Well, there were other discussions that I cannot provide a link to yet. If you read the Torvalds essay in Open Sources (not the addendum), he trashes microkernels pretty hard.
Basically, the gist of his argument is that microkernels aren't any better than monolithic kernels, simply because any tricks you can pull to optimize a microkernel can be applied towards optimizing a monolithic kernel. Microkernels aren't necessarily any more portable than a well-designed monolithic one, and they don't necessarily guarantee better performance. Further, they have some overhead that monolithic kernels can avoid.
I'm sure all of that is well and good, but the fact that the BeOS kernel exists, is a microkernel, and has a performance on par or better than (depending on the situation) the Linux kernel tends to, in my mind, dispute Torvalds' views that microkernels are basically intellectual playthings not worthy of implementation.
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Good point.:)
How *do* we define merit? Most accurate? Most appealing? Most realistic? (Not necessarily the same as most accurate.) Most forward-looking? I don't know, frankly.
But I *do* know that the paper worth of an individual has absolutely nothing to do with the value/merit/worth of their vision. "Vision" is an inherently personal quality - it isn't something you can walk into a 7-11 and purchase ("Yeah, I'd like a pack of Marlboros... oh yeah, and give me some vision, too.").
I try and be tolerant as well (although you might not guess it from my post above).
The thing that gets my goat are the hypocrites in the open source movement. These are the people who want me to respect their beliefs, ideas, and decisions, but promptly turn around and slam the living crap out of me when something I believe or do is contrary to their ideals. These are the people who, upon even the slightest inkling of misbehaviour on Microsoft's part, cry bloody blue murder - and yet, when the role is reverse, think nothing of doing the exact same things they claim are so unfair when somebody else does it to them.
I try and be tolerant. I try and accept that other people have differing opinions and ideas, and I try and accept that as best I can. But sometimes I simply have to call a spade a spade. I haven't had the same luck as you with the tolerance - I've encounter far more people who believe that open source is the one true nirvana and that anything else amounts to heresy.
But it's also *my* right to choose proprietary software, and by embarking upon a campaign to rid the world of proprietary software you are depriving me of my right to choose it.
I'll stand up for your right to choose Free Software. But in return, I expect you to respect my choice to use and develop proprietary software, even if you don't agree with it.
If you don't respect my rights, then you are hypocrite. Espousing freedom, and then denying others theirs, is hypocrisy. Forcing your particular brand of freedom on me is no freedom at all.
(BTW, Extrasolar, this isn't a particular rant against you personally. This is aimed towards the very strict free software supporters in general. I apologize if you take any personal offense at this.)
Could it be because BeOS is effectively about two years old? (When it first debuted on the vastly more popular Intel architecture.)
No, couldn't be. After all, when Linux was two years old the general populace thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. When was that? 1993? Yeah, Linux was *really* popular and well-known back in 1993.
It's not my theory that open source is a bad methodology. In fact, I admire what Linux has become through the open source method.
My point is actually contrary to what you stated it to be. What I'm saying is that while the open source movement has produced such magnificent software as Linux, producing good software isn't restricted to the open source movement. Simply because a product is developed commercial isn't an automatic stamp of inferior quality. BeOS is an example of a piece of proprietary software that is on par with Linux in terms of quality. Yet people denegrate it as if it was the latest iteration of Windows - the only reason being is that BeOS is closed-source.
I don't want to see any open source operating system go away. I think OSS is going to do great things for the software industry. What I object to is the insistence that open source and proprietary development methodologies cannot co-exist. What I object to is the notion that something is automatically deemed garbage simply because I don't have the opportunity to see the source code. I prefer to judge things on how they work rather than the intellectual motives behind it.
On the contrary, proprietary software is NOT akin to exortion. Here's why: you are not obligated to purchase it.
Nobody is forcing you to buy proprietary software. I've never heard of an instance where a shopper in CompUSA has had a gun held to his or her head and forced to buy a copy of Microsoft Office or Rainbox Six. As a result, it's *your choice* as to whether you want to use/purchase proprietary software.
If you decide to use proprietary software, you are implicitly agreeing to pay the purchase price. Otherwise, you may quite willingly - and are free-as-in-speech to - decline to purchase a commercial/proprietary piece of software in favor of an alternative that is either free-as-in-speech or free-as-in-beer (or both). Since you aren't being forced to buy a particular product, you aren't being forced to pay money - which means you aren't being extorted.
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That's a very fault argument.
On more familiar grounds, Bill Gates is worth billions, and Linus Torvalds isn't. Does that mean Linus' vision has any less merit that Gates'?
Money has nothing to do with the value of somebody's visions. A windfall like Red Hat's is more of a "right place, right time" scenario than anything else. Linux happened to be in the right place at the right time, and the people involved in it now are making a killing. Three years ago, had Red Hat gone public, their stock would've been in the toilet.
No. On the other hand, some of us don't subscribe to the notion that selling a proprietary product is akin to extortion and theft.
Personally, I feel like ESR - I want to use software that doesn't suck. Unlike ESR, I believe that 'lack of suckiness' isn't an exclusive property of the open source movement - that there exists proprietary software which doesn't suck. BeOS is a very good example of that software. Well architectured, easy to program for, and has technology that Linux either is only beginning to get, already has but in a very immature form compared to the BeOS implementation, or won't have for a long time (journalling file systems for the first, MIME-based file types for the second, and system-wide file translators for the third).
Unfortunately, the zealots have convinced the mainstream media that operating systems are a generic product. Perhaps it's true; perhaps it isn't. What that amounts to, however, is that a product that fits my needs far better than Linux can (now or for the forseeable future) has effectively been driven off the market by PR. It smacks horribly of the same tactics Microsoft is berated for by the Linux community.
When I first got into the Linux community, I was amazed at how farsighted it was. No stone was left unturned, nobody was ignored, and every possible repercussion was considered, both in software and in politics. Yet, in the thirst for a taste of Microsoft's blood and caught up in its own delusions of grandeur, the Linux community is acting more and more like the very people they claim to despise. Any action is sanctionable as long as it furthers the goal of open source. Great products, whose only technical "flaw" is that they aren't open-sourced, are gone after with the same ferocity and tenacity as if they are the latest incarnation of bloatware from Microsoft.
Freedom my ass. Paraphrasing somebody else in another article yesterday, if it were left up to the OSS community the only choice I'd get is which open source, free UNIX OS I want to install on my machine.
Maybe tonight I'll back up my BeOS files, format the disk, and install the latest version of Slackware. That way, I can hang out with a bunch of superhumans who know everything.
Frankly, I'm not particularly fussy about version numbers on distribution releases. Once upon a time, version numbers actually meant something; given the way things are going, it's fast becoming that the only thing sticking to a sane versioning scheme is the Linux kernel itself.
Frankly, I'm not going to make a choice of software simply because Mandrake is at version 7 and Red Hat is at version 6.1. I'm going to look at the software on each, where they differ, and which one is more apt to suit my needs. Based on that, I'll choose a distribution.
Further, just to due to my personal preferences, neither Mandrake nor Red Hat would be on my list of distributions. I'm currently attempting to decide between Slackware and Debian - and the vast disparity in versioning numbers between them has absolutely nothing to do with my decision.:)
This was all very clearly explained when Slackware made the jump from version 4 to version 7. Patrick Volkerding made the huge number leap because of all the people who kept asking him if why he wasn't supporting (at the time) "Linux 6," and who basically didn't understand that distribution version numbers and Linux versioning numbers were two separate entities. You can read the statement he made about it on the Slackware web site, under the FAQs section.
Perhaps, because Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number.
Nobody knows, frankly. There wasn't anybody at the beginning of time with a notepad.:)
Whether it can happen only once is basically getting at the heart of, "Are we alone in the universe?" Some will tell you that life is a rare, precious commodity; others will tell you that it's a natural byproduct of any habitable world.
Assuming that life isn't a one-time thing, then it's natural (no pun intended) to assume that it's happened many, many times. Not necessarily on Earth, either. It could be still happening here on Earth today, but we simply don't observe it because we don't know what we're looking for (nobody quite seems to understand the process, nor what *exactly* constitutes life). As a result, we can't brew up simple life in a lab, either.
So if you believe life is more organic than religious (that is, you don't need an omnipotent, omniscient diety to create it), then it's probably a pretty safe assumption that life is continually being created, here on Earth and elsewhere.
One, you aren't "out wandering." The bacteria itself is *inside* the rock. Rock samples taken from Earth, dated at tens of millions of years, have yielded viable bacteria that have simply lain dormant all that time, without oxygen or food.
As far as re-entering Earth's atmosphere, bacteria can survive if they are sufficiently deep inside a meteor, because the heat doesn't penetrate that deep.
In terms of oxygen, some types of bacteria have the ability to go into a sort of "stasis" or hibernation. Again, some types of bacteria have been successfully restored from deep inside rock samples millions of years old. The only way they could survive that long is to go into a form of suspend mode where they can survive without food or oxygen.
When it "lands", the shock isn't going to affect bacteria wedged deep inside a rock.
The rest of your trip sounds pretty accurate though - it's only your conclusions that seem a little too hasty.
The problem with Occam's Razor is that, in universe matters, it doesn't take into account biases.
For instance: Which is MORE reasonable, that the Earth is the center of everything and that the stars and Sun rotate around the Earth, or that the Earth is but a minor planet, orbiting around a star, in a galaxy which orbits around a central axis, in a universe filled with unevenly distributed other galaxies?
The latter option, you'd say. But you have not only scientific evidence, but you've most likely been brought up with the world believing it's off in a corner somewhere. So let's move back to the 1400s. In the 1400s, which answer would've been more reasonable? The former, because the Catholic Church, almost the sole center of authority, told you it was.
So in this case, I think, Occam's Razor is a little too Earth-centric. We haven't had the time or the ability to establish a scientific precedent for panspermia, and so without that precedent the notion seems very unreasonable.
Perhaps in several hundred years, when we've settled on Mars and discovered a common ancestry between Earth organisms and Martian lifeforms living in the permafrost and liquid aquifers deep under the Martian surface, you can ask that question again with a little less scientific bias.
We have found similar rocks on Earth. There's a whole classification of rocks that were found (most of them in Antarctica) that have been analyzed and found to be consistent with Martian geography.
It was further confirmed with Pathfinder/Sojourner when they drove Sojourner off to many of the rocks in the Pathfinder landing area. Most of the rock samples they took matched those of the meteors they found in the Antarctic ice flows.
If I remember correctly, the impact happened very early in the formation of the Earth, when our protoplanet was cooled by not very hospitable. Life probably didn't have much of a foothold then. Most likely, it was still the primordial soup, if anything existed at all - enough for a few basic proteins to form, but nothing resembling even the most basic of lifeforms.
Mars, being smaller, would've cooled earlier than Earth and, assuming life gets going in the same amount of time as it did on Earth, would've formed lifeforms earlier than the Earth did. Since early in our solar system's history, planets were being subjected to meteor bombardment, there were probably many Mars rocks that were ejected into space that contained native lifeforms.
Even had life from Mars taken hold on Earth before the Moon was formed so violently, there's little reason not to think another life-bearing rock would've found its way to the post-Moon Earth surface (we've found dozens of post-impact meteors that we believe came from Mars that have landed over the course of prehistory). Some even believe that the Moon-forming impact actually created *better* conditions for life to take hold; which, in idle speculation, might mean that if life had spawned on pre-impact Earth, it would've been even more likely to get a foothold on post-impact Earth.
Disclaimer: I know what I know from reading and educating myself. I am not a telepath, clairvoyant, remote viewer. I do not have the ability to see historical or future events in my mind with any sort of accuracy. Therefore, take everything I say with a grain of salt.
No, it hasn't. It's very controversial, still. For each of the criteria to determine whether it's life, there are arguments and perspectives that support both sides of the issues.
Some say that the rock was contaminated by Earth compounds, but others say that the chemicals detected are too far inside the rock for external terrestrial contamination. This particular group of chemicals *can* be formed by other processes than life, but IIRC living organisms are the most common source of them.
And some scientific discoveries have continued to muddy the waters further. One of the original problems with the "bacteria" theory was that the fossils were FAR too small, and that terrestrial bacteria had never been found that were of comparable size. Not too long ago, bacteria on that scale were discovered (and dubbed "nanobacteria"), which means that it is at least within the realm of possibility that they are fossils.
As most people say, the chances of ever knowing for sure are pretty slim unless the Earth, or some portion of it, gets off their collective arse and funds a scientific discovery mission to Mars. For $50 billion dollars, we can send human beings to Mars for a two year surface mission using existing technology. Split up among several countries, or funded by a large number of private corporations, this would be achievable within a decade.
Look is simply a matter of choosing the right theme.
Content is a separate matter. I don't understand the syntax quite yet (... at all...), but if you look in your ~/.enlightenment directory, I seem to recall that there is a directory for menus. You can edit those menus to add/delete/change menu items and their organization. Again, syntax is something I can't help you with, but that's where it is.
I don't know if there is a global menu change, so that you can make a certain menu structure the default for new users; you're on your own to figure that out.
Careful. There are two versions of Corel Linux being sold - Deluxe and Standard. I was looking in the Woodbury, MN CompUSA yesterday and happened to notice that the Deluxe version (which, among other things, includes Civ:CTP) was put in big cardboard display holders at the front of the store, whereas the Standard version was mixed in with the rest of the Linux stuff on the shelves.
You probably saw the Deluxe version. I wasn't able to find a price on the Standard, but I'm assuming it was something closer to $40 or $50. What it lacks from the Deluxe version, beyond the plastic Tux and a limited edition of Civilization, also escapes me.
The problem with having points that can only be used as negative moderation is that it, too, will be abused. It's simply giving more moderation points, regardless of the intent.
For instance, I'll choose a particularly controversial topic: KDE vs. GNOME. Say I'm a hugely fanatical GNOME supporter, to the point where I think KDE is an utter load of garbage. And, lo and behold, a topic appears on Slashdot where I can exercise my views in a vigorous manner.
With the current system, I have five points. I can either push five posts down, five posts up, or mix it up a little. But I'm still limited to five posts maximum that I can moderate. Under the old system, I have to choose whether moderating a particular post down is worth giving up the ability to moderate another post up. The "Natalie Portman's naked ass" posts can definately go down, but if I'm half the zealot I'm pretending to be, I would ignore the Natalie posts and start moderating the opinions of people that I either agree with or disagree with. You like KDE? *BAM* your post drops a notch. This guy over here, though, thinks GNOME is "the most bitch-ass DE for Linux in the world," so I'll raise his content-free post up a level.
Say, however, Slashdot's new moderation system gives me the ability to moderate five posts, as well as three posts which I can only moderate down. That gives me an effective eight posts that I can moderate. That means I can surpress three posts I disagree with, and raise five that I do agree with. In other words, not only can I still moderate up to five posts, but I still can push down an extra three posts without having to use "free moderation" points to do it.
This could be limited by changing the rules. Perhaps we could have three "free" points and three "down-only" points. But that would still lead to people having a heightened ability to moderate posts down without having their overall moderating ability impaired. The existing system means you have to choose whether you want your opinion heard, or somebody else's opinion squashed. Segregating moderation into "free" and "down-only" relieves you of that choice: you can now make your opinion heard AND squash somebody else's without having to make a decision as to which is more important.
Anyways... I don't quite think simply adding negative moderation only is a viable solution.
However, it's locked into a GUI install which bombs out if it encounters anything (such as a video card) that it doesn't know how to support.
I would debate that. This past weekend I visited a friend, and as part of that visit he installed the downloaded version of Corel Linux. The particular computer he installed it into had, among other things, a PCI modem and an SB64 Gold card. Corel Linux went through the installation without any problems, despite not being able to support the PCI modem and not setting up the support for the SB64 card (no sounds issued forth from the computer after reboot).
I would, however, agree with your assessment tht it's targeted towards newer users who want to migrate from Windows rather than the hardcore Linux guru. For those, we have Slackware and Debian.:)
IE doesn't use any secret COM APIs to acheive this.
I'm not saying IE uses any "secret" COM APIs. Try reading what I write before you respond.
It is not 'artificially' tied together. Infact, some member of the mozilla group has written a COM wrapper that implements IWebBrowser so you can replace IE in windows with mozilla.
Thank you. Since I can replace IE in Windows, it means Windows and IE are not integrated. Which in turn means that Microsoft has blantantly lied during the trial. Perhaps you'd care to revise your statement?
And if you really do want to challenge this point, please explain how an integrated component - which according to earlier definitions cannot be removed or replaced - can be removed and replaced by another.
BTW, windows without IE would not work exactly the same. Therefore it relies on it.
That's a strange statement. First you say that Mozilla, as a COM component, can replace IE, and then you say that Windows won't work quite right without IE. Why not? If Windows is only using the COM interface to IE, then Mozilla/COM should work perfectly.
If it doesn't, and Mozilla/COM has a complete implementation of the published interface for IE, then I see a problem. It means Windows is interacting with IE/COM in an undocumented way. At best, then, Microsoft has been lax in their documentation. At worst, Microsoft has been intentionally and maliciously withholding documentation to bolster their argument that IE and Windows are "integrated."
Your arguments would mean ever OO application is illegal since it integrates many components from many different applications.
If you lack any understanding of what I am saying, then yes that is what my arguments "would mean."
On the other hand, if you'd bother seeing past your fanaticism and read what I actually wrong, you'd see that I'm specifically NOT saying integration, per se, is illegal or wrong. What I AM saying is that in this particular case, there was no technical benefit for integrating IE and Windows (and before you start listing them, read this entire thread, paying attention to the numerous statements as to what actually qualifies as a benefit). --
id and Carmack did NOT have any influence over the decision to open the source for Descent II. In fact, Descent II is largely Descent I with a few additions/changes and different maps, and the Descent I source code has been available for at least two years.
When it was released, Parallax/Interplay stated that they would try to continue releasing the source for their games once the game was no longer viable as a serious product. The release of Descent II source is another step along that road, I expect that in a few years, when Descent III is no longer at the top of the heap and Descent IV has replaced it, Outrage will release the Descent III code.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there were other discussions that I cannot provide a link to yet. If you read the Torvalds essay in Open Sources (not the addendum), he trashes microkernels pretty hard.
Basically, the gist of his argument is that microkernels aren't any better than monolithic kernels, simply because any tricks you can pull to optimize a microkernel can be applied towards optimizing a monolithic kernel. Microkernels aren't necessarily any more portable than a well-designed monolithic one, and they don't necessarily guarantee better performance. Further, they have some overhead that monolithic kernels can avoid.
I'm sure all of that is well and good, but the fact that the BeOS kernel exists, is a microkernel, and has a performance on par or better than (depending on the situation) the Linux kernel tends to, in my mind, dispute Torvalds' views that microkernels are basically intellectual playthings not worthy of implementation.
Good point. :)
How *do* we define merit? Most accurate? Most appealing? Most realistic? (Not necessarily the same as most accurate.) Most forward-looking? I don't know, frankly.
But I *do* know that the paper worth of an individual has absolutely nothing to do with the value/merit/worth of their vision. "Vision" is an inherently personal quality - it isn't something you can walk into a 7-11 and purchase ("Yeah, I'd like a pack of Marlboros... oh yeah, and give me some vision, too.").
I try and be tolerant as well (although you might not guess it from my post above).
The thing that gets my goat are the hypocrites in the open source movement. These are the people who want me to respect their beliefs, ideas, and decisions, but promptly turn around and slam the living crap out of me when something I believe or do is contrary to their ideals. These are the people who, upon even the slightest inkling of misbehaviour on Microsoft's part, cry bloody blue murder - and yet, when the role is reverse, think nothing of doing the exact same things they claim are so unfair when somebody else does it to them.
I try and be tolerant. I try and accept that other people have differing opinions and ideas, and I try and accept that as best I can. But sometimes I simply have to call a spade a spade. I haven't had the same luck as you with the tolerance - I've encounter far more people who believe that open source is the one true nirvana and that anything else amounts to heresy.
Here's to hoping my luck changes.
Yes, it's your right to choose Free Software.
But it's also *my* right to choose proprietary software, and by embarking upon a campaign to rid the world of proprietary software you are depriving me of my right to choose it.
I'll stand up for your right to choose Free Software. But in return, I expect you to respect my choice to use and develop proprietary software, even if you don't agree with it.
If you don't respect my rights, then you are hypocrite. Espousing freedom, and then denying others theirs, is hypocrisy. Forcing your particular brand of freedom on me is no freedom at all.
(BTW, Extrasolar, this isn't a particular rant against you personally. This is aimed towards the very strict free software supporters in general. I apologize if you take any personal offense at this.)
Let's see:
Could it be because BeOS is effectively about two years old? (When it first debuted on the vastly more popular Intel architecture.)
No, couldn't be. After all, when Linux was two years old the general populace thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. When was that? 1993? Yeah, Linux was *really* popular and well-known back in 1993.
It's not my theory that open source is a bad methodology. In fact, I admire what Linux has become through the open source method.
My point is actually contrary to what you stated it to be. What I'm saying is that while the open source movement has produced such magnificent software as Linux, producing good software isn't restricted to the open source movement. Simply because a product is developed commercial isn't an automatic stamp of inferior quality. BeOS is an example of a piece of proprietary software that is on par with Linux in terms of quality. Yet people denegrate it as if it was the latest iteration of Windows - the only reason being is that BeOS is closed-source.
I don't want to see any open source operating system go away. I think OSS is going to do great things for the software industry. What I object to is the insistence that open source and proprietary development methodologies cannot co-exist. What I object to is the notion that something is automatically deemed garbage simply because I don't have the opportunity to see the source code. I prefer to judge things on how they work rather than the intellectual motives behind it.
On the contrary, proprietary software is NOT akin to exortion. Here's why: you are not obligated to purchase it.
Nobody is forcing you to buy proprietary software. I've never heard of an instance where a shopper in CompUSA has had a gun held to his or her head and forced to buy a copy of Microsoft Office or Rainbox Six. As a result, it's *your choice* as to whether you want to use/purchase proprietary software.
If you decide to use proprietary software, you are implicitly agreeing to pay the purchase price. Otherwise, you may quite willingly - and are free-as-in-speech to - decline to purchase a commercial/proprietary piece of software in favor of an alternative that is either free-as-in-speech or free-as-in-beer (or both). Since you aren't being forced to buy a particular product, you aren't being forced to pay money - which means you aren't being extorted.
That's a very fault argument.
On more familiar grounds, Bill Gates is worth billions, and Linus Torvalds isn't. Does that mean Linus' vision has any less merit that Gates'?
Money has nothing to do with the value of somebody's visions. A windfall like Red Hat's is more of a "right place, right time" scenario than anything else. Linux happened to be in the right place at the right time, and the people involved in it now are making a killing. Three years ago, had Red Hat gone public, their stock would've been in the toilet.
No. On the other hand, some of us don't subscribe to the notion that selling a proprietary product is akin to extortion and theft.
Personally, I feel like ESR - I want to use software that doesn't suck. Unlike ESR, I believe that 'lack of suckiness' isn't an exclusive property of the open source movement - that there exists proprietary software which doesn't suck. BeOS is a very good example of that software. Well architectured, easy to program for, and has technology that Linux either is only beginning to get, already has but in a very immature form compared to the BeOS implementation, or won't have for a long time (journalling file systems for the first, MIME-based file types for the second, and system-wide file translators for the third).
Unfortunately, the zealots have convinced the mainstream media that operating systems are a generic product. Perhaps it's true; perhaps it isn't. What that amounts to, however, is that a product that fits my needs far better than Linux can (now or for the forseeable future) has effectively been driven off the market by PR. It smacks horribly of the same tactics Microsoft is berated for by the Linux community.
When I first got into the Linux community, I was amazed at how farsighted it was. No stone was left unturned, nobody was ignored, and every possible repercussion was considered, both in software and in politics. Yet, in the thirst for a taste of Microsoft's blood and caught up in its own delusions of grandeur, the Linux community is acting more and more like the very people they claim to despise. Any action is sanctionable as long as it furthers the goal of open source. Great products, whose only technical "flaw" is that they aren't open-sourced, are gone after with the same ferocity and tenacity as if they are the latest incarnation of bloatware from Microsoft.
Freedom my ass. Paraphrasing somebody else in another article yesterday, if it were left up to the OSS community the only choice I'd get is which open source, free UNIX OS I want to install on my machine.
Maybe tonight I'll back up my BeOS files, format the disk, and install the latest version of Slackware. That way, I can hang out with a bunch of superhumans who know everything.
Frankly, I'm not particularly fussy about version numbers on distribution releases. Once upon a time, version numbers actually meant something; given the way things are going, it's fast becoming that the only thing sticking to a sane versioning scheme is the Linux kernel itself.
:)
Frankly, I'm not going to make a choice of software simply because Mandrake is at version 7 and Red Hat is at version 6.1. I'm going to look at the software on each, where they differ, and which one is more apt to suit my needs. Based on that, I'll choose a distribution.
Further, just to due to my personal preferences, neither Mandrake nor Red Hat would be on my list of distributions. I'm currently attempting to decide between Slackware and Debian - and the vast disparity in versioning numbers between them has absolutely nothing to do with my decision.
It's all marketing.
This was all very clearly explained when Slackware made the jump from version 4 to version 7. Patrick Volkerding made the huge number leap because of all the people who kept asking him if why he wasn't supporting (at the time) "Linux 6," and who basically didn't understand that distribution version numbers and Linux versioning numbers were two separate entities. You can read the statement he made about it on the Slackware web site, under the FAQs section.
Perhaps, because Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number.
*shrug*
Nobody knows, frankly. There wasn't anybody at the beginning of time with a notepad. :)
Whether it can happen only once is basically getting at the heart of, "Are we alone in the universe?" Some will tell you that life is a rare, precious commodity; others will tell you that it's a natural byproduct of any habitable world.
Assuming that life isn't a one-time thing, then it's natural (no pun intended) to assume that it's happened many, many times. Not necessarily on Earth, either. It could be still happening here on Earth today, but we simply don't observe it because we don't know what we're looking for (nobody quite seems to understand the process, nor what *exactly* constitutes life). As a result, we can't brew up simple life in a lab, either.
So if you believe life is more organic than religious (that is, you don't need an omnipotent, omniscient diety to create it), then it's probably a pretty safe assumption that life is continually being created, here on Earth and elsewhere.
Let's examine this a little closer.
One, you aren't "out wandering." The bacteria itself is *inside* the rock. Rock samples taken from Earth, dated at tens of millions of years, have yielded viable bacteria that have simply lain dormant all that time, without oxygen or food.
As far as re-entering Earth's atmosphere, bacteria can survive if they are sufficiently deep inside a meteor, because the heat doesn't penetrate that deep.
In terms of oxygen, some types of bacteria have the ability to go into a sort of "stasis" or hibernation. Again, some types of bacteria have been successfully restored from deep inside rock samples millions of years old. The only way they could survive that long is to go into a form of suspend mode where they can survive without food or oxygen.
When it "lands", the shock isn't going to affect bacteria wedged deep inside a rock.
The rest of your trip sounds pretty accurate though - it's only your conclusions that seem a little too hasty.
The problem with Occam's Razor is that, in universe matters, it doesn't take into account biases.
For instance: Which is MORE reasonable, that the Earth is the center of everything and that the stars and Sun rotate around the Earth, or that the Earth is but a minor planet, orbiting around a star, in a galaxy which orbits around a central axis, in a universe filled with unevenly distributed other galaxies?
The latter option, you'd say. But you have not only scientific evidence, but you've most likely been brought up with the world believing it's off in a corner somewhere. So let's move back to the 1400s. In the 1400s, which answer would've been more reasonable? The former, because the Catholic Church, almost the sole center of authority, told you it was.
So in this case, I think, Occam's Razor is a little too Earth-centric. We haven't had the time or the ability to establish a scientific precedent for panspermia, and so without that precedent the notion seems very unreasonable.
Perhaps in several hundred years, when we've settled on Mars and discovered a common ancestry between Earth organisms and Martian lifeforms living in the permafrost and liquid aquifers deep under the Martian surface, you can ask that question again with a little less scientific bias.
We have found similar rocks on Earth. There's a whole classification of rocks that were found (most of them in Antarctica) that have been analyzed and found to be consistent with Martian geography.
It was further confirmed with Pathfinder/Sojourner when they drove Sojourner off to many of the rocks in the Pathfinder landing area. Most of the rock samples they took matched those of the meteors they found in the Antarctic ice flows.
If I remember correctly, the impact happened very early in the formation of the Earth, when our protoplanet was cooled by not very hospitable. Life probably didn't have much of a foothold then. Most likely, it was still the primordial soup, if anything existed at all - enough for a few basic proteins to form, but nothing resembling even the most basic of lifeforms.
Mars, being smaller, would've cooled earlier than Earth and, assuming life gets going in the same amount of time as it did on Earth, would've formed lifeforms earlier than the Earth did. Since early in our solar system's history, planets were being subjected to meteor bombardment, there were probably many Mars rocks that were ejected into space that contained native lifeforms.
Even had life from Mars taken hold on Earth before the Moon was formed so violently, there's little reason not to think another life-bearing rock would've found its way to the post-Moon Earth surface (we've found dozens of post-impact meteors that we believe came from Mars that have landed over the course of prehistory). Some even believe that the Moon-forming impact actually created *better* conditions for life to take hold; which, in idle speculation, might mean that if life had spawned on pre-impact Earth, it would've been even more likely to get a foothold on post-impact Earth.
Disclaimer: I know what I know from reading and educating myself. I am not a telepath, clairvoyant, remote viewer. I do not have the ability to see historical or future events in my mind with any sort of accuracy. Therefore, take everything I say with a grain of salt.
No, it hasn't. It's very controversial, still. For each of the criteria to determine whether it's life, there are arguments and perspectives that support both sides of the issues.
Some say that the rock was contaminated by Earth compounds, but others say that the chemicals detected are too far inside the rock for external terrestrial contamination. This particular group of chemicals *can* be formed by other processes than life, but IIRC living organisms are the most common source of them.
And some scientific discoveries have continued to muddy the waters further. One of the original problems with the "bacteria" theory was that the fossils were FAR too small, and that terrestrial bacteria had never been found that were of comparable size. Not too long ago, bacteria on that scale were discovered (and dubbed "nanobacteria"), which means that it is at least within the realm of possibility that they are fossils.
As most people say, the chances of ever knowing for sure are pretty slim unless the Earth, or some portion of it, gets off their collective arse and funds a scientific discovery mission to Mars. For $50 billion dollars, we can send human beings to Mars for a two year surface mission using existing technology. Split up among several countries, or funded by a large number of private corporations, this would be achievable within a decade.
Change how?
...), but if you look in your ~/.enlightenment directory, I seem to recall that there is a directory for menus. You can edit those menus to add/delete/change menu items and their organization. Again, syntax is something I can't help you with, but that's where it is.
Look is simply a matter of choosing the right theme.
Content is a separate matter. I don't understand the syntax quite yet (... at all
I don't know if there is a global menu change, so that you can make a certain menu structure the default for new users; you're on your own to figure that out.
Careful. There are two versions of Corel Linux being sold - Deluxe and Standard. I was looking in the Woodbury, MN CompUSA yesterday and happened to notice that the Deluxe version (which, among other things, includes Civ:CTP) was put in big cardboard display holders at the front of the store, whereas the Standard version was mixed in with the rest of the Linux stuff on the shelves.
You probably saw the Deluxe version. I wasn't able to find a price on the Standard, but I'm assuming it was something closer to $40 or $50. What it lacks from the Deluxe version, beyond the plastic Tux and a limited edition of Civilization, also escapes me.
The problem with having points that can only be used as negative moderation is that it, too, will be abused. It's simply giving more moderation points, regardless of the intent.
For instance, I'll choose a particularly controversial topic: KDE vs. GNOME. Say I'm a hugely fanatical GNOME supporter, to the point where I think KDE is an utter load of garbage. And, lo and behold, a topic appears on Slashdot where I can exercise my views in a vigorous manner.
With the current system, I have five points. I can either push five posts down, five posts up, or mix it up a little. But I'm still limited to five posts maximum that I can moderate. Under the old system, I have to choose whether moderating a particular post down is worth giving up the ability to moderate another post up. The "Natalie Portman's naked ass" posts can definately go down, but if I'm half the zealot I'm pretending to be, I would ignore the Natalie posts and start moderating the opinions of people that I either agree with or disagree with. You like KDE? *BAM* your post drops a notch. This guy over here, though, thinks GNOME is "the most bitch-ass DE for Linux in the world," so I'll raise his content-free post up a level.
Say, however, Slashdot's new moderation system gives me the ability to moderate five posts, as well as three posts which I can only moderate down. That gives me an effective eight posts that I can moderate. That means I can surpress three posts I disagree with, and raise five that I do agree with. In other words, not only can I still moderate up to five posts, but I still can push down an extra three posts without having to use "free moderation" points to do it.
This could be limited by changing the rules. Perhaps we could have three "free" points and three "down-only" points. But that would still lead to people having a heightened ability to moderate posts down without having their overall moderating ability impaired. The existing system means you have to choose whether you want your opinion heard, or somebody else's opinion squashed. Segregating moderation into "free" and "down-only" relieves you of that choice: you can now make your opinion heard AND squash somebody else's without having to make a decision as to which is more important.
Anyways... I don't quite think simply adding negative moderation only is a viable solution.
However, it's locked into a GUI install which bombs out if it encounters anything (such as a video card) that it doesn't know how to support.
:)
I would debate that. This past weekend I visited a friend, and as part of that visit he installed the downloaded version of Corel Linux. The particular computer he installed it into had, among other things, a PCI modem and an SB64 Gold card. Corel Linux went through the installation without any problems, despite not being able to support the PCI modem and not setting up the support for the SB64 card (no sounds issued forth from the computer after reboot).
I would, however, agree with your assessment tht it's targeted towards newer users who want to migrate from Windows rather than the hardcore Linux guru. For those, we have Slackware and Debian.
Heh. :) There's also the more humorous version. PCMCIA: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
IE doesn't use any secret COM APIs to acheive this.
I'm not saying IE uses any "secret" COM APIs. Try reading what I write before you respond.
It is not 'artificially' tied together. Infact, some member of the mozilla group has written a COM wrapper that implements IWebBrowser so you can replace IE in windows with mozilla.
Thank you. Since I can replace IE in Windows, it means Windows and IE are not integrated. Which in turn means that Microsoft has blantantly lied during the trial. Perhaps you'd care to revise your statement?
And if you really do want to challenge this point, please explain how an integrated component - which according to earlier definitions cannot be removed or replaced - can be removed and replaced by another.
BTW, windows without IE would not work exactly the same. Therefore it relies on it.
That's a strange statement. First you say that Mozilla, as a COM component, can replace IE, and then you say that Windows won't work quite right without IE. Why not? If Windows is only using the COM interface to IE, then Mozilla/COM should work perfectly.
If it doesn't, and Mozilla/COM has a complete implementation of the published interface for IE, then I see a problem. It means Windows is interacting with IE/COM in an undocumented way. At best, then, Microsoft has been lax in their documentation. At worst, Microsoft has been intentionally and maliciously withholding documentation to bolster their argument that IE and Windows are "integrated."
Your arguments would mean ever OO application is illegal since it integrates many components from many different applications.
If you lack any understanding of what I am saying, then yes that is what my arguments "would mean."
On the other hand, if you'd bother seeing past your fanaticism and read what I actually wrong, you'd see that I'm specifically NOT saying integration, per se, is illegal or wrong. What I AM saying is that in this particular case, there was no technical benefit for integrating IE and Windows (and before you start listing them, read this entire thread, paying attention to the numerous statements as to what actually qualifies as a benefit).
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Just type in 'netconfig'. It asks you for your host and domain names, then asks if you want to use DHCP. It'll mangle your config scripts for you.
Correction.
id and Carmack did NOT have any influence over the decision to open the source for Descent II. In fact, Descent II is largely Descent I with a few additions/changes and different maps, and the Descent I source code has been available for at least two years.
When it was released, Parallax/Interplay stated that they would try to continue releasing the source for their games once the game was no longer viable as a serious product. The release of Descent II source is another step along that road, I expect that in a few years, when Descent III is no longer at the top of the heap and Descent IV has replaced it, Outrage will release the Descent III code.