All I was saying was that in general user data is what matters. You can infect all the system files you want and all you'd have to do is re-isntall the OS which is no big deal unless you're running Windows.
But if user data is destroyed then you better hope you have backups.
Someone else already mentioned this but I'll say it again.
There is no difference as far as I'm concerned as losing my entire system or losing my home directory. You're right that at least if you don't use the root account to catch the virus only your own files would be destroyed but really the files in my home directory are the only files that I care about getting destroyed.
It only takes me about 10-15 minutes the get my system back up if I had to reinstall. It's all my personal files that can't be replaced that would make the experience traumatic.
A lot of people won't touch software that's "free" (as in no commercial backing).
Mainly execs and people who are not technically "inclined". They think that if it doesn't have a company backing it it's not worth anything.
People like this wouldn't dream of touching open office (let alone know that it exists) but knowing that Star Office costs money means it must be worth something.
WTF did I get modded Troll? Really I was not trying to troll I was trying to create a discussion. This guy said that Napster was responsible for the piracy of music and so I was discussing that with an analogy of guns.
It's entirely irrelevant but I don't actually feel that guns are responsible for people's actions. Just as I don't feel that Napster is responsible for people's actions which is why I posted in the first place. Because I wanted to show the irony of blaming Napster for other people's actions.
I don't really care about Karma. I'm not upset that I lost any. I have plenty to spare. However, I am a little offended that people mistook my post as a troll. I was only trying to contribute to a discussion.
Do you believe that guns should be outlawed or at least regulated where you live (providing they aren't already)?
If so then my post won't mean squat.
However, if you don't believe that then just think that when the first guns were made their sole intentions were to kill. When a gun is manufactured today it's sole intention is to kill. There is no gray area. I may buy a gun for self defense but if I'm ever forced to use it you better believe that it will be to kill.
Therefore gun manufacturers are just as guilty for murders as Napster is for music piracy.
I used to be a Slackware user. I'm fairly advanced when it comes to Linux and UNIX in general so I don't care at all about graphical interfaces or configuration tools. However, I have fallen in love with advanced package management tools and distro companies that are really quick to update packages.
I just don't have the time to spend a few hours grabbing the latest source patches and doing a recompile. I use to like to compile everything from source so that I could optimise it for my machine but real life eventually got in the way of that and it stopped being fun.
So for the past 3-4 years I've been using Mandrake. But the first thing I do is 'rpm -e linuxconf drakx* kde* gnome*' etc. The reason I like it is not because of the ease of use but because Mandrake is really quick to release security updates and all it takes is a simple urpmi command to download them. Plus every release comes with tons of new toys that I like to play around with when I'm bored.
There's lots of other reasons I choose Mandrake too but I mean this as constructive critisism towards Slackware so I'll leave those out.
Comming from a BSD background I always felt right at home with Slack but when you just want something that you can use and keep up to date and secure with minimum effort then it just doesn't cut it.
I don't feel that you need to be user friendly and geared towards windows and mac users to fill this gap. Just a few command line tools that make a UNIX administrator's life easier when it comes to managing what's installed on the system (and the pkg_* tools are not up to speed on this IMO).
So I'm going to go off on a limb here and get ready to be flamed by all the Slackware lovers. I would probably switch back to Slackware if they were to switch to rpm or deb pkg. They can keep the "no easy configuration tools" or the bsd-style init scripts which I love so much. But I really need a way to customize my system and keep it up to date with minimal effort.
I know Slack has come with rpm installed optionally for a while but all of the system stuff like glibc, bash etc. should be installed as rpms so that it's really easy to updgrade them without taking hours to recompile.
Well this is hardly the time to get into a political debate but I have karma and time to kill so what the hell.
The law does say "innocent until proven guilty" but in practice it is always "guilty until proven innocent".
A good example of this is in the case of Robert Blake who (incase you don't know) was charged for murdering his wife. Instead of saying "Okay you're trial is on this date we'll see you then" he was taken into custody and is being held behind bars until he can prove that he is innocent.
Now the logic here is that he may very well be a threat to society and the government must protect the lives of other citizens. I'm not saying that that's wrong I'm just saying that it completely contradicts the "inncocent until proven guilty" clause.
So don't bring that up because although a lot of people believe in it is a complete myth when it comes to North American (and most other) societies.
I don't understand where people get this attitude. "If you don't vote you have no right to complain!" Bullshit.
My problem isn't that I don't think I can change things. My problem is that I don't think changing anything within our current system is going to make any difference. It's not corruption of our democracy that's the problem. It's the fact that we're lied to about it being a democracy in the first place.
It's not a democracy. It's at best a corporate republic but in the last 3 years it's been pushing on the side of a corporate dictatorship.
If you vote you are succumbing to the illusion and proving that you can be lied to. You have no right to complain. You contributed to the illusion that the government wants everyone to buy into.
I don't vote because I don't believe in our democracy. I like the idea of democracy but it's implementation in North America is so twisted that it takes all the democracy right out of it.
I don't need the government to know that I'm mad at them because it's irrelevant. I'm doing everything in my power to educate myself about politics and society in hopes that some day maybe I can contribute the creation of a new system.
But voting isn't doing any good. It's doing the opposite in my opinion. It's very similar to the "don't feed the trolls" that we hear about here on/. all the time. Don't feed the government my making them believe that you are with them.
If you really are with them then that's fine. Go ahead and vote and advocate for a free democracy. That's your porogative. But please try to look beyond your country and beyond the government. What's the problem? It's not that no one's voting and electing a 3rd party. As I said I don't believe that a 3rd party could make the right changes in office, even if 20 3rd party candidates were elected in a row. It's not that we're not getting anyone honest in office it's the office itself.
But I do write letters and I do try to make differences that will benefit people within the current system. I just chose not to participate in the evolution of the sytem because I don't believe in the system itself.
It can all be summed up in one of my favourite quotes (from the song Freedom by Rage Against The Machine):
Evironment. The enviornment exceeding on the level of our unconsiouness. For example: what does the billboard say? Come and play. Come and play. Forget about the movement.
It's for reasons like this that I refuse to vote. Not because I don't think that my vote makes a difference but because I don't believe that who I vote for will do anything differently than who I don't vote for.
The current system in North America just doesn't work. It's not about the people. It's about the profit. It doesn't matter who you vote for. The elected (if they are truly elected *cough*clinton*cough*bush*cough) will either become corrupt and turn against you or they will be shot dead (like JFK and X).
So even if I were to make a difference and get a 3rd party in office they're either going to do exactly the same thing as a major party would have done or they will be shot dead because they will piss off the wrong people.
The only time anything will change is when > 50% of the population decides that it's time to change their government. It will start by people rebelling against authority. Not just anyone but people who normally wouldn't like programmers and house wives. Then when things start to get really out of hand and the government gets the military involved you have a typical civil war on your hands.
And when that's all said and done history will repeat itself once more.
Try Direct Connect. I found a few clients on freshmeat but I like it so much that I just boot into windows when I need it (that's not to assume that you have windows installed, just saying what I do).
The system is more like IRC than any other p2p system I've used before. Plus there's nothing you can't get. There are file format filters to help your searches but the system itself doesn't care what kind of file you're sharing.
For the longest time I've been wondering about a single exam or set of exams that would prove "high school equivalency". I've never heard of the GED though and every school official I've spoken to has told me that none exist (obviously they want me in their schools).
You just pointed me to exactly what I've been looking for all this time.
I just spend the last year looking for work. I was in a pretty bad situation, no HS diploma, only 2 years experience and 2 kids to support.
I found the exact same results as you. It seems to be the HR people who make things difficult. Every company exec that I spoke to seemed to be really impressed with what I've done in my 2 years "industry experience" but all the HR people are like "Well your resume doesn't say development tool design and implementation" even though it lists "Designed and implemented scripting language interpreter, debugger, pre-parser" etc. It's a sad situtation.
And I am also one of the people who are thinking of leaving IT. Not necessarily because of IT itself. I love coding but I've gotten a very bad taste of corporate america, new laws regarding computing and copyright etc. It's just not as fun as it was going into it.
I do have a plan that's being implemented right now for finishing school so I think I'll choose a different degree and going into something different.
-- Garett
Re:how about for non-comic viewers?
on
Review: Spiderman
·
· Score: 2
I know I'm WAY too late for this argument. It's Sunday and I just got to see it Today.
Anyway I do want to get in on this. My main critique with the movie wasn't that the character didn't fit the comic one, but that so much had apparently been cut. I felt like they took a 10 hour long movie and crammed it into a 2 hour one but cutting so much. And I think the reason the character didn't fit so much was because of that.
Now I'll respond point by point:
In comic, Peter Parker is a science "genius". He's really, really, smart..... He invents his webbing formula, the webshooters to use them, sensors that allows him to track people with his spider sense, and so forth.
They tried. Harry's dad was constantly praising him for his science genius and Harry even made a comment about how he thought his dad wanted to adopt Peter and that his not such a bad guy if you're a science genius (like Peter was). I know they were really shallow but they tried. If they had more time they would have gotten this right.
Family Ties. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were the only people in the world that loved him. They meant everything to him.
In the movie Peter tells Uncle Ben to effectively get off his case because he (Ben) is not his dad.
I still got that impression (that they were everything to him). I just think they were trying to add to the emotional impact that his death had on Peter by making their last confrontation a fight. This actually helps with the whole "bad day" argument that we'll talk about in a bit.
Secret Identity. Peter is very careful to keep is alter-ego secret because he's afraid that knowlege would allow others to hurt those he loves.
In the movie, he walks into the wrestling promoter's office unmasked. He fights Mary Jane's muggers without his mask. He has no obvious stress about others finding out about him.
True but remember, at the end he ditches the girl he loves because he's afraid that he being Spider-Man will hurt her. The scene you talk about was rather fishy but he did put his mask on before she saw him and there was the whole Green Goblin attacking his loved ones that adds to the "no-one can know about this" thing.
Constant Oppression. Peter Parker is the quinessential "sad sack". No matter how bad your day was, his was worse! He was constantly picked on at school, his uncle was killed, his aunt was frail and perpetually on death's door, they were constantly on the edge of being evicted, occasionally his film would be ruined and there's be no picture money from the Daily Bugle, the world hates him thanks to JJJ. He's constantly stressed out and you always feel sorry for him.
In the movie his uncle dies. Other than that, Aunt May is spry and survives a bomb blast. Peter moves out to live in an apartment that he apparently is able to pay for (or Harry's dad pays for). He's not all that upset about not having a job. His only stress was due to the Green Goblin learning his secret identity and using his loved ones.
They could have done better here but I still felt like his life sucked. His one true love was going out with his best friend. He was a complete nerd who was always picked on. His uncle died. He didn't have a father etc. Remember, the comics had years and years and years to feed you all this information. The movie only had 2 hours.
Public Perception. Thanks to J. Jonah Jameson's rants and headlines in the Daily Bugle, most of the public is either afraid of Spider-man or hate him.
In the movie New Yorkers rally behind him on the bridge as "one of our own".
That was definitely present in the movie. The cop wanted to arrest him before he could run into the burning building. J. Jonah was putting the bad headlines out there and people started to fear him. Yes, in the end people were cheering him on but I think they wanted a semi-happy ending.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility Lesson Peter lets the criminal that kills Uncle Ben go because after his stint of celebrity, he feels really cocky about his newfound power and fame.
IMO he wasn't Spider-Man yet. He was still P.P. He didn't have the costume. That was his very first appearance as "Spider-Man" and he wasn't a vigil-anti. He was just trying to earn some cash. It was actually that event that changed his opinion and made him care. He let the guy go and as a result his uncle died. It was the big plot shifter.
The ones I left out are yours. I can't come up with any argument for them. I don't know enough about Spider-Man. I read the comics when I was a kid and watched the cartoon but I was more of a Bat-Man guy myself.
Still I felt like this was one of the best movies I've ever seen. Stan Lee definitely didn't sell us out like Lucas did.
I think that's what this is trying to avoid. The whole problem with National Id cards is what you just described.
Biometric encoding would eliminate this because you could easily match a peron to an id card.
My problem with this kind of stuff is just the security involved. I'm a System Administrator and so I know first hand how lazy people can be when it comes to security. People always choose convenience over security. No matter what. And the U.S government is no exception.
A couple small examples:
In the gulf war a U.S Navy ship was compromised and e-mail was leaked.
I don't want to trust every single piece of information that's very personal to an irresponsible government that doesn't take the security of it's network seriously. Because most likely everyone's information will be stored in a single database that government officials can use to lookup your information. It's already happening it's just not as centralized as they want it to be.
I guess the idea is that if you get pulled over the cop will take a hand or retinal scan, go to his cruiser and get every single piece of information he could possibly need to know about you from a central database.
That scares because of both security and privacy concerns that I have.
IMO the distribution part is putting it up on the net. Plain and simple. You still have copyright. You still control who copies and redistributes it. No one can post it on their web site. However if they link to you it's still you redistributing it from your web server.
This is all up to interpretation and opinion, of course, but that's how I see it anyway. As a content creator I don't have any problem with that.
This case isn't about copying and redistributing IMO. It's saying that "If you want to read my book entitled 'foo' you must first read 'bar'. If you don't that's copyright violation".
Well bullshit. It's not. Just as it's not copyright violation to not read the front page of a site before reading an article contained within.
And what's wrong with someone saying "For more information refer to page xx in the book foo by bar etc...."? It happens all the time, it's perfectly legal and I see hyperlinking as the exact same concept.
And please don't bring up advertising and how I don't pay them and so I owe it to them to watch the ads. IMO that's the same as flipping channels on the t.v during commercials. I don't pay the individual networks and I still don't watch the ads. There's nothing illegal about that. Of course companies would like there to be but I think if that were to happen then maybe (just maybe) the public would realize that they're living in a police state after all.
If you can't afford a stack push, then you probably shouldn't be using STL in the first place.
I disagree.
IMO when deciding wether or not to use the STL (or deciding wether or not to use C++ instead of C) you have to make a very big compromose: performance vs. nice code.
Nice code is essential to a stable program and IMO the STL is perfect for this. It adds stability and makes coding things like hash tables, trivial string operations, vectors etc. a breaze. However, this all comes with a performance hit.
Lets say I decide to use the STL in my application because while it must be as fast as possible I'm going to sacrifice some performance for stability. I'm not going to sacrifice more by wrapping it with an API. That's stupid.
So why would you do it? Because not all your developers like the STL? That's even stupider. If I'm going to have other developers working on my application that makes use of the STL then they must know the STL. Why would I expect anything different?
It's not like I'm going to say "Oh you don't know perl? That's okay I've written a compiler that will allow you to write your code in C and output a perl script."
It just doesn't make any sense.
The only acceptable times to use a wrapper IMO is for portability or when you want to take a number of related API's and merge them into one easy to use API for your developers. Wrapping the STL because your programmers don't like it just seems like a terrible waste of performance to me. I've already sacrificed all the stack pushes I'm willing to just to be able to use the STL. I'm not willing to sacrifice more because I have programmers who don't like the API I've chosen.
I agree with your point and I guess I sounded a little harsh when you look at it that way.
It's not that there's anything offending with newbies or non-programmers wanting to use my software. It's offending when I'm told that I have a responsibility or obligation to help them and to support my software.
The truth is that of course I get a good feeling when people find my software useful. I enjoy getting good feedback. However, I don't enjoy answering questions that are easily self-answerable by doing 5 minutes worth of reading and I don't enjoy writing documentation.
And being told that I have some sort of sacred duty or responsibility to do those two things just down right pisses me off.
-- Garett
Re:My thoughts
on
Revolution OS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Who cares?
The impression that I get from Linus is that he never cared about free software or open source or whatever. The only reason he released his code was because that was the "academic" thing to do.
I mean this guy has to constantly listen to ESR and RMS's ramblings and all this bullshit about free software and open source that he doesn't give a shit about.
He's being dragged to conventions and always being hit up for interviews etc. It must be really annoying.
All I know is that if I were Linus I would have jumped ship about 5-7 years ago.
So wether GNU was responsible for bringing Linux where it is today is totally irrelevant. Linus doesn't give a shit about GNU or FSF and would have simply used other tools to compile his work and wether he released his code or not in Sept. '91 does not matter.
I mean holly shit. The company I work for develops our product on Linux and uses gcc/gdb/automake/autoconf/libtool etc. to do all the development. Does that mean we should call it GNU/(our_product)? Fuck no! If there were no GNU tools available we would simply use something else.
We don't care that it's free. We don't care that it's open source. We would gladly pay for a proprietary, expensive alternative. Sure being free and OSS is nice but no one would really give a shit if it wasn't.
Again, fuck that. I'm all for paying money for software if it means the difference between getting support reliably or trying to deal with the "get lost n00b" assholes that seem to be so common in the open source world.
Good for you.
You know, I have heard very few programmers try to convince newbies to use their software. It always seems to be the phylosophical types like ESR and RMS who try to get people to use it. Yes they are programmers but they are not very active. ESR maintains fetchmail and is making contributions to the kernel but most of his work seems to be trying to recruit people to OSS. Same with RMS but I better specify FS in his case so I don't get flamed.
Actually, the most vocal crowd trying to get newbies to use OSS are the newbies themselves. When I first migrated to Linux and fell in love with it I was a complete nut for the first 2 years trying to get everyone and their mother to use it. I've given up on that now because I just don't care anymore.
Anyway, my interpretation of your post suggests that you are saying "If you want people to use your software then why are you so rude when they ask you for help?"
Well my response is "I don't give a shit if people use my software or not. I write the code for myself and not for anyone else. If you like it fine. If you don't then find something else".
I get the same impression from Linus regarding the kernel and from most other OSS hackers. It's the people who are not doing the programming who seem to want other people to use the software so much and it's always the programmers who get the slack for not supporting their code.
So please all I ask is that you don't blame the programmers when they tell you to RTFM and leave them the fuck alone.
I'm sure there's lots of programmers out there who are trying to recruit new users of their software and so they put just as much of an effort into support and documentation as they do the code. However, in my experience that's only a select few.
So really, fuck off and leave us alone. And for all the people trying to get people to use other people's software: support it yourself or go home. It's not my responsiblity to support my software.
I code for fun. Coding == fun. Supporting newbies and writing documentation is not fun therefore I don't do it. It's not my job to write OSS software. Only a hobby. Why would I do something as a hobby that I don't enjoy?
-- Garett
Re:The difference between M$ and OS
on
Revolution OS
·
· Score: 2
This gave MS a bit of competition and decided to make their next 9x release based on NT which has always been more robust.
Just to clarify I'm talking about XP here. I guess there's room for confusion and you may think I'm talking about ME or something (which is pretty funny considering it's the most unstable of the 9x series).
-- Garett
Re:The difference between M$ and OS
on
Revolution OS
·
· Score: 2
Why do you assume that Gates is a programmer? Sure he did his fair share of coding when he was younger but that's not the career that he pursued.
Most historical representations of the early days of MS depict Paul Allen doing most of the technical work. Gates is a business man. Nothing more.
So when you ask yourself why he did this or that it's because it was the best thing for business at the time.
Nobody except the technically inclined have ever given a shit about Windows' stability of lack of security. And Microsoft's market has never consisted of these types anyway because they're running *nix.
But when Linux became popular our biggest outcry was that Linux was more stable. This gave MS a bit of competition and decided to make their next 9x release based on NT which has always been more robust.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course not but that wasn't my point.
All I was saying was that in general user data is what matters. You can infect all the system files you want and all you'd have to do is re-isntall the OS which is no big deal unless you're running Windows.
But if user data is destroyed then you better hope you have backups.
--
Garett
That's for Linux.
;^)
If it's OpenBSD gimme 5
--
Garett
I'm not worried about a virus infecting ELF binaries in my home partition. I'm worried about a virus deleting everything upon trigger.
Anyway taking off the write bit doesn't do anything (on Linux anyway). As long as you're the owner you can still delete it.
The only solution (as other people have pointed out) is doing regular backups.
--
Garett
Someone else already mentioned this but I'll say it again.
There is no difference as far as I'm concerned as losing my entire system or losing my home directory. You're right that at least if you don't use the root account to catch the virus only your own files would be destroyed but really the files in my home directory are the only files that I care about getting destroyed.
It only takes me about 10-15 minutes the get my system back up if I had to reinstall. It's all my personal files that can't be replaced that would make the experience traumatic.
--
Garett
Man, if I had mod points right now I'd mod you a troll even though your point is right.
So they guy didn't know and he was ignorant. Ignorace != stupidity and it was rude of you to call him a fucking retard.
I'm sorry but in my eyes you're the fucking retard.
--
Garett
A lot of people won't touch software that's "free" (as in no commercial backing).
Mainly execs and people who are not technically "inclined". They think that if it doesn't have a company backing it it's not worth anything.
People like this wouldn't dream of touching open office (let alone know that it exists) but knowing that Star Office costs money means it must be worth something.
--
Garett
WTF did I get modded Troll? Really I was not trying to troll I was trying to create a discussion. This guy said that Napster was responsible for the piracy of music and so I was discussing that with an analogy of guns.
It's entirely irrelevant but I don't actually feel that guns are responsible for people's actions. Just as I don't feel that Napster is responsible for people's actions which is why I posted in the first place. Because I wanted to show the irony of blaming Napster for other people's actions.
I don't really care about Karma. I'm not upset that I lost any. I have plenty to spare. However, I am a little offended that people mistook my post as a troll. I was only trying to contribute to a discussion.
Good day.
--
Garett
Do you believe that guns should be outlawed or at least regulated where you live (providing they aren't already)?
If so then my post won't mean squat.
However, if you don't believe that then just think that when the first guns were made their sole intentions were to kill. When a gun is manufactured today it's sole intention is to kill. There is no gray area. I may buy a gun for self defense but if I'm ever forced to use it you better believe that it will be to kill.
Therefore gun manufacturers are just as guilty for murders as Napster is for music piracy.
--
Garett
I used to be a Slackware user. I'm fairly advanced when it comes to Linux and UNIX in general so I don't care at all about graphical interfaces or configuration tools. However, I have fallen in love with advanced package management tools and distro companies that are really quick to update packages.
I just don't have the time to spend a few hours grabbing the latest source patches and doing a recompile. I use to like to compile everything from source so that I could optimise it for my machine but real life eventually got in the way of that and it stopped being fun.
So for the past 3-4 years I've been using Mandrake. But the first thing I do is 'rpm -e linuxconf drakx* kde* gnome*' etc. The reason I like it is not because of the ease of use but because Mandrake is really quick to release security updates and all it takes is a simple urpmi command to download them. Plus every release comes with tons of new toys that I like to play around with when I'm bored.
There's lots of other reasons I choose Mandrake too but I mean this as constructive critisism towards Slackware so I'll leave those out.
Comming from a BSD background I always felt right at home with Slack but when you just want something that you can use and keep up to date and secure with minimum effort then it just doesn't cut it.
I don't feel that you need to be user friendly and geared towards windows and mac users to fill this gap. Just a few command line tools that make a UNIX administrator's life easier when it comes to managing what's installed on the system (and the pkg_* tools are not up to speed on this IMO).
So I'm going to go off on a limb here and get ready to be flamed by all the Slackware lovers. I would probably switch back to Slackware if they were to switch to rpm or deb pkg. They can keep the "no easy configuration tools" or the bsd-style init scripts which I love so much. But I really need a way to customize my system and keep it up to date with minimal effort.
I know Slack has come with rpm installed optionally for a while but all of the system stuff like glibc, bash etc. should be installed as rpms so that it's really easy to updgrade them without taking hours to recompile.
--
Garett
Well this is hardly the time to get into a political debate but I have karma and time to kill so what the hell.
The law does say "innocent until proven guilty" but in practice it is always "guilty until proven innocent".
A good example of this is in the case of Robert Blake who (incase you don't know) was charged for murdering his wife. Instead of saying "Okay you're trial is on this date we'll see you then" he was taken into custody and is being held behind bars until he can prove that he is innocent.
Now the logic here is that he may very well be a threat to society and the government must protect the lives of other citizens. I'm not saying that that's wrong I'm just saying that it completely contradicts the "inncocent until proven guilty" clause.
So don't bring that up because although a lot of people believe in it is a complete myth when it comes to North American (and most other) societies.
--
Garett
I don't understand where people get this attitude. "If you don't vote you have no right to complain!" Bullshit.
/. all the time. Don't feed the government my making them believe that you are with them.
My problem isn't that I don't think I can change things. My problem is that I don't think changing anything within our current system is going to make any difference. It's not corruption of our democracy that's the problem. It's the fact that we're lied to about it being a democracy in the first place.
It's not a democracy. It's at best a corporate republic but in the last 3 years it's been pushing on the side of a corporate dictatorship.
If you vote you are succumbing to the illusion and proving that you can be lied to. You have no right to complain. You contributed to the illusion that the government wants everyone to buy into.
I don't vote because I don't believe in our democracy. I like the idea of democracy but it's implementation in North America is so twisted that it takes all the democracy right out of it.
I don't need the government to know that I'm mad at them because it's irrelevant. I'm doing everything in my power to educate myself about politics and society in hopes that some day maybe I can contribute the creation of a new system.
But voting isn't doing any good. It's doing the opposite in my opinion. It's very similar to the "don't feed the trolls" that we hear about here on
If you really are with them then that's fine. Go ahead and vote and advocate for a free democracy. That's your porogative. But please try to look beyond your country and beyond the government. What's the problem? It's not that no one's voting and electing a 3rd party. As I said I don't believe that a 3rd party could make the right changes in office, even if 20 3rd party candidates were elected in a row. It's not that we're not getting anyone honest in office it's the office itself.
But I do write letters and I do try to make differences that will benefit people within the current system. I just chose not to participate in the evolution of the sytem because I don't believe in the system itself.
--
Garett
It can all be summed up in one of my favourite quotes (from the song Freedom by Rage Against The Machine):
Evironment.
The enviornment exceeding on the level of our unconsiouness.
For example: what does the billboard say?
Come and play. Come and play.
Forget about the movement.
It's for reasons like this that I refuse to vote. Not because I don't think that my vote makes a difference but because I don't believe that who I vote for will do anything differently than who I don't vote for.
The current system in North America just doesn't work. It's not about the people. It's about the profit. It doesn't matter who you vote for. The elected (if they are truly elected *cough*clinton*cough*bush*cough) will either become corrupt and turn against you or they will be shot dead (like JFK and X).
So even if I were to make a difference and get a 3rd party in office they're either going to do exactly the same thing as a major party would have done or they will be shot dead because they will piss off the wrong people.
The only time anything will change is when > 50% of the population decides that it's time to change their government. It will start by people rebelling against authority. Not just anyone but people who normally wouldn't like programmers and house wives. Then when things start to get really out of hand and the government gets the military involved you have a typical civil war on your hands.
And when that's all said and done history will repeat itself once more.
--
Garett
Try Direct Connect. I found a few clients on freshmeat but I like it so much that I just boot into windows when I need it (that's not to assume that you have windows installed, just saying what I do).
The system is more like IRC than any other p2p system I've used before. Plus there's nothing you can't get. There are file format filters to help your searches but the system itself doesn't care what kind of file you're sharing.
--
Garett
Thank you.
For the longest time I've been wondering about a single exam or set of exams that would prove "high school equivalency". I've never heard of the GED though and every school official I've spoken to has told me that none exist (obviously they want me in their schools).
You just pointed me to exactly what I've been looking for all this time.
Thanks,
--
Garett
I agree.
I just spend the last year looking for work. I was in a pretty bad situation, no HS diploma, only 2 years experience and 2 kids to support.
I found the exact same results as you. It seems to be the HR people who make things difficult. Every company exec that I spoke to seemed to be really impressed with what I've done in my 2 years "industry experience" but all the HR people are like "Well your resume doesn't say development tool design and implementation" even though it lists "Designed and implemented scripting language interpreter, debugger, pre-parser" etc. It's a sad situtation.
And I am also one of the people who are thinking of leaving IT. Not necessarily because of IT itself. I love coding but I've gotten a very bad taste of corporate america, new laws regarding computing and copyright etc. It's just not as fun as it was going into it.
I do have a plan that's being implemented right now for finishing school so I think I'll choose a different degree and going into something different.
--
Garett
I know I'm WAY too late for this argument. It's Sunday and I just got to see it Today.
Anyway I do want to get in on this. My main critique with the movie wasn't that the character didn't fit the comic one, but that so much had apparently been cut. I felt like they took a 10 hour long movie and crammed it into a 2 hour one but cutting so much. And I think the reason the character didn't fit so much was because of that.
Now I'll respond point by point:
In comic, Peter Parker is a science "genius". He's really, really, smart..... He invents his webbing formula, the webshooters to use them, sensors that allows him to track people with his spider sense, and so forth.
They tried. Harry's dad was constantly praising him for his science genius and Harry even made a comment about how he thought his dad wanted to adopt Peter and that his not such a bad guy if you're a science genius (like Peter was). I know they were really shallow but they tried. If they had more time they would have gotten this right.
Family Ties. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were the only people in the world that loved him. They meant everything to him.
In the movie Peter tells Uncle Ben to effectively get off his case because he (Ben) is not his dad.
I still got that impression (that they were everything to him). I just think they were trying to add to the emotional impact that his death had on Peter by making their last confrontation a fight. This actually helps with the whole "bad day" argument that we'll talk about in a bit.
Secret Identity. Peter is very careful to keep is alter-ego secret because he's afraid that knowlege would allow others to hurt those he loves.
In the movie, he walks into the wrestling promoter's office unmasked. He fights Mary Jane's muggers without his mask. He has no obvious stress about others finding out about him.
True but remember, at the end he ditches the girl he loves because he's afraid that he being Spider-Man will hurt her. The scene you talk about was rather fishy but he did put his mask on before she saw him and there was the whole Green Goblin attacking his loved ones that adds to the "no-one can know about this" thing.
Constant Oppression. Peter Parker is the quinessential "sad sack". No matter how bad your day was, his was worse! He was constantly picked on at school, his uncle was killed, his aunt was frail and perpetually on death's door, they were constantly on the edge of being evicted, occasionally his film would be ruined and there's be no picture money from the Daily Bugle, the world hates him thanks to JJJ. He's constantly stressed out and you always feel sorry for him.
In the movie his uncle dies. Other than that, Aunt May is spry and survives a bomb blast. Peter moves out to live in an apartment that he apparently is able to pay for (or Harry's dad pays for). He's not all that upset about not having a job. His only stress was due to the Green Goblin learning his secret identity and using his loved ones.
They could have done better here but I still felt like his life sucked. His one true love was going out with his best friend. He was a complete nerd who was always picked on. His uncle died. He didn't have a father etc. Remember, the comics had years and years and years to feed you all this information. The movie only had 2 hours.
Public Perception. Thanks to J. Jonah Jameson's rants and headlines in the Daily Bugle, most of the public is either afraid of Spider-man or hate him.
In the movie New Yorkers rally behind him on the bridge as "one of our own".
That was definitely present in the movie. The cop wanted to arrest him before he could run into the burning building. J. Jonah was putting the bad headlines out there and people started to fear him. Yes, in the end people were cheering him on but I think they wanted a semi-happy ending.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility Lesson Peter lets the criminal that kills Uncle Ben go because after his stint of celebrity, he feels really cocky about his newfound power and fame.
IMO he wasn't Spider-Man yet. He was still P.P. He didn't have the costume. That was his very first appearance as "Spider-Man" and he wasn't a vigil-anti. He was just trying to earn some cash. It was actually that event that changed his opinion and made him care. He let the guy go and as a result his uncle died. It was the big plot shifter.
The ones I left out are yours. I can't come up with any argument for them. I don't know enough about Spider-Man. I read the comics when I was a kid and watched the cartoon but I was more of a Bat-Man guy myself.
Still I felt like this was one of the best movies I've ever seen. Stan Lee definitely didn't sell us out like Lucas did.
--
Garett
Because it's a lot easier to forge/counterfeit/phake/steal a picture than it is a retinal scan or a finger print.
I never said I agreed with the technology (actually I stated the contrary) but that's the idea anyway.
--
Garett
I think that's what this is trying to avoid. The whole problem with National Id cards is what you just described.
Biometric encoding would eliminate this because you could easily match a peron to an id card.
My problem with this kind of stuff is just the security involved. I'm a System Administrator and so I know first hand how lazy people can be when it comes to security. People always choose convenience over security. No matter what. And the U.S government is no exception.
A couple small examples:
In the gulf war a U.S Navy ship was compromised and e-mail was leaked.
Presently there's a group of blackhat's calling themselves "The Deceptive Duo" who have succesfully hacked into government systems..
I don't want to trust every single piece of information that's very personal to an irresponsible government that doesn't take the security of it's network seriously. Because most likely everyone's information will be stored in a single database that government officials can use to lookup your information. It's already happening it's just not as centralized as they want it to be.
I guess the idea is that if you get pulled over the cop will take a hand or retinal scan, go to his cruiser and get every single piece of information he could possibly need to know about you from a central database.
That scares because of both security and privacy concerns that I have.
--
Garett
I don't see that as "redistributing it" though.
IMO the distribution part is putting it up on the net. Plain and simple. You still have copyright. You still control who copies and redistributes it. No one can post it on their web site. However if they link to you it's still you redistributing it from your web server.
This is all up to interpretation and opinion, of course, but that's how I see it anyway. As a content creator I don't have any problem with that.
This case isn't about copying and redistributing IMO. It's saying that "If you want to read my book entitled 'foo' you must first read 'bar'. If you don't that's copyright violation".
Well bullshit. It's not. Just as it's not copyright violation to not read the front page of a site before reading an article contained within.
And what's wrong with someone saying "For more information refer to page xx in the book foo by bar etc...."? It happens all the time, it's perfectly legal and I see hyperlinking as the exact same concept.
And please don't bring up advertising and how I don't pay them and so I owe it to them to watch the ads. IMO that's the same as flipping channels on the t.v during commercials. I don't pay the individual networks and I still don't watch the ads. There's nothing illegal about that. Of course companies would like there to be but I think if that were to happen then maybe (just maybe) the public would realize that they're living in a police state after all.
--
Garett
If you can't afford a stack push, then you probably shouldn't be using STL in the first place.
I disagree.
IMO when deciding wether or not to use the STL (or deciding wether or not to use C++ instead of C) you have to make a very big compromose: performance vs. nice code.
Nice code is essential to a stable program and IMO the STL is perfect for this. It adds stability and makes coding things like hash tables, trivial string operations, vectors etc. a breaze. However, this all comes with a performance hit.
Lets say I decide to use the STL in my application because while it must be as fast as possible I'm going to sacrifice some performance for stability. I'm not going to sacrifice more by wrapping it with an API. That's stupid.
So why would you do it? Because not all your developers like the STL? That's even stupider. If I'm going to have other developers working on my application that makes use of the STL then they must know the STL. Why would I expect anything different?
It's not like I'm going to say "Oh you don't know perl? That's okay I've written a compiler that will allow you to write your code in C and output a perl script."
It just doesn't make any sense.
The only acceptable times to use a wrapper IMO is for portability or when you want to take a number of related API's and merge them into one easy to use API for your developers. Wrapping the STL because your programmers don't like it just seems like a terrible waste of performance to me. I've already sacrificed all the stack pushes I'm willing to just to be able to use the STL. I'm not willing to sacrifice more because I have programmers who don't like the API I've chosen.
--
Garett
I agree with your point and I guess I sounded a little harsh when you look at it that way.
It's not that there's anything offending with newbies or non-programmers wanting to use my software. It's offending when I'm told that I have a responsibility or obligation to help them and to support my software.
The truth is that of course I get a good feeling when people find my software useful. I enjoy getting good feedback. However, I don't enjoy answering questions that are easily self-answerable by doing 5 minutes worth of reading and I don't enjoy writing documentation.
And being told that I have some sort of sacred duty or responsibility to do those two things just down right pisses me off.
--
Garett
Who cares?
The impression that I get from Linus is that he never cared about free software or open source or whatever. The only reason he released his code was because that was the "academic" thing to do.
I mean this guy has to constantly listen to ESR and RMS's ramblings and all this bullshit about free software and open source that he doesn't give a shit about.
He's being dragged to conventions and always being hit up for interviews etc. It must be really annoying.
All I know is that if I were Linus I would have jumped ship about 5-7 years ago.
So wether GNU was responsible for bringing Linux where it is today is totally irrelevant. Linus doesn't give a shit about GNU or FSF and would have simply used other tools to compile his work and wether he released his code or not in Sept. '91 does not matter.
I mean holly shit. The company I work for develops our product on Linux and uses gcc/gdb/automake/autoconf/libtool etc. to do all the development. Does that mean we should call it GNU/(our_product)? Fuck no! If there were no GNU tools available we would simply use something else.
We don't care that it's free. We don't care that it's open source. We would gladly pay for a proprietary, expensive alternative. Sure being free and OSS is nice but no one would really give a shit if it wasn't.
--
Garett
Again, fuck that. I'm all for paying money for software if it means the difference between getting support reliably or trying to deal with the "get lost n00b" assholes that seem to be so common in the open source world.
Good for you.
You know, I have heard very few programmers try to convince newbies to use their software. It always seems to be the phylosophical types like ESR and RMS who try to get people to use it. Yes they are programmers but they are not very active. ESR maintains fetchmail and is making contributions to the kernel but most of his work seems to be trying to recruit people to OSS. Same with RMS but I better specify FS in his case so I don't get flamed.
Actually, the most vocal crowd trying to get newbies to use OSS are the newbies themselves. When I first migrated to Linux and fell in love with it I was a complete nut for the first 2 years trying to get everyone and their mother to use it. I've given up on that now because I just don't care anymore.
Anyway, my interpretation of your post suggests that you are saying "If you want people to use your software then why are you so rude when they ask you for help?"
Well my response is "I don't give a shit if people use my software or not. I write the code for myself and not for anyone else. If you like it fine. If you don't then find something else".
I get the same impression from Linus regarding the kernel and from most other OSS hackers. It's the people who are not doing the programming who seem to want other people to use the software so much and it's always the programmers who get the slack for not supporting their code.
So please all I ask is that you don't blame the programmers when they tell you to RTFM and leave them the fuck alone.
I'm sure there's lots of programmers out there who are trying to recruit new users of their software and so they put just as much of an effort into support and documentation as they do the code. However, in my experience that's only a select few.
So really, fuck off and leave us alone. And for all the people trying to get people to use other people's software: support it yourself or go home. It's not my responsiblity to support my software.
I code for fun. Coding == fun. Supporting newbies and writing documentation is not fun therefore I don't do it. It's not my job to write OSS software. Only a hobby. Why would I do something as a hobby that I don't enjoy?
--
Garett
This gave MS a bit of competition and decided to make their next 9x release based on NT which has always been more robust.
Just to clarify I'm talking about XP here. I guess there's room for confusion and you may think I'm talking about ME or something (which is pretty funny considering it's the most unstable of the 9x series).
--
Garett
Why do you assume that Gates is a programmer? Sure he did his fair share of coding when he was younger but that's not the career that he pursued.
Most historical representations of the early days of MS depict Paul Allen doing most of the technical work. Gates is a business man. Nothing more.
So when you ask yourself why he did this or that it's because it was the best thing for business at the time.
Nobody except the technically inclined have ever given a shit about Windows' stability of lack of security. And Microsoft's market has never consisted of these types anyway because they're running *nix.
But when Linux became popular our biggest outcry was that Linux was more stable. This gave MS a bit of competition and decided to make their next 9x release based on NT which has always been more robust.
It was the best business decision.
--
Garett