn't think that White European settlers would engage in total warfare against them, either. War between Native American tribes could probably be described more as a violent slug fest after which everybody would make up and go home, variously hurt, grumpy, or satisfied, but not crushed under foot, looted into poverty, and forced from their homes in humiliating defeat; The "burn you to a crisp" warfare was totally new to them and by the time they figured that out, it was way too late to get up and fight back effectively.
No, it doesn't surprise me at all that the Na'vi would be equally innocent in their outlook as to what's coming at them.
True story: When I first played Civilization, I spent at least 60 hours in front of the computer at a single stretch, the whole time wide awake on a case of Mountain Dew, and not even remembering how often I got up to hit the restroom (or whether I just absorbed the Dew and never got up at all).
Monday morning came around, I called in sick, and woke up six hours later to delete the game off my hard disk! I never blamed anyone except myself for that weekend of rampant insanity, and certainly I would not blame Sid Meier for making a game that was way too much fun to stop playing. I took responsibility for my own actions as, I believe, every human being should. Anything less is despicable.
Yes, if they marketed the game to children, secretly added extra-cute stuff in there that nobody could find out about until they played it for a while themselves, scoured facebook for their friends and hammered them with messages ("hey, your friend's playing this, and so should you!"), and then publicly lied about all of it, and "proved" through fake studies that there's nothing remotely addicting about the game at all.
Bottom line, the tobacco industry is/was a bunch of lying drug peddlers without a conscience. But if NCSoft doesn't get this lawsuit laughed out of court (with court costs hung on the idjet who file the suit), then 12 million lawsuits might next get filed against Blizzard, for a grand total of 36 trillion dollars in damages.
NIO may not be defective, it just may be solving a problem you haven't conceived of.
That's exactly right. NIO was never intended to replace the old school Java I/O, it was intended to solve precisely the type of scalability issues that you encountered, hundreds and hundreds of threads piling up, each sucking up resources that a NIO-based solution would side step elegantly.
As so often in life, it comes down to understanding the available tools, and knowing when to use which.
The problem is not that Acrobat Reader needs to save notes, addenda, form information, etc. The problem is a lack of proper control over who gets to write what, when, and where to the local system. If merely opening a document can cause an infection, then there's something fundamentally(!) wrong with the design of that software. In fact, it's the equivalent of a Trojan horse.
Yes, there are certainly situations where anonymity helps safeguard a dissenter in a potentially hostile environment; and anonymity does change the playing field in other ways, too. No argument there.
As to the educated few leading the uneducated masses, I do not agree at all that the argument was obliterated in the Renaissance or at any other time. It has fallen into disfavor, though, especially with the "educated" few serving their own interests to the exclusion of the masses they were supposed to lead. Nothing in human nature has changed from those times, of course, only the severity of the damage is lessened when power is spread (diluted) far and wide. Ultimately that may be democracy's greatest value.
A true democracy does not scale well, of course, so we have a representative democracy, instead, with some elements of a plutocracy and oligarchy as incidental side effects. There is enough upwards mobility in the system to eliminate the concept of a ruling class, but for the most part the people have no idea what the hell they're voting for, anyway, they're just voting for some vague ideas that may have no bearing on reality. The effect is much less the exercise of a democracy than that of a popularity contest.
In effect, we do have those who deem themselves leaders, whether educated or dumb as bricks. And most of the trappings of our democracy amount to a bit of a sham, a game intended to make the people feel engaged. The faces of our leadership change, but the voters don't really have much say in where the ship of state is going.
I suspect that the anonymity granted by a mere handle online gives many people license to compete for "points" on any ground that can get a laugh or comparable reaction from their online peers. The few who may have actually something to contribute to society will either find their attempts drowned out by that crowd, or won't bother to frequent Fark towards that end.
By comparison, I find that Slashdot's peer-based moderation system fares quite well in filtering the noise. It's not perfect, but the Slashdot crowd seems also a good bit less driven to cash in on quick, cheap thrills.
On the whole, though, I trust far more in the thoughtfully conducted discourse of the considerate few, than the multidirectional pull of large crowds. I wonder if that says something, too, about the effectiveness of our democracy.
From an evolutionary standpoint, males with all their stuff on display received preferential treatment from the females. It doesn't have to be biologically optimal, it just has to beat out other options at any given time. And the extreme sensitivity of the testicles ensures that males take great care not to get injured there.
As for why, the following article on the baculum (penis bone) present in most mammals offers speculation on why humans rely on erectile tissue, instead of a baculum; I suspect that external testicles were simply part of the very same selection process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum
Maybe anyone dumb enough to furnish that kind of information will not be hired? And have their identity stolen as they deserve, no doubt? To me that sounds like a cunning plan to hire smart people, those who leave that section blank.
1a. It takes a lot of energy to move something the size of the ISS into an orbit high enough not to fall on our heads in the relatively near future;
1b. There is no orbit halfway between the earth and the moon. Even if you considered one of the five "stable" Lagrange points, they are not all that stable in the long run, not for unattended, unfueled vehicles anyway;
2. I think it admirable that the Russians are not merely throwing their stuff away but at least show the willingness to keep it up there and try to reuse it. Even if this fails in the end, they will learn a lot from the attempt. And too many of us are conditioned not to maintain and repair things, but throw them away when they break (or even when they're simply not in style anymore) and buy new.
Hidden volume within truecrypt's volume is the answer. You enter your password, they get to see some of the hidden stuff, like documents and such that you wouldn't want to actually fall into someone else's hands if the laptop were stolen, but the stuff you *really* want nobody else to even see is on another volume hidden there in such a way that you can claim that it does not exist and they could not prove you wrong.
It's called plausible deniability. Use it.
But above all, don't play the pissed-off jerk at the airport. Just open the laptop up and let them browse the files while you ask to be there, too. Be nice, be friendly, not too helpful, but demonstrate that you have nothing to hide and they're unlikely to feel it worth their time to waste their time with you.
Not sure if that works, but keep the human equation in mind. They're people, too, even if they're paid to shove a stick up their ass before they show up for work.
On another note, it is sad how quickly our government undermined, as a response to those attacks, the very values that made this nation what it used to be. Four damn airplanes is all it took and the perpetrator is still alive today. The mind boggles.
I've been running Rockbox on my iriver 140 since shortly after v2.5 was released and been upgrading it every few months when the fancy struck me. Then I sort-of lost track of it in late 2006. The software was good, did what I needed it for, and that was it. Two weeks ago I grabbed a new copy and was amazed at all the new functionality, the huge amount of work on the interface, and the way it has all come together. Rockbox 2.5 was better than the original firmware; Rockbox 3.0 blows it away. Yes, it rocks!
Oh, and to add actual value to my blather: Rockbox has a software emulator for several operating systems on which you can play with their software and explore its functionality without actually having to install it on your player. I've not used that emulator but thought it worth mentioning. And if you do install it on your player, there's a way to get rid of it again or at least skipping to the original firmware, so you're not really hurting yourself by exploring. At least it works that way on the iriver.
Alas, I doubt the law will see it this way. Most likely they'll expect him to function as a mild-mannered guidance counselor which, as most of us know all too well, will jive quite well with his personality.;-)
This, I think, nails the fundamentals quite precisely. A sentence reduction for clearing up the unknowns is ultimately best for everybody, from the perpetrator to the survivors.
Keep in mind that Hans Reiser's crime seems to have been more a crime of passion than a premeditated murder. Most likely he's been wishing that life had a backspace key. Sure, the murder must be punished, but whether it is with 25 or 15 years is hardly going to make a difference except to grant satisfaction to those who suffered as a result of Nina's murder.
I would be interested in how the law would have treated him had he come forward from the start with a statement like, "omg wtf have I done?!" In other words, would complete cooperation from the very start have turned out better? Anyone with knowledge or experience in that direction care to comment on the possibilities?
Ultimately the most interesting aspect of this sordid affair is the fact that Hans has been a valuable contributor to the Linux community. Can he use a computer from behind bars to contribute patches to reiserfs4? Probably not.
I agree with your assessment on a potential pump-and-dump scheme, though I'd like to reserve judgment and see if in 12 to 18 months they've got independently verified proof of all their claims, including useful production volume.
But the disclaimer you cite is a fairly standard thing for any company to attach to their financial statements when their business is dependent on factors beyond their control. Without it someone would invariably sue them for, oh... not being able to sell their stuff for $1/gallon fifty years from now.
Bravo! Well-said. And I shall bring the skewers, the chains, the bone saws, tubs of acid, pointy needles, and the meat grinders, too. Just a shame that nothing can make good on the pain and frustration that these bastards are inflicting on the world in the meantime.
Hey, I'd like a "cold suit" that would show my car with nobody at the wheel at all. "Couldn't have been me, your Honor, must have been a politician driving it."
it could equally be argued that without Linux, the GNU user space tools would just be a nice collection of tools with no OS to run on
GNU tools run just fine on Solaris and Windows and just about any other operating system where you can get them compiled, so I'd say that the Linux kernel needs the GNU tools just a little more.:)
But the whole GNU vs. GNU/Linux vs. Linux debate is ultimately counter productive, IMO, because (as the parent pointed out) there is a whole lot more to a Linux system than merely the kernel and GNU unless you run a completely pure GNU system. I'll argue that the "nickname" Linux has won out in the market and we'd all be better off if we get used to that and move on to more important issues.
I do wonder what level of fine it would take for Microsoft to really change it's way of doing things
"If you don't adhere, you can't sell here" would probably work wonders. Either that, or impose a Eu1000 or 500% (whichever is greater) tax on each copy of the product imported or sold. I'm sure companies like Microsoft will come around in a hurry or be locked out of the market one way or another.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not to be picking nits, but the Java language/platform isn't quite comparable to OpenOffice.org: There are many implementations that run Java software (Sun's, IBM's, and that of the OpenJDK project to name a few); likewise, there are many editors for the OASIS Open Document Format (Abiword, GoogleDocs, KOffice, and yes, OpenOffice.org). OpenOffice.org is probably the most visible, most widely recognized, and possibly the most complete reference implementation. For that reason, the name change is a big deal.
I was never fond of .org being officially part of the name, so a name change could become an opportunity, provided that the new name is short and catchy. Thus, I like "TopOffice" (suggested by roman_mir above; it rises above the rest, to the lofty top floor, or something like that). But, as others have pointed out already, LibreOffice isn't going to fly, at least no further than turds do. ;-)
Sings, "I bagged the baby / 'cause I didn't have no tupperware" (to the tune of I Shot the Sherriff)
No, real nerds have never run Windows, not as their primary O/S at least. Their nerd cred would be forever shot if they did, and the smiling face of billg would haunt them in their sleep forever.
I think I'll put something like "FORMAT C: /X /Y" in an autorun.inf file of all my removable devices. That'll learn 'em!
Sounds like you're saying that the stupid natives just didn't seem to understand how much more superior our ways are, so it's all their own damn fault.
Me, I think they were just looking at our culture and saying, these people blew themselves up, had to leave their polluted home and roam for decades in search of a new one, and now we're supposed to learn their ways?!
Native Americans really didn't think that White European settlers would engage in total warfare against them, either. War between Native American tribes could probably be described more as a violent slug fest after which everybody would make up and go home, variously hurt, grumpy, or satisfied, but not crushed under foot, looted into poverty, and forced from their homes in humiliating defeat; The "burn you to a crisp" warfare was totally new to them and by the time they figured that out, it was way too late to get up and fight back effectively.
No, it doesn't surprise me at all that the Na'vi would be equally innocent in their outlook as to what's coming at them.
True story: When I first played Civilization, I spent at least 60 hours in front of the computer at a single stretch, the whole time wide awake on a case of Mountain Dew, and not even remembering how often I got up to hit the restroom (or whether I just absorbed the Dew and never got up at all).
Monday morning came around, I called in sick, and woke up six hours later to delete the game off my hard disk! I never blamed anyone except myself for that weekend of rampant insanity, and certainly I would not blame Sid Meier for making a game that was way too much fun to stop playing. I took responsibility for my own actions as, I believe, every human being should. Anything less is despicable.
Yes, if they marketed the game to children, secretly added extra-cute stuff in there that nobody could find out about until they played it for a while themselves, scoured facebook for their friends and hammered them with messages ("hey, your friend's playing this, and so should you!"), and then publicly lied about all of it, and "proved" through fake studies that there's nothing remotely addicting about the game at all.
Bottom line, the tobacco industry is/was a bunch of lying drug peddlers without a conscience. But if NCSoft doesn't get this lawsuit laughed out of court (with court costs hung on the idjet who file the suit), then 12 million lawsuits might next get filed against Blizzard, for a grand total of 36 trillion dollars in damages.
WTFLOLBBQWOW.
NIO may not be defective, it just may be solving a problem you haven't conceived of.
That's exactly right. NIO was never intended to replace the old school Java I/O, it was intended to solve precisely the type of scalability issues that you encountered, hundreds and hundreds of threads piling up, each sucking up resources that a NIO-based solution would side step elegantly.
As so often in life, it comes down to understanding the available tools, and knowing when to use which.
The problem is not that Acrobat Reader needs to save notes, addenda, form information, etc. The problem is a lack of proper control over who gets to write what, when, and where to the local system. If merely opening a document can cause an infection, then there's something fundamentally(!) wrong with the design of that software. In fact, it's the equivalent of a Trojan horse.
Yes, there are certainly situations where anonymity helps safeguard a dissenter in a potentially hostile environment; and anonymity does change the playing field in other ways, too. No argument there.
As to the educated few leading the uneducated masses, I do not agree at all that the argument was obliterated in the Renaissance or at any other time. It has fallen into disfavor, though, especially with the "educated" few serving their own interests to the exclusion of the masses they were supposed to lead. Nothing in human nature has changed from those times, of course, only the severity of the damage is lessened when power is spread (diluted) far and wide. Ultimately that may be democracy's greatest value.
A true democracy does not scale well, of course, so we have a representative democracy, instead, with some elements of a plutocracy and oligarchy as incidental side effects. There is enough upwards mobility in the system to eliminate the concept of a ruling class, but for the most part the people have no idea what the hell they're voting for, anyway, they're just voting for some vague ideas that may have no bearing on reality. The effect is much less the exercise of a democracy than that of a popularity contest.
In effect, we do have those who deem themselves leaders, whether educated or dumb as bricks. And most of the trappings of our democracy amount to a bit of a sham, a game intended to make the people feel engaged. The faces of our leadership change, but the voters don't really have much say in where the ship of state is going.
I suspect that the anonymity granted by a mere handle online gives many people license to compete for "points" on any ground that can get a laugh or comparable reaction from their online peers. The few who may have actually something to contribute to society will either find their attempts drowned out by that crowd, or won't bother to frequent Fark towards that end.
By comparison, I find that Slashdot's peer-based moderation system fares quite well in filtering the noise. It's not perfect, but the Slashdot crowd seems also a good bit less driven to cash in on quick, cheap thrills.
On the whole, though, I trust far more in the thoughtfully conducted discourse of the considerate few, than the multidirectional pull of large crowds. I wonder if that says something, too, about the effectiveness of our democracy.
From an evolutionary standpoint, males with all their stuff on display received preferential treatment from the females. It doesn't have to be biologically optimal, it just has to beat out other options at any given time. And the extreme sensitivity of the testicles ensures that males take great care not to get injured there.
As for why, the following article on the baculum (penis bone) present in most mammals offers speculation on why humans rely on erectile tissue, instead of a baculum; I suspect that external testicles were simply part of the very same selection process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum
"Google Beats Dick" has a nice sound to it, namely that of a million slashdotters fapping.
Maybe anyone dumb enough to furnish that kind of information will not be hired? And have their identity stolen as they deserve, no doubt? To me that sounds like a cunning plan to hire smart people, those who leave that section blank.
1a. It takes a lot of energy to move something the size of the ISS into an orbit high enough not to fall on our heads in the relatively near future;
1b. There is no orbit halfway between the earth and the moon. Even if you considered one of the five "stable" Lagrange points, they are not all that stable in the long run, not for unattended, unfueled vehicles anyway;
2. I think it admirable that the Russians are not merely throwing their stuff away but at least show the willingness to keep it up there and try to reuse it. Even if this fails in the end, they will learn a lot from the attempt. And too many of us are conditioned not to maintain and repair things, but throw them away when they break (or even when they're simply not in style anymore) and buy new.
Hidden volume within truecrypt's volume is the answer. You enter your password, they get to see some of the hidden stuff, like documents and such that you wouldn't want to actually fall into someone else's hands if the laptop were stolen, but the stuff you *really* want nobody else to even see is on another volume hidden there in such a way that you can claim that it does not exist and they could not prove you wrong.
It's called plausible deniability. Use it.
But above all, don't play the pissed-off jerk at the airport. Just open the laptop up and let them browse the files while you ask to be there, too. Be nice, be friendly, not too helpful, but demonstrate that you have nothing to hide and they're unlikely to feel it worth their time to waste their time with you.
Not sure if that works, but keep the human equation in mind. They're people, too, even if they're paid to shove a stick up their ass before they show up for work.
On another note, it is sad how quickly our government undermined, as a response to those attacks, the very values that made this nation what it used to be. Four damn airplanes is all it took and the perpetrator is still alive today. The mind boggles.
I've been running Rockbox on my iriver 140 since shortly after v2.5 was released and been upgrading it every few months when the fancy struck me. Then I sort-of lost track of it in late 2006. The software was good, did what I needed it for, and that was it. Two weeks ago I grabbed a new copy and was amazed at all the new functionality, the huge amount of work on the interface, and the way it has all come together. Rockbox 2.5 was better than the original firmware; Rockbox 3.0 blows it away. Yes, it rocks!
Oh, and to add actual value to my blather: Rockbox has a software emulator for several operating systems on which you can play with their software and explore its functionality without actually having to install it on your player. I've not used that emulator but thought it worth mentioning. And if you do install it on your player, there's a way to get rid of it again or at least skipping to the original firmware, so you're not really hurting yourself by exploring. At least it works that way on the iriver.
Alas, I doubt the law will see it this way. Most likely they'll expect him to function as a mild-mannered guidance counselor which, as most of us know all too well, will jive quite well with his personality. ;-)
This, I think, nails the fundamentals quite precisely. A sentence reduction for clearing up the unknowns is ultimately best for everybody, from the perpetrator to the survivors.
Keep in mind that Hans Reiser's crime seems to have been more a crime of passion than a premeditated murder. Most likely he's been wishing that life had a backspace key. Sure, the murder must be punished, but whether it is with 25 or 15 years is hardly going to make a difference except to grant satisfaction to those who suffered as a result of Nina's murder.
I would be interested in how the law would have treated him had he come forward from the start with a statement like, "omg wtf have I done?!" In other words, would complete cooperation from the very start have turned out better? Anyone with knowledge or experience in that direction care to comment on the possibilities?
Ultimately the most interesting aspect of this sordid affair is the fact that Hans has been a valuable contributor to the Linux community. Can he use a computer from behind bars to contribute patches to reiserfs4? Probably not.
I agree with your assessment on a potential pump-and-dump scheme, though I'd like to reserve judgment and see if in 12 to 18 months they've got independently verified proof of all their claims, including useful production volume.
But the disclaimer you cite is a fairly standard thing for any company to attach to their financial statements when their business is dependent on factors beyond their control. Without it someone would invariably sue them for, oh... not being able to sell their stuff for $1/gallon fifty years from now.
Bravo! Well-said. And I shall bring the skewers, the chains, the bone saws, tubs of acid, pointy needles, and the meat grinders, too. Just a shame that nothing can make good on the pain and frustration that these bastards are inflicting on the world in the meantime.
Hey, I'd like a "cold suit" that would show my car with nobody at the wheel at all. "Couldn't have been me, your Honor, must have been a politician driving it."
But the whole GNU vs. GNU/Linux vs. Linux debate is ultimately counter productive, IMO, because (as the parent pointed out) there is a whole lot more to a Linux system than merely the kernel and GNU unless you run a completely pure GNU system. I'll argue that the "nickname" Linux has won out in the market and we'd all be better off if we get used to that and move on to more important issues.
Either that, or impose a Eu1000 or 500% (whichever is greater) tax on each copy of the product imported or sold.
I'm sure companies like Microsoft will come around in a hurry or be locked out of the market one way or another.