I know others have said it already, often quite rudely, but instant is inferior to freshly brewed coffee. If your instant tastes better, reevaluate the quality of your beans/grounds and your brewing tools/method. I'm sure there is decent instant coffee, but I have yet to find it. It may be more convenient than fresh, but it will probably be more expensive.
I've been discovering recently that the drip coffee I've been making is often too bitter because I haven't been using enough ground coffee. That's right: decreasing the grounds may make the coffee weaker, but it will be more bitter. One guideline I've heard recently is two tablespoons of ground coffee per six ounces of water. I'm sorry if you use SI units; I would too if I didn't live in this uncivilized backwater called the US (well, in regard to units at least).
In my view, Christianity is more similar to Free Software than proprietary. Jesus said:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV).
The only way to be saved is through him, but in him is freedom.
Similarly, to restrict oneself to Free Software is also a narrow road: it may be inconvenient and require more work than the popular sofware and one must believe that the effort is worth the reward of greater freedom in the future.
However, I wouldn't try to take the analogy too far.
I would be very concerned if a state government did something this intrusive; I'm more willing to give a city the benefit of the doubt, since the control is more local. I think I would have to live there or be very familiar with the situation to pass judgment. My gut feeling is that the city was probably going too far, but I can't say that for certain. It would probably be more reasonable to increase police patrols of gang hangouts rather than imposing more burden on private businesses.
ReiserFS is where I am hoping to see these kinds of revolutionary features emerge. Version 4 is about to be released and it already has a number of features that are hard to find in general purpose filesystems. If you really want to expand your thinking about data storage and access, read Hans Reiser's vision for the future of ReiserFS. Your ideas would definitely be implementable in his model.
Those are good definitions; I think they mostly agree with the ones I pasted. All definitions I've found involve violence and coercion. There are many ways people damage property or deprive others of property that don't involve a combination of violence and coercion.
If crackers caused financial or physical damage to SCO's property to protest SCO's legal dealings, it would probably be better categorized as vandalism rather than terrorism. There was no violence or threat to personal safety that I'm aware of.
I think that since "terrorism" has "terror" as its root, it is more than causing or threatening damage.
Here are a couple of definitions:
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)" Terrorism Ter"ror*ism, n. Cf. F. terrorisme.
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode
of government by terror or intimidation. --Jefferson.
"WordNet (r) 2.0" terrorism
n : the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence)
against civilians in order to attain goals that are
political or religious or ideological in nature; this is
done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear
syn: act of terrorism, terrorist act
By these definitions, most "eco-terrorism" is probably better characterized as vandalism.
Financial damage shouldn't be trivialized, but it can be addressed without resorting to inflammatory labeling. If anyone who does damage to someone else can be called a terrorist, the word will lose its meaning. Are thieves, vandals, slanderers and crackers all terrorists by nature?
Can you point me to articles about the details of the case? I've read about it a couple of places and nowhere have I read that the objection is to simply hearing the Pledge. I'm not doubting your word at all, but instead more interested to get the whole story.
I agree with most of what you've said about this case. If someone can prohibit teachers from saying something in a public school simply because he disagrees with it, will public schools be able to teach anything of value? There will be someone who objects to almost anything said in school. Some people object to certain theories or to Science entirely. Others might be offended by certain spin or lack of spin in history books. I wonder if this atheist has considered the weight such a precedent would give to those who object to sex education or the teaching of natural evolution.
Like you, I believe in free will and personal responsibility to decide what to believe. Unlike you, I believe in a personal God. A person can choose to believe in Him or not, regardless of whether He or religion is discussed in school. Mentioning or discussing God is not the same as establishing a state religion.
The issue is not whether a school can force anyone to recite the Pledge, but whether they can even suggest and lead it. For the Supreme Court or and any Federal entity to prohibit teachers from leading the pledge is just as serious an affront to free speech as for the schools to require it.
Even if the Pledge didn't have "under God" in it, it would still offend anarchists, communists, and probably some Native Americans. It's not the government's job to make sure no one is ever offended.
I agree with some of what you said. Religious arguments have been used to excuse and justify all kinds of wrong thinking and injustice. As a Christian, I find it horrible that the name of Christ has been used to justify things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust. There are also many who seem to think that because God has blessed the US in the past, anything it does is just, which is a dangerous lie. The addition of the words "under God" might be a mild example of this problem.
However, for the Supreme court to prohibit reciting the Pledge of Allegiance would be a violation of the principles of the first ammendment. It would violate freedom of speech and religion just as seriously as if Congress established a national religion. God doesn't need a government's defense, but one of the US government's primary purposes is to defend its citizens' rights.
I also think it's wrong for a public school to require students to recite the Pledge or to participate in other patriotic rituals. I don't see how voluntary participation is violating anyone's rights. If parents don't like what their children are taught, they should send them to a different school, which leads to my final point.
I think the biggest problem with this whole debate is that it's reached too high a level. Public schools are under school boards and ultimately under the states. Why is this being debated at a Federal level? Why can't these type of questions be resolved at a local or state level? This whole thing shows how the public school system is far too centralized. If schools were locally controlled as they were originally, the Supreme Court wouldn't have to be involved.
Good point. As a US citizen who has lived outside the US much of my life, but never left America, it always bothers me that so many people assume the two are the same. I think part of the problem is that there isn't a good moniker for my nationality. I call myself a "US citizen," but that's long and clumsy. I could call myself an Estadounidense, but that's pretty long and many US citizens don't know what it means. We need a better English term.
You seem to be confused between specification and implementation. It doesn't make sense to claim that Java isn't Open Source, since there are various Open Source and Free Software implementations of Java compilers, runtimes and libraries in addition to the proprietary ones. Here is a good list. Some of these Free implementations have been around much longer than Mono. Mono isn't the only Free implementation of DotNet; there's also DotGNU.
Copyright never was a legal property right. It is the right to copy a work. It is a legal monopoly granted for a certain period of time. Many people talk like it is a property right and would like to see it made a property right in the law. The problem is not the original concept of copyright as much as recent reinterpretations. We need to point out how current implementations of copyright have changed for the worse. On a related note, I will never use the term "intellectual property" except to point out how it is a false and dangerous idea.
I haven't used Crystal Reports to make reports, but I have tried to deal with its DLL hell: it wasn't fun. Like many things in the Windoze world, it involved following arcane, unexplained instructions, guessing at the correct order to register COM components and restarting apps. It was pretty much magic when it worked. Of course, the reports in question were an unsupported add-on from the developer of a proprietary app my employer had bought, so everything was a little dodgy.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Many people don't need or want to use the Web or much of the frivolous uses of the Internet, but email has long been and will long be the killer Internet app. My grandparents on both sides use email, though they don't use the Web or any other Internet application. They are the type of people that can't program their VCRs and even have a little trouble dealing with Juno, but the value of quick communication with their family and friends is worth it.
Good point. I'm now checking the "hide number of private hosts" option on my Linksys residential gateway. They'll never find me out now! Thanks Kevin, you just saved me a bundle.
Wow, that's great. I assumed that it should be easy to make it work in Gentoo since it's long had dependency based services, but I had never seen that setting. It just goes to show you that Slashdot is good for something. I'm sure there are other GNU/Linux or at least Free Unix-like operating systems that have dependency based services.
You're right that Half Life's key is not activation. I've installed it many times on Win98, Win2K, WineX, and Wine and it's seldom caused any trouble. It seems to exist for the purpose of uniquely identifying each player (which makes me a little uneasy, but it's reasonable if it can be used to stop cheaters) and making sure that each sold copy is only running one instance at a time.
Slashdot Mirror
I know others have said it already, often quite rudely, but instant is inferior to freshly brewed coffee. If your instant tastes better, reevaluate the quality of your beans/grounds and your brewing tools/method. I'm sure there is decent instant coffee, but I have yet to find it. It may be more convenient than fresh, but it will probably be more expensive.
I've been discovering recently that the drip coffee I've been making is often too bitter because I haven't been using enough ground coffee. That's right: decreasing the grounds may make the coffee weaker, but it will be more bitter. One guideline I've heard recently is two tablespoons of ground coffee per six ounces of water. I'm sorry if you use SI units; I would too if I didn't live in this uncivilized backwater called the US (well, in regard to units at least).
Similarly, to restrict oneself to Free Software is also a narrow road: it may be inconvenient and require more work than the popular sofware and one must believe that the effort is worth the reward of greater freedom in the future.
However, I wouldn't try to take the analogy too far.
I would be very concerned if a state government did something this intrusive; I'm more willing to give a city the benefit of the doubt, since the control is more local. I think I would have to live there or be very familiar with the situation to pass judgment. My gut feeling is that the city was probably going too far, but I can't say that for certain. It would probably be more reasonable to increase police patrols of gang hangouts rather than imposing more burden on private businesses.
ReiserFS is where I am hoping to see these kinds of revolutionary features emerge. Version 4 is about to be released and it already has a number of features that are hard to find in general purpose filesystems. If you really want to expand your thinking about data storage and access, read Hans Reiser's vision for the future of ReiserFS. Your ideas would definitely be implementable in his model.
Those are good definitions; I think they mostly agree with the ones I pasted. All definitions I've found involve violence and coercion. There are many ways people damage property or deprive others of property that don't involve a combination of violence and coercion.
If crackers caused financial or physical damage to SCO's property to protest SCO's legal dealings, it would probably be better categorized as vandalism rather than terrorism. There was no violence or threat to personal safety that I'm aware of.
Here are a couple of definitions:
By these definitions, most "eco-terrorism" is probably better characterized as vandalism.
Financial damage shouldn't be trivialized, but it can be addressed without resorting to inflammatory labeling. If anyone who does damage to someone else can be called a terrorist, the word will lose its meaning. Are thieves, vandals, slanderers and crackers all terrorists by nature?
Can you point me to articles about the details of the case? I've read about it a couple of places and nowhere have I read that the objection is to simply hearing the Pledge. I'm not doubting your word at all, but instead more interested to get the whole story.
I agree with most of what you've said about this case. If someone can prohibit teachers from saying something in a public school simply because he disagrees with it, will public schools be able to teach anything of value? There will be someone who objects to almost anything said in school. Some people object to certain theories or to Science entirely. Others might be offended by certain spin or lack of spin in history books. I wonder if this atheist has considered the weight such a precedent would give to those who object to sex education or the teaching of natural evolution.
Like you, I believe in free will and personal responsibility to decide what to believe. Unlike you, I believe in a personal God. A person can choose to believe in Him or not, regardless of whether He or religion is discussed in school. Mentioning or discussing God is not the same as establishing a state religion.
The issue is not whether a school can force anyone to recite the Pledge, but whether they can even suggest and lead it. For the Supreme Court or and any Federal entity to prohibit teachers from leading the pledge is just as serious an affront to free speech as for the schools to require it.
Even if the Pledge didn't have "under God" in it, it would still offend anarchists, communists, and probably some Native Americans. It's not the government's job to make sure no one is ever offended.
I agree with some of what you said. Religious arguments have been used to excuse and justify all kinds of wrong thinking and injustice. As a Christian, I find it horrible that the name of Christ has been used to justify things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust. There are also many who seem to think that because God has blessed the US in the past, anything it does is just, which is a dangerous lie. The addition of the words "under God" might be a mild example of this problem.
However, for the Supreme court to prohibit reciting the Pledge of Allegiance would be a violation of the principles of the first ammendment. It would violate freedom of speech and religion just as seriously as if Congress established a national religion. God doesn't need a government's defense, but one of the US government's primary purposes is to defend its citizens' rights.
I also think it's wrong for a public school to require students to recite the Pledge or to participate in other patriotic rituals. I don't see how voluntary participation is violating anyone's rights. If parents don't like what their children are taught, they should send them to a different school, which leads to my final point.
I think the biggest problem with this whole debate is that it's reached too high a level. Public schools are under school boards and ultimately under the states. Why is this being debated at a Federal level? Why can't these type of questions be resolved at a local or state level? This whole thing shows how the public school system is far too centralized. If schools were locally controlled as they were originally, the Supreme Court wouldn't have to be involved.
Good point. As a US citizen who has lived outside the US much of my life, but never left America, it always bothers me that so many people assume the two are the same. I think part of the problem is that there isn't a good moniker for my nationality. I call myself a "US citizen," but that's long and clumsy. I could call myself an Estadounidense, but that's pretty long and many US citizens don't know what it means. We need a better English term.
You seem to be confused between specification and implementation. It doesn't make sense to claim that Java isn't Open Source, since there are various Open Source and Free Software implementations of Java compilers, runtimes and libraries in addition to the proprietary ones. Here is a good list. Some of these Free implementations have been around much longer than Mono. Mono isn't the only Free implementation of DotNet; there's also DotGNU.
I sure hope not. We all know how much safer the typical C and C++ programs are.
Copyright never was a legal property right. It is the right to copy a work. It is a legal monopoly granted for a certain period of time. Many people talk like it is a property right and would like to see it made a property right in the law. The problem is not the original concept of copyright as much as recent reinterpretations. We need to point out how current implementations of copyright have changed for the worse. On a related note, I will never use the term "intellectual property" except to point out how it is a false and dangerous idea.
I didn't know anything about alternate Internet DNS namespaces. Thanks for pointing it out.
I have so much more time to eat my cheeseburger when I update a package on Gentoo!
I haven't used Crystal Reports to make reports, but I have tried to deal with its DLL hell: it wasn't fun. Like many things in the Windoze world, it involved following arcane, unexplained instructions, guessing at the correct order to register COM components and restarting apps. It was pretty much magic when it worked. Of course, the reports in question were an unsupported add-on from the developer of a proprietary app my employer had bought, so everything was a little dodgy.
I'd consider the bare minimum for music to be about 70 or 80 kbps Vorbis, but I don't have great quality audio hardware.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Many people don't need or want to use the Web or much of the frivolous uses of the Internet, but email has long been and will long be the killer Internet app. My grandparents on both sides use email, though they don't use the Web or any other Internet application. They are the type of people that can't program their VCRs and even have a little trouble dealing with Juno, but the value of quick communication with their family and friends is worth it.
Flaky and buttery. Mmmmm croissant.
Good point. I'm now checking the "hide number of private hosts" option on my Linksys residential gateway. They'll never find me out now! Thanks Kevin, you just saved me a bundle.
Counting client hosts behind NAT is quite possible, so I think it's your credibility that has dropped.
Wow, that's great. I assumed that it should be easy to make it work in Gentoo since it's long had dependency based services, but I had never seen that setting. It just goes to show you that Slashdot is good for something. I'm sure there are other GNU/Linux or at least Free Unix-like operating systems that have dependency based services.
Speak for yourself. I bought the GNU/Linux version of Myth2 in the store when I could have bought both Myth and Myth2 for Windoze combined for less.
You're right that Half Life's key is not activation. I've installed it many times on Win98, Win2K, WineX, and Wine and it's seldom caused any trouble. It seems to exist for the purpose of uniquely identifying each player (which makes me a little uneasy, but it's reasonable if it can be used to stop cheaters) and making sure that each sold copy is only running one instance at a time.