Alot of the scientists touting impending doom work for universities and government. They too have a bias; impending doom means more grants & appropriations for more research. More appropriations means better offices, improved labs & computers, etc.
Climate is a cyclical thing... that's accepted by everyone. Many scientists attribute changes in climate patterns as a combination of natural factors with the shift of industrialization from Europe & North America to Asia. Historical data from when North America began industrializing supports this.
But that isn't as sexy as global catastrophe resulting from human activity, and thus doesn't get the attention or funding that it should.
The environmental people are conflicted because they are classic suburbanites. They want to move to a beautiful village or suburban community and lock the door behind them.
I went to a zoning board meeting to get a fence permit. I was stuck at this meeting until almost 1AM because some anti-sprawl activist group had about 20 speakers present to speak out against the environmental destruction that a Walgreens (!) would reap on an already bustling commercial corridor. They were demanding building moratoriums and injunctions against the "sprawl" projects for hours.
The president of the group was someone I recognized: a woman who just built a McMansion in a 300-house subdivision whose homeowners association put nearby farmers out of business because they didn't like the smell of the animals.
People like that represent the money behind the environmental movement. They are against sprawl, until they buy a house on the new subdivision. They want people to move back into the cities, but are unwilling to send kids to urban schools. They protest Wal-Mart's environmental impact when a new one comes to town, yet drive 15 miles to another another one to save $0.10 on green beans.
Science tells us to choose the cleaner option--use less energy.
And that is the problem with the environmental movement. I don't see the millions of environmentalists giving up electricity or their homes in the suburbs or the country.
All that we hear is some bleating about how we need to "stop consuming" or look for "solutions" to population growth.
Red Hat and Suse did an end-run around the LSB by making deals with big companies.
Red Hat partnered with Oracle, hence Oracle is supported only on RHEL. Suse partnered with IBM on Power and Z-Series platforms, and they are the dominant player there.
If you follow some of the posters here and solder yourself a custom power regulator for everything you own, and it subsequently burns your house down, you will get $0 from your insurance company when they figure it out.
1) "Oh look! It has more vulnerabilities than IE!" (tho they fail to state how critical these are. And don't forget that Firefox 1.03 was just released, fixing these. How long it took IE to release theirs?)
You have no idea how long these vulnerabilities have been out there, as security-related bugzilla threads are usually locked.
Microsoft generally announces vulnerabilities when they have a patch ready for release too.
I think that Firefox is the best browser out there, but declaring that its 100% secure is quite foolish. Mozilla/Firefox is built around a complex cross-platform framework that few people really understand well... and there's bound to be bugs.
There's a critical difference between a "real" engineer and a software engineer. When a building fails or a bridge collapses as a result of a critical design flaw, engineers lose their licenses and can even face criminal charges.
When software fails, most software engineers shrug their shoulders and release a patch or sometimes even redefine success to eliminate errors.
Alot of it has to do with BS accounting practices.
I worked at a place that wanted to upgrade Office '97 to 2003 due to some application that was using features in 2003.
It turned out to be cheaper to buy new machines with Office 2003 preinstalled, because we could use capital funds to make the purchase. If we had tried to upgrade, the money would have come out the operational budget and we would've laid off a bunch of contractors.
Set up security stations and look for people with USB drives. When you discover someone obscounding with IP, call an all hands meeting and cane the SoB. If caning is illegal in your area, just knock the guy to the floor and have the entire group stomp him. (This is also a teambuilding exercise)
Corporal punishment will assert your IP authority and eliminate other disiplinary issues.
Recent generations of cruise missiles have been equipped with GPS... but for nearly thirty years they were successfully equippped with intertial guidance systems.
LORAN was used to guide warplanes.... does that make the creation of that navigation technology warmongering?
I'm not taking potshots at Red Hat. I used Red Hat linux for years, like the company and know people who work there.
The company made a business decision that is working out pretty well for them. That's cool with me, they give back to the community and employ alot of smart people.
Note that people aren't failsafe. There have been a few incidents where kids have taken over and run subway trains for hours without anybody noticing. In one case in the 80's people cheered at platforms in Queens because the train was on time for the first time in ages.
The problem with Fedora is that it changes too rapidly for server installs. Red Hat uses Fedora as a testing ground, and is willing to full features out at any times.
Although it might be usable in a smaller company; a big server environment makes it painful to accept the churn (and huge changes) that Fedora introduces.
You also couldn't use Fedora as a mass-deployed desktop platform, for instance... unless you routinely wipe out and refresh systems.
IMHO Fedora is a great learning platform, and an excellent distro for individual hackers or programmers. I used it until a few months ago when we started using Suse in the office. But it just isn't intended to be used within companies.
Debian is great in theory, you get a good, working system without the headaches of something like Gentoo. But obviously they are having trouble attracting developers and are fading away.
"I read his post to mean "madden = football", as in all kinds of football are the same"
You read wrong. We're talking about games here, not leagues. I never understood the viability of sports game franchises at all. Why would you drop $50 or $60 on Madden 2005 if you already own 2004?
It obvious to anyone that football is football from a game designer's perspective. If you think EA isn't just changing some uniforms and stadiums for an NCAA football game, you're deluding yourself.
Release a friggin distribution or just shut Debian down.
Seriously, they haven't had a stable release in nearly three years. Projects like Ubuntu were created due to the complete lack of leadership on Debian's part.
In the wake of Red Hat's withdrawl of a viable free linux distro, Debian should be thriving right now. Instead its fading away.
Slashdot Mirror
"...not all scientists are funded equally"
Good point.
Alot of the scientists touting impending doom work for universities and government. They too have a bias; impending doom means more grants & appropriations for more research. More appropriations means better offices, improved labs & computers, etc.
Climate is a cyclical thing... that's accepted by everyone. Many scientists attribute changes in climate patterns as a combination of natural factors with the shift of industrialization from Europe & North America to Asia. Historical data from when North America began industrializing supports this.
But that isn't as sexy as global catastrophe resulting from human activity, and thus doesn't get the attention or funding that it should.
The environmental people are conflicted because they are classic suburbanites. They want to move to a beautiful village or suburban community and lock the door behind them.
I went to a zoning board meeting to get a fence permit. I was stuck at this meeting until almost 1AM because some anti-sprawl activist group had about 20 speakers present to speak out against the environmental destruction that a Walgreens (!) would reap on an already bustling commercial corridor. They were demanding building moratoriums and injunctions against the "sprawl" projects for hours.
The president of the group was someone I recognized: a woman who just built a McMansion in a 300-house subdivision whose homeowners association put nearby farmers out of business because they didn't like the smell of the animals.
People like that represent the money behind the environmental movement. They are against sprawl, until they buy a house on the new subdivision. They want people to move back into the cities, but are unwilling to send kids to urban schools. They protest Wal-Mart's environmental impact when a new one comes to town, yet drive 15 miles to another another one to save $0.10 on green beans.
And that is the problem with the environmental movement. I don't see the millions of environmentalists giving up electricity or their homes in the suburbs or the country.
All that we hear is some bleating about how we need to "stop consuming" or look for "solutions" to population growth.
Hopefully I will have mastered Team Fortress 2 by that time.
Thanks... that's really helpful, I had been unable to find a reference to the actual legislation!
Write your Senator and ask them to oppose the measure. The bill is Senate #786.
Don't be rude. Identify yourself as a constituent and express your feelings about the issue.
Red Hat and Suse did an end-run around the LSB by making deals with big companies.
Red Hat partnered with Oracle, hence Oracle is supported only on RHEL. Suse partnered with IBM on Power and Z-Series platforms, and they are the dominant player there.
If you follow some of the posters here and solder yourself a custom power regulator for everything you own, and it subsequently burns your house down, you will get $0 from your insurance company when they figure it out.
If you did the same thing as the linux community, you'd ship binary drivers with your kernel, violating the letter and spirit of the GPL.
You have no idea how long these vulnerabilities have been out there, as security-related bugzilla threads are usually locked.
Microsoft generally announces vulnerabilities when they have a patch ready for release too.
I think that Firefox is the best browser out there, but declaring that its 100% secure is quite foolish. Mozilla/Firefox is built around a complex cross-platform framework that few people really understand well... and there's bound to be bugs.
There's a critical difference between a "real" engineer and a software engineer. When a building fails or a bridge collapses as a result of a critical design flaw, engineers lose their licenses and can even face criminal charges.
When software fails, most software engineers shrug their shoulders and release a patch or sometimes even redefine success to eliminate errors.
Depends on your point of view. Squeezing into the back of a Civic and trying to get some work done while the chauffeur drives would really suck.
Newsforge was on the scene to report on every grunt and movement. Witnesses report that the feces was stinky.
Give me a break. Google has done this for nearly 2 years now.
Alot of it has to do with BS accounting practices.
I worked at a place that wanted to upgrade Office '97 to 2003 due to some application that was using features in 2003.
It turned out to be cheaper to buy new machines with Office 2003 preinstalled, because we could use capital funds to make the purchase. If we had tried to upgrade, the money would have come out the operational budget and we would've laid off a bunch of contractors.
Don't put up with this nonsense.
Set up security stations and look for people with USB drives. When you discover someone obscounding with IP, call an all hands meeting and cane the SoB. If caning is illegal in your area, just knock the guy to the floor and have the entire group stomp him. (This is also a teambuilding exercise)
Corporal punishment will assert your IP authority and eliminate other disiplinary issues.
Recent generations of cruise missiles have been equipped with GPS... but for nearly thirty years they were successfully equippped with intertial guidance systems.
LORAN was used to guide warplanes.... does that make the creation of that navigation technology warmongering?
Do you know what a cruise missile is?
If you did, you'd see how absurd your statement is.
I'm not taking potshots at Red Hat. I used Red Hat linux for years, like the company and know people who work there.
The company made a business decision that is working out pretty well for them. That's cool with me, they give back to the community and employ alot of smart people.
Train systems have all sorts of failsafes.
Note that people aren't failsafe. There have been a few incidents where kids have taken over and run subway trains for hours without anybody noticing. In one case in the 80's people cheered at platforms in Queens because the train was on time for the first time in ages.
Not at all... those games use different engines.
A Maddden vs. NCAA football game is more like Half-Life vs. Counterstrike. Same game engine & physics, slightly different rules.
The problem with Fedora is that it changes too rapidly for server installs. Red Hat uses Fedora as a testing ground, and is willing to full features out at any times.
Although it might be usable in a smaller company; a big server environment makes it painful to accept the churn (and huge changes) that Fedora introduces.
You also couldn't use Fedora as a mass-deployed desktop platform, for instance... unless you routinely wipe out and refresh systems.
IMHO Fedora is a great learning platform, and an excellent distro for individual hackers or programmers. I used it until a few months ago when we started using Suse in the office. But it just isn't intended to be used within companies.
Debian is great in theory, you get a good, working system without the headaches of something like Gentoo. But obviously they are having trouble attracting developers and are fading away.
"I read his post to mean "madden = football", as in all kinds of football are the same"
You read wrong. We're talking about games here, not leagues. I never understood the viability of sports game franchises at all. Why would you drop $50 or $60 on Madden 2005 if you already own 2004?
It obvious to anyone that football is football from a game designer's perspective. If you think EA isn't just changing some uniforms and stadiums for an NCAA football game, you're deluding yourself.
Release a friggin distribution or just shut Debian down.
Seriously, they haven't had a stable release in nearly three years. Projects like Ubuntu were created due to the complete lack of leadership on Debian's part.
In the wake of Red Hat's withdrawl of a viable free linux distro, Debian should be thriving right now. Instead its fading away.
Now for college sports! woot!
Who buys this crap anyway?