Everyone knows that Microsoft is dead in the water in three years, and everyone knows that Linux and the open-source movement will replace them. These things are beyond refutation...
Exactly -- just as irrefutable as these truths we all know:
- Email has totally removed our need for physical mail
- The web has totally supplanted the old-fashioned print industry
Look, just because something newr, better, cheaper comes along doesn't mean that the old way of doing things is dead. Open source may put MS in trouble -- in SOME areas. But saying they'll be "dead" in 3 years is crazy.
There will always, always be a need for commercial software. First of all, some software is DULL, and no one will want to code it for fun. Secondly, there will always be companies with deep pockets who can fund a very competent closed-source project. And what about apps like air traffic control? You want to fly into an airport running GNU-ATC v0.9B? Assuming it even got written, no one would use it because for some applications you need a company backing the product -- uptime, reliability, support. And I doubt that open-source support firms like VA Linux can fill in ALL those gaps.
Open source is great. Just don't make it a religious crusade.
Its sort of the myth of the paperless office. People have been saying we'll stop using paper for years...
You have it exactly. Wish I could mod you up.
The idea that a perfectly good older technology (printing presses, paper) will be blown away by a more sophisticated, more expensive technology is BS. Electronic books may be great for some things, but they will suck at other things -- a LOT of other things -- and printing companies will stay in business.
Then again, since I am in publishing maybe I am an old-fashioned dinosaur who is going to get modded down.
Do you know if there is a way to record multiple video streams simultaneously with free software? If I had 4 cameras and and a fast computer, could I capture 4 full-frame video streams at once?
Damnit...couldn't you just flame me back? Why did you have to go and be all reasonable?
Muahaha! My master plan. Apology accepted.:)
Isn't slippery slope usually considered a logical fallacy...?
Well, not everyone believes it's a valid argument, but if you look at history there are a lot of examples. Even in the state of California, where I used to live, we went from "register your 'evil' guns and we promise they'll stay legal, we just want to keep track of them" to "we changed out minds, turn them in or you are a criminal" within a year or so. So it can happen.
Switzerland: Google around for data, I don't have links around. But they are quite a gun culture, with some mandatory military service, and a lot of full-auto weapons knocking around. I don't have all the details here, but suffice to say with all that hardware misuse is infrequent.
Economist article: Reading it now. You should read Gary Kleck's studies. But this stuff is hard to study, it may never really get worked out.
Truthfully, I don't care if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that carrying a gun statistically makes me MORE at risk. I am the kind of person who would rather take the "risk," trusting in my intelligence and skills to carry the day if I ever had to use the weapon. (I do shoot pistol competitively. I have no experience with being attacked, but operation of the hardware is second nature and I have a lot of faith in that. I live in Seattle, where I can get a permit to carry a weapon, and I plan to do so. I shoot better than 99% of the cops out there, and I have an even temper.)
I believe you mentioned somewhere in another post that you disapproved of too much sex in the media...
Nope, wasn't me. I do not understand the American fear of that material either. We are a very odd culture here... it probably looks TOTALLY insane to an outsider. My Aussie friends who used to live here were in complete culture shock the whole time.
>Could it be because the NRA bribes the republican party with millions of dollars to prevent any gun law, no matter how common sense, from being passed or enforced?
Wow, you have it all wrong. Understandable, you aren't from here, the system probably looks screwy. Well, it is. But one thing you should be crystal clear on is this: the pro-gunners here are strongly, strongly in favor of the enforcement of existing anti-gun-crime laws. The NRA and its kin are big backers of stuff like "use a gun, go to jail." The reason is simple -- they know that the only chance they have not to get new, more restrictive gun bans passed is to enforce the "abuse a gun, go to jail" laws that are already out there. So whatever else we may disagree on, or whatever you think about politics over here, just understand that one thing.
It is true that the NRA lobbies against every single gun restriction. They're believers in the slipperly slope thing. Give an inch, you lose a mile. (Yes, I am an NRA member.)
>Why would someone ever be anti-gun if it wasn't to save kids from being killed by guns?
There is one other reason: To change society. We have a lot of anti-gun-CULTURE sentiment here. There are a lot of people who seem to care less about "the children" than they do about getting rid of people who have a tradition of gun ownership. It's an ideological struggle, as bitter as any one a society has had over religion, abortion, or anything else. You just don't see it that way unless you are on the front lines as an activist for one side or the other.
There are polite, well-armed societies out there like Switzerland. Every man there has a machine gun, given to him by the state. Yet their society isn't in chaos. Instead of trying to figure out what they are doing right, here in the US they are trying to paint all guns and the gun culture as evil.
There is one other main reason to be anti-gun: many anti gunners simply don't believe in the possibility or the right to self-defense. They prefer to rely on the police for everything, and they are trying to arrange it so that you have no other option. I find these people especially odious. Self-defense is a basic human right, and the best tool for it is a gun. Even if you don't think people should be allowed to carry guns, they should have the right to keep one at home.
>Oh, of course, it is all a plot to disarm white trash so the UN can invade and occupy their precious trailer parks.
Wow, nice shot! You combined conspiracy theory and classic US white trash racism and tried to paint me with it because we disagree. Very classy. Very mature. C'mon... start taking about my overalls or pickup truck.
As to being afraid of guns -- well, it is better than being cocky and overconfident. But you are not being served by your fear. Too much fear is a detriment. If you have trustworthy friends or relatives who go shooting, try to go on a trip with them. Learn a little, like how to handle a gun safely. Having knowledge like that can never hurt.
I actually think they should teach kids about guns in school, kind of like what they do with cars. They should show videos of gunshot wounds, like they do with car crashes. They should teach you basic things like "don't point a gun at anyone."
(I actually think that kids should be taught HOW to shoot in school, because training can instill respect for the weapon, and it demystifies it, making daddy's hidden gun less attractive.)
1. It's already illegal to be a fool and store your gun where kids can get at it. It has been for a long time. The penalties are severe. Such laws seem never to be enforced. Why? Beats me. Probably because the anti-gun crowd has an easier time getting more laws passed with a pile of dead kids around. If some parents did get locked up for being retards, other parents might get a clue and rates of accidental shootings might decline. That probably isn't optimal for the Master Plan, which is getting rid of all the guns period. (Was this an excessively cynical comment? Maybe. Maybe not.)
2. The solution to bad parents is not more laws.
As to the rest... forget it, I'm too lazy to have this argument today. Let's just agree to disagree.
When I was 16 or so, I was playing Lazer Tag in the street in front of a friend's house. There were 3 of us. Two had the pistols (black, with red blinkenlights) and one had the Lazer Tag rifle (big and white, like a refrigerator, with red blinkenlights).
We were playing at night. Someone in the neighborhood called the cops; we were told later that they had called in "man with a gun prowling around." Maybe they made that call knowing we had toy guns, because they just wanted us to go away. I'll never know.
Anyway, the cops show up. I almost got killed. Literally. I was hiding behind a parked car. I hear a car driving up the street, and I think, "when it passes by, I will pop out and gun for my friend who I know is hiding across the street." Well, when I popped out I saw it was a POLICE car, passenger door open, driving slowly, deputy with a shotgun walking along with the car, using it for cover.
He saw me pop up and pointed his shotgun at me. He must have been a cool customer because I did not get blown away. At than range (a couple of yards), the shotgun would have really made a mess of me.
Anyway, I relate this tale of teenage misadventure to make the following points.
1. It's too bad we live in a society where it just isn't safe to play with toy guns outside.
2. To *some* extent at least it doesn't matter what your toy gun looks like. The cops still showed up for Lazer Tag. Because lighting was good where I was, the cop who aimed at me was able to make the right decision about my threat level. If it was darker it wouldn't have mattered what the toy gun looked like. I probably would have been shot based on my posture and the vaguely gun-shaped thing in my hand.
If the LT pistol had looked like a real gun, I probably WOULD be dead. I still don't support laws that outlaw toy guns, or force restrictions on them. I am a fairly libertarian kind of person.
Yeah, I have heard of it. I think it is actually called the "Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship," or something similar -- the acronym is definitely DCM. I have friends who do the matches.
To qualify for a rifle you have to participate in a few DCM matches. Once that is done, your Garand is just a couple hundred bucks or so. Sometimes you get luckyand receive one still in the cosmoline.
I am amazed that the DCM lived throught the dark Clinton years.
This story really makes me worry that I'll get busted for freerifle.com.
FreeRifle.com is obviously a joke, right? A witty (sort of) send-up of the idiotic companies we saw during the height of the internet business craze... Right?
Now I'm seriously considering putting a disclaimer on the page, which will ruin the parody.
I think the reason is that the free Unix-alikes are complicated, and their monkeys can't handle the support. It would cost them more to train people, and develop documentation to support the non "mainstream" OS user. It is much easier and cheaper to blame every problem on the customer, pinning it on the OS choice.
As to more likely to run a server -- probably true as well.
When we signed up for @Home in Seattle I had to train my wife never to say anything like Mac, Linux, or BSD to their staff. I found out later that they are "tolerant" of alternative OSes, but I didn't want to take any chances. I even got a static IP too, but they just started trying to take it away. No exemption for Linux was mentioned. I will mention that that is happening in D/FW if they bring it up again.
The ToS don't let you run a server, but I am running a few Apache virtual hosts and getting sometimes 700+ unique visitors a day... If they do any kind of serious auditing, they'll find me sooner or later. Fingers crossed. I don't want the hassle or expense of switching to DSL.
I am also running my own mail server, because as you said, theirs sucks. Running your own internet services on your own hardware is a great experience. Couldn't live without it now.
The "prions" that are thought to cause "mad cow disease" are proteins. They are also exceptionally tough. Autoclaving won't wreck them, for example. It all depends on how the protein is formed and folded.
It's not as if "Science" acts with one mind. What you are saying is as ridiculous as me blaming you for the global warming and the Clippers. What were YOU doing this weekend? Maybe when you were out seeing a movie there was some homeless guy freezing to death in an alley, or dying from an OD, right in your town? And what did YOU do to stop it? Nothing. When you were watching Babylon 5 reruns this week, you weren't doing anything to stop nuclear proliferation, were you? Clearly YOU are at fault for these things and probably many more.
That's a stupid argument, isn't it? So stop blaming "Science."
I think that we need to have some sort of guaranteed legal representation for civil cases just as we do for criminal cases. That way, if you get sued by someone or some corporation, you have at least SOME kind of legal representation that you don't have to pay for.
Naturally if you have the money you may wish to buy a better lawyer. But since our system really lets you wreck someone with civil suits, there needs to be some kind of protection when suits are filed in aggression.
She represents publishers of newsletters that command a $14,000 subscription rate, not curious george...
I'm familiar with Tetrahedron Letters. It's a journal of inorganic chemistry articles. Some really useful stuff, if you are into that kind of thing. I had to copy articles out of it for some chem class I was taking in grad school. It's pretty obscure material, which naturally would make it expensive, but... $14000/year? That's crazy!
The actual production cost for a product like that can't be more than $2/copy, and that is making a huge allowance for the expense of the quality paper. (a typical 32-64 page gaming book, with a color cover, costs less than $1/copy to manufacture. Not counting staff costs, of course.) I wonder how many subs they have?
Hopefully the system will be accurate enough. What if there's a racetrack right next to a residential area? I race in parking lots, which are often right by homes.
I haven't driven in the bay area much, but what I saw made it look a lot like LA, and in LA someone driving 100 sticks out really badly. You must have a really amazing route to work to let you do that safely -- or, you are that guy that everyone else hates for weaving in and out of traffic, and you're gonna kill someone eventually.
I do agree 110% about driving schools and autocross. I never really understood the limits of my car or myself until I started throwing the vehicle around a track. Fun AND educational, can't beat it.
What about people who race their cars? Don't laugh, there are plenty of people with normal street cars who enjoy racing them on a track in a controlled environment (www.scca.org). I wonder if sports car enthusiasts will be able to get waivers for sporting events?
If this madness hits the states, I hope people will have the guts to protest vigorously and snip their GPS antennas.
The US gov't has mandated that all cell phones made past a certain point in time (a year or three from now -- pretty soon, can't recall just when) have a GPS in them. I do NOT want "the man" knowing where I am going all the time... even if it's for my safety. I'll take my chances.
Ever since OJ we've been able to doubt our heros...
Who the heck here considers OJ a hero? I'm 29, and at this ripe old age OJ is still "that football player in The Naked Gun" and "the footbal guy from the car rental commercials." If Shaq knifed someone, I could at least understand why it was the top story every day for over a year.
I bet I'm an old fart for the Slashdot crowd... the OJ trial hype was probably TOTALLY incomprehensible for anyone younger than me (it was just "mostly incomprehensible" to me). Are there a lot of teenagers here who always looked up to OJ? I'd be surprised.
Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.
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I've never had luck arguing against the "what do you have to hide" guys by giving examples of escalation. Invariably, they say, "I still wouldn't care if the state videotaped me and my blowup doll, I'm no criminal, it's worth it to be safe, what do you have to hide, blah blah blah."
I don't know if those people genuinely FEEL that way, or if they are simply intellectually lazy, and don't feel like thinking the situation (or their own true feelings) through.
It's always easier to sit on your ass and say you don't care, even if a little bit of you does. People lie to themselves and to others all the time. If we can find a way to overcome this apathy, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, fear is the best antidote, and by the time these type of people are scared it's way too late to do anything about the situation.
Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.
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Even if the Waco folks started the fire (which is REALLY debatable) everything up to that point was a debacle, compliments of the Feds.
All they had to do was pick up Koresh when he was by himself running errands in town. Which he did frequently. Everyone in the community knew him. Thought he was strange, but not violent. But the Feds decided to, well, make a federal case out of it and send out the thugs.
There were little kids in that compound, and for weeks the Feds played all sorts of awful noises for psych warfare purposes -- the noise of animals in pain and other such stuff. They cut off the electricity and water. And eventually they started using tanks to knock the building down. If they were really interested in a peaceful solution, they could have tried a lot of different things.
It didn't have to end that way. It could have been handled differently. And just because someone is an unsavory religious freak doesn't mean it's OK to abuse their rights.
Citizens should always keep a sharp, critical eye on the actions of their government. Better for us to be a little too critical of the government's actions than a little too lenient, because once things start going to hell, it takes a LONG time for the pendulum to swing back the other way.
Cops are not bad people, usually. A job that gives power like that, it does tend to attract losers, but on the whole cops are decent people.
Not that they'll treat you decently much of the time. I admit that. I have my own stories, like many people. And I am still a cop supporter.
I know cops. They rapidly get desensitized to all the awful things they see. It's a defense mechanism. If they didn't get that way, they'd go crazy with worry and stress. That goes for the bad guys and the average Joe Citizens they meet on the job. Stick to the rules. No discussion. No analysis. Do the job. Survive. From a citizen's point of view, it sucks. But look at it from their side -- it's the only way they can stay effective in their job AND stay sane.
Cops also have a very strong clique mentality. Ever been on a ridealong, or hung out with cops? It's a whole 'nother world. Suddenly, you are on the INSIDE of this giant, powerful machine. Even as a hanger-on, on your ride-along, you start to look at "civilians" a little differently. Like they are a little lower on the food chain. It's undeniably COOL when you get to wear the ballistic armor with "POLICE" on it as you walk around with your cop friend, looking for some scumbag, and people passing you on the street say, "excuse me, Officer." Weird feeling. I can see how one would get to like it.
Power is intoxicating, and then when your whole day is spent dealing with the worst society has to offer, it is hard to spare any enthusiasm for the good people you meet on the job. Civilians are the things you interact with to perform your job. Some are bad people. Others are just... less bad.
My best advice for dealing with cops is just COMPLY. When a cop interacts with you, there is some transaction he wants to get done -- getting information, ticketing you, arresting you, whatever. Your actions won't change his goals, except maybe for whining your way out of a speeding ticket. So be polite. Be cooperative. Let the cop get his transaction done, and he will leave you alone. There are courts to sort things out afterwards. That isn't the cop's job.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows that Microsoft is dead in the water in three years, and everyone knows that Linux and the open-source movement will replace them. These things are beyond refutation...
Exactly -- just as irrefutable as these truths we all know:
- Email has totally removed our need for physical mail
- The web has totally supplanted the old-fashioned print industry
Look, just because something newr, better, cheaper comes along doesn't mean that the old way of doing things is dead. Open source may put MS in trouble -- in SOME areas. But saying they'll be "dead" in 3 years is crazy.
There will always, always be a need for commercial software. First of all, some software is DULL, and no one will want to code it for fun. Secondly, there will always be companies with deep pockets who can fund a very competent closed-source project. And what about apps like air traffic control? You want to fly into an airport running GNU-ATC v0.9B? Assuming it even got written, no one would use it because for some applications you need a company backing the product -- uptime, reliability, support. And I doubt that open-source support firms like VA Linux can fill in ALL those gaps.
Open source is great. Just don't make it a religious crusade.
Its sort of the myth of the paperless office. People have been saying we'll stop using paper for years...
You have it exactly. Wish I could mod you up.
The idea that a perfectly good older technology (printing presses, paper) will be blown away by a more sophisticated, more expensive technology is BS. Electronic books may be great for some things, but they will suck at other things -- a LOT of other things -- and printing companies will stay in business.
Then again, since I am in publishing maybe I am an old-fashioned dinosaur who is going to get modded down.
Do you know if there is a way to record multiple video streams simultaneously with free software? If I had 4 cameras and and a fast computer, could I capture 4 full-frame video streams at once?
Damnit...couldn't you just flame me back? Why did you have to go and be all reasonable?
:)
Muahaha! My master plan. Apology accepted.
Isn't slippery slope usually considered a logical fallacy...?
Well, not everyone believes it's a valid argument, but if you look at history there are a lot of examples. Even in the state of California, where I used to live, we went from "register your 'evil' guns and we promise they'll stay legal, we just want to keep track of them" to "we changed out minds, turn them in or you are a criminal" within a year or so. So it can happen.
Switzerland: Google around for data, I don't have links around. But they are quite a gun culture, with some mandatory military service, and a lot of full-auto weapons knocking around. I don't have all the details here, but suffice to say with all that hardware misuse is infrequent.
Economist article: Reading it now. You should read Gary Kleck's studies. But this stuff is hard to study, it may never really get worked out.
Truthfully, I don't care if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that carrying a gun statistically makes me MORE at risk. I am the kind of person who would rather take the "risk," trusting in my intelligence and skills to carry the day if I ever had to use the weapon. (I do shoot pistol competitively. I have no experience with being attacked, but operation of the hardware is second nature and I have a lot of faith in that. I live in Seattle, where I can get a permit to carry a weapon, and I plan to do so. I shoot better than 99% of the cops out there, and I have an even temper.)
I believe you mentioned somewhere in another post that you disapproved of too much sex in the media...
Nope, wasn't me. I do not understand the American fear of that material either. We are a very odd culture here... it probably looks TOTALLY insane to an outsider. My Aussie friends who used to live here were in complete culture shock the whole time.
>Could it be because the NRA bribes the republican party with millions of dollars to prevent any gun law, no matter how common sense, from being passed or enforced?
Wow, you have it all wrong. Understandable, you aren't from here, the system probably looks screwy. Well, it is. But one thing you should be crystal clear on is this: the pro-gunners here are strongly, strongly in favor of the enforcement of existing anti-gun-crime laws. The NRA and its kin are big backers of stuff like "use a gun, go to jail." The reason is simple -- they know that the only chance they have not to get new, more restrictive gun bans passed is to enforce the "abuse a gun, go to jail" laws that are already out there. So whatever else we may disagree on, or whatever you think about politics over here, just understand that one thing.
It is true that the NRA lobbies against every single gun restriction. They're believers in the slipperly slope thing. Give an inch, you lose a mile. (Yes, I am an NRA member.)
>Why would someone ever be anti-gun if it wasn't to save kids from being killed by guns?
There is one other reason: To change society. We have a lot of anti-gun-CULTURE sentiment here. There are a lot of people who seem to care less about "the children" than they do about getting rid of people who have a tradition of gun ownership. It's an ideological struggle, as bitter as any one a society has had over religion, abortion, or anything else. You just don't see it that way unless you are on the front lines as an activist for one side or the other.
There are polite, well-armed societies out there like Switzerland. Every man there has a machine gun, given to him by the state. Yet their society isn't in chaos. Instead of trying to figure out what they are doing right, here in the US they are trying to paint all guns and the gun culture as evil.
There is one other main reason to be anti-gun: many anti gunners simply don't believe in the possibility or the right to self-defense. They prefer to rely on the police for everything, and they are trying to arrange it so that you have no other option. I find these people especially odious. Self-defense is a basic human right, and the best tool for it is a gun. Even if you don't think people should be allowed to carry guns, they should have the right to keep one at home.
>Oh, of course, it is all a plot to disarm white trash so the UN can invade and occupy their precious trailer parks.
Wow, nice shot! You combined conspiracy theory and classic US white trash racism and tried to paint me with it because we disagree. Very classy. Very mature. C'mon... start taking about my overalls or pickup truck.
Wish I had a +1 for you, well said.
As to being afraid of guns -- well, it is better than being cocky and overconfident. But you are not being served by your fear. Too much fear is a detriment. If you have trustworthy friends or relatives who go shooting, try to go on a trip with them. Learn a little, like how to handle a gun safely. Having knowledge like that can never hurt.
I actually think they should teach kids about guns in school, kind of like what they do with cars. They should show videos of gunshot wounds, like they do with car crashes. They should teach you basic things like "don't point a gun at anyone."
(I actually think that kids should be taught HOW to shoot in school, because training can instill respect for the weapon, and it demystifies it, making daddy's hidden gun less attractive.)
1. It's already illegal to be a fool and store your gun where kids can get at it. It has been for a long time. The penalties are severe. Such laws seem never to be enforced. Why? Beats me. Probably because the anti-gun crowd has an easier time getting more laws passed with a pile of dead kids around. If some parents did get locked up for being retards, other parents might get a clue and rates of accidental shootings might decline. That probably isn't optimal for the Master Plan, which is getting rid of all the guns period. (Was this an excessively cynical comment? Maybe. Maybe not.)
2. The solution to bad parents is not more laws.
As to the rest... forget it, I'm too lazy to have this argument today. Let's just agree to disagree.
When I was 16 or so, I was playing Lazer Tag in the street in front of a friend's house. There were 3 of us. Two had the pistols (black, with red blinkenlights) and one had the Lazer Tag rifle (big and white, like a refrigerator, with red blinkenlights).
We were playing at night. Someone in the neighborhood called the cops; we were told later that they had called in "man with a gun prowling around." Maybe they made that call knowing we had toy guns, because they just wanted us to go away. I'll never know.
Anyway, the cops show up. I almost got killed. Literally. I was hiding behind a parked car. I hear a car driving up the street, and I think, "when it passes by, I will pop out and gun for my friend who I know is hiding across the street." Well, when I popped out I saw it was a POLICE car, passenger door open, driving slowly, deputy with a shotgun walking along with the car, using it for cover.
He saw me pop up and pointed his shotgun at me. He must have been a cool customer because I did not get blown away. At than range (a couple of yards), the shotgun would have really made a mess of me.
Anyway, I relate this tale of teenage misadventure to make the following points.
1. It's too bad we live in a society where it just isn't safe to play with toy guns outside.
2. To *some* extent at least it doesn't matter what your toy gun looks like. The cops still showed up for Lazer Tag. Because lighting was good where I was, the cop who aimed at me was able to make the right decision about my threat level. If it was darker it wouldn't have mattered what the toy gun looked like. I probably would have been shot based on my posture and the vaguely gun-shaped thing in my hand.
If the LT pistol had looked like a real gun, I probably WOULD be dead. I still don't support laws that outlaw toy guns, or force restrictions on them. I am a fairly libertarian kind of person.
Yeah, I have heard of it. I think it is actually called the "Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship," or something similar -- the acronym is definitely DCM. I have friends who do the matches.
To qualify for a rifle you have to participate in a few DCM matches. Once that is done, your Garand is just a couple hundred bucks or so. Sometimes you get luckyand receive one still in the cosmoline.
I am amazed that the DCM lived throught the dark Clinton years.
FreeRifle.com is obviously a joke, right? A witty (sort of) send-up of the idiotic companies we saw during the height of the internet business craze... Right?
Now I'm seriously considering putting a disclaimer on the page, which will ruin the parody.
I think the reason is that the free Unix-alikes are complicated, and their monkeys can't handle the support. It would cost them more to train people, and develop documentation to support the non "mainstream" OS user. It is much easier and cheaper to blame every problem on the customer, pinning it on the OS choice.
As to more likely to run a server -- probably true as well.
When we signed up for @Home in Seattle I had to train my wife never to say anything like Mac, Linux, or BSD to their staff. I found out later that they are "tolerant" of alternative OSes, but I didn't want to take any chances. I even got a static IP too, but they just started trying to take it away. No exemption for Linux was mentioned. I will mention that that is happening in D/FW if they bring it up again.
The ToS don't let you run a server, but I am running a few Apache virtual hosts and getting sometimes 700+ unique visitors a day... If they do any kind of serious auditing, they'll find me sooner or later. Fingers crossed. I don't want the hassle or expense of switching to DSL.
I am also running my own mail server, because as you said, theirs sucks. Running your own internet services on your own hardware is a great experience. Couldn't live without it now.
It depends on the protein.
The "prions" that are thought to cause "mad cow disease" are proteins. They are also exceptionally tough. Autoclaving won't wreck them, for example. It all depends on how the protein is formed and folded.
It's not as if "Science" acts with one mind. What you are saying is as ridiculous as me blaming you for the global warming and the Clippers. What were YOU doing this weekend? Maybe when you were out seeing a movie there was some homeless guy freezing to death in an alley, or dying from an OD, right in your town? And what did YOU do to stop it? Nothing. When you were watching Babylon 5 reruns this week, you weren't doing anything to stop nuclear proliferation, were you? Clearly YOU are at fault for these things and probably many more.
That's a stupid argument, isn't it? So stop blaming "Science."
I think that we need to have some sort of guaranteed legal representation for civil cases just as we do for criminal cases. That way, if you get sued by someone or some corporation, you have at least SOME kind of legal representation that you don't have to pay for.
Naturally if you have the money you may wish to buy a better lawyer. But since our system really lets you wreck someone with civil suits, there needs to be some kind of protection when suits are filed in aggression.
I'm familiar with Tetrahedron Letters. It's a journal of inorganic chemistry articles. Some really useful stuff, if you are into that kind of thing. I had to copy articles out of it for some chem class I was taking in grad school. It's pretty obscure material, which naturally would make it expensive, but... $14000/year? That's crazy!
The actual production cost for a product like that can't be more than $2/copy, and that is making a huge allowance for the expense of the quality paper. (a typical 32-64 page gaming book, with a color cover, costs less than $1/copy to manufacture. Not counting staff costs, of course.) I wonder how many subs they have?
I have 2 FreeBSD boxes at home. 1 (3.4) is my firewall/webserver/natd box. The other (4.2) is my mp3 jukebox. (I chose webplay and it rules!)
I have never had a problem with an MP3 played over Samba skipping, and my firewall/file server box is a lowly P133. The jukebox is a P200.
For the record I just set up a Debian partition on another box, so that I can become an educated BSD snob. ;)
The MS stake in Apple is something like $200M. It ain't billions of bucks.
Hopefully the system will be accurate enough. What if there's a racetrack right next to a residential area? I race in parking lots, which are often right by homes.
I haven't driven in the bay area much, but what I saw made it look a lot like LA, and in LA someone driving 100 sticks out really badly. You must have a really amazing route to work to let you do that safely -- or, you are that guy that everyone else hates for weaving in and out of traffic, and you're gonna kill someone eventually.
I do agree 110% about driving schools and autocross. I never really understood the limits of my car or myself until I started throwing the vehicle around a track. Fun AND educational, can't beat it.
What about people who race their cars? Don't laugh, there are plenty of people with normal street cars who enjoy racing them on a track in a controlled environment (www.scca.org). I wonder if sports car enthusiasts will be able to get waivers for sporting events?
If this madness hits the states, I hope people will have the guts to protest vigorously and snip their GPS antennas.
The US gov't has mandated that all cell phones made past a certain point in time (a year or three from now -- pretty soon, can't recall just when) have a GPS in them. I do NOT want "the man" knowing where I am going all the time... even if it's for my safety. I'll take my chances.
Flame on.
Ever since OJ we've been able to doubt our heros... Who the heck here considers OJ a hero? I'm 29, and at this ripe old age OJ is still "that football player in The Naked Gun" and "the footbal guy from the car rental commercials." If Shaq knifed someone, I could at least understand why it was the top story every day for over a year. I bet I'm an old fart for the Slashdot crowd... the OJ trial hype was probably TOTALLY incomprehensible for anyone younger than me (it was just "mostly incomprehensible" to me). Are there a lot of teenagers here who always looked up to OJ? I'd be surprised.
I've never had luck arguing against the "what do you have to hide" guys by giving examples of escalation. Invariably, they say, "I still wouldn't care if the state videotaped me and my blowup doll, I'm no criminal, it's worth it to be safe, what do you have to hide, blah blah blah."
I don't know if those people genuinely FEEL that way, or if they are simply intellectually lazy, and don't feel like thinking the situation (or their own true feelings) through.
It's always easier to sit on your ass and say you don't care, even if a little bit of you does. People lie to themselves and to others all the time. If we can find a way to overcome this apathy, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, fear is the best antidote, and by the time these type of people are scared it's way too late to do anything about the situation.
Even if the Waco folks started the fire (which is REALLY debatable) everything up to that point was a debacle, compliments of the Feds.
All they had to do was pick up Koresh when he was by himself running errands in town. Which he did frequently. Everyone in the community knew him. Thought he was strange, but not violent. But the Feds decided to, well, make a federal case out of it and send out the thugs.
There were little kids in that compound, and for weeks the Feds played all sorts of awful noises for psych warfare purposes -- the noise of animals in pain and other such stuff. They cut off the electricity and water. And eventually they started using tanks to knock the building down. If they were really interested in a peaceful solution, they could have tried a lot of different things.
It didn't have to end that way. It could have been handled differently. And just because someone is an unsavory religious freak doesn't mean it's OK to abuse their rights.
Citizens should always keep a sharp, critical eye on the actions of their government. Better for us to be a little too critical of the government's actions than a little too lenient, because once things start going to hell, it takes a LONG time for the pendulum to swing back the other way.
man, I'm destroying my karma tonight!
Cops are not bad people, usually. A job that gives power like that, it does tend to attract losers, but on the whole cops are decent people.
Not that they'll treat you decently much of the time. I admit that. I have my own stories, like many people. And I am still a cop supporter.
I know cops. They rapidly get desensitized to all the awful things they see. It's a defense mechanism. If they didn't get that way, they'd go crazy with worry and stress. That goes for the bad guys and the average Joe Citizens they meet on the job. Stick to the rules. No discussion. No analysis. Do the job. Survive. From a citizen's point of view, it sucks. But look at it from their side -- it's the only way they can stay effective in their job AND stay sane.
Cops also have a very strong clique mentality. Ever been on a ridealong, or hung out with cops? It's a whole 'nother world. Suddenly, you are on the INSIDE of this giant, powerful machine. Even as a hanger-on, on your ride-along, you start to look at "civilians" a little differently. Like they are a little lower on the food chain. It's undeniably COOL when you get to wear the ballistic armor with "POLICE" on it as you walk around with your cop friend, looking for some scumbag, and people passing you on the street say, "excuse me, Officer." Weird feeling. I can see how one would get to like it.
Power is intoxicating, and then when your whole day is spent dealing with the worst society has to offer, it is hard to spare any enthusiasm for the good people you meet on the job. Civilians are the things you interact with to perform your job. Some are bad people. Others are just... less bad.
My best advice for dealing with cops is just COMPLY. When a cop interacts with you, there is some transaction he wants to get done -- getting information, ticketing you, arresting you, whatever. Your actions won't change his goals, except maybe for whining your way out of a speeding ticket. So be polite. Be cooperative. Let the cop get his transaction done, and he will leave you alone. There are courts to sort things out afterwards. That isn't the cop's job.