I'm a nutjob when it comes to this, but I believe that you should be able to own any weapon, including nuclear/chemical/biological weapons. No, you're only a nutjob if you think you should use them (which includes all but one current US presidential candidate). As deterrents, go for it.
I didn't use to like MAD, but now I do. It's really scary that nearly all of the US Presidential candidates are willing to use nukes in a preemptive strike. That's wrong.
"Hey Fred! Have you seen you seen my new XS3402 Tactical Nuclear Missile launcher? Bring a six pack over and I'll show it to you."
People should be allowed to buy nukes. Yeah, if they can afford them. See my earlier comment.
As RAH said, "an armed society is a polite society" and that sounds OK with me and I certainly wouldn't have a problem with a neighbor having a rocket launcher in his back yard, but I wouldn't screw around with his wife behind his back either.
The government has proven itself incapable of handling those types of weapons responsibly, and should therefore be banned from possessing them. This isn't funny, it's insightful.
The leading cause of death in the 20th century was government (WWI, WWII, the Ukraine & Stalin, China and the cultural purges, etc. etc. etc.)
Looks like this century will be no different.:-(
(When I was playing NationStates, the government of my nation of Altair was explicitly banned by its constitution from possessing firearms, but the citizens were allowed to have backyard tactical nukes if they could afford them, and by the rules Altair had one of the most prosperous economies in the game).
Intelligent and well educated citizens ought to be able to possess weapons up to (and beyond) tactical nuclear weapons. History has proven that they'll make better decisions about using them than governments have been.
If you wish to mod me down, please adopt an Iraqi orphan from the US invasion of Iraq. Thanks.
You are posting in support of people who believe ad-blocking is a crime and you completely miss the point I'm trying to make.
First they came for the P2P music downloaders, but I stayed quiet because I don't download pirated music.
Then they came for the ad-blockers, but I stayed quiet because a few ads never hurt anyone.
Then they came for people who did not support the sponsored software that was preinstalled on their system, but I stayed quiet because it gave me a cheaper computer and I like Microsoft Windows anyway.
Then they came for me...
OK, that's kind of cheesy, but if you want to view ads on your computer, go ahead -- it's your business and none of mine. Please don't force the rest of us to conform to your views.
I am one of the myriad of programmers who has given away free code for decades so that the internet could be built up in the first place. Wish we'd had a license on the internet like the GPL, but it's too late now. If you think it's fair that advertises must be paid on each web page accessad, pay me royalties for every email message you send (most of the code on your computer that is a derived work of mine would be email related). Fair is fair, or do you mean something else?
I don't know how it works; I've never seen the code. My fault in a way, but hey, would one expect rmdir(2) to/bin/rm -f/usr/share/man/man2/rmdir-considered-evil.2* as a side effect?
I think you are stretching things to equate *using* pre-installed software to blocking ads. It's a similar argument and I'm not the one equating viewing web pages as one wishes with theft, "theft" is supposed to be a crime.
I'm a computer fundamentalist (which didn't use to be a bad word). Either everything that happens on my computer is what I intended and/or is done with 100% legal software and if I can't fix it myself, I make it go away.
I view web pages the way I want them to be displayed (and my preferred browser is Lynx not Konqueror or Firefox, but sometimes I like to look at pictures, like a few days ago when my neighborhood in Manila was flooded and on the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer).
the ads don't bother me.... The only ones that really bother me are the ones that expand when you roll over them or float across the screen on their own. Whatever works for you, but I hope you see the contradiction there.
I remember when the world was UUCP and the problem was finding an email path that actually worked, not blocking >90% of incoming email and it appears I have a different view point than yours.
Does it kill you *that* much to have to view an ad now and again. Technically, yes. I have a lot better things to do with my time than wait for slow ads to load. The beauty of the internet is that you are free to watch them if you wish. So, go for it there big guy.
Now, the text of the message on that site equates ad-blocking with theft. Assume this is true, what about other similar situations? Look at Microsoft Window preinstalls on computers. We are being told that the cost of the system is being offset by 3rd party apps affectionately called "crapplets" here and that is why bare metal or Linux installs cost more than equivalent Microsoft Windows-based systems. The crapplet guys are paying for the privilege of being on your desktop. Does that not then make it theft to wipe the machine and do a clean install? Also, shouldn't you feel compelled to actually use them, after all someone paid money for them to be there. They have to recoup their investment, don't they?
I don't see any fundamental difference in the two cases. If it is theft to block ads, it must also be theft to remove programs from your computer that a vendor has paid to have put there.
With that in mind, let me fix the wording of your statement:
Does it kill you *that* much to have to use the stuff that came preinstalled on your computer? Like it or not, the retail computer market is largely driven by 3rd party app support, and a lot of retail computer vendors would either disappear or be less comprehensive if they didn't have the incentive in place to keep providing low-cost computers. Be careful what you are asking for, you might get it.
Yeah, that page is censored by the version of ABP I'm using.
That's actually rather troubling. Troubling isn't the word I would use. Despicable is closer.
There's exactly 0% chance I'm going to buy something online (or offline) due to an advertisement on somebody's web page. It's a waste of time to have it forced down my throat.
It's none of a web site author's business which client is used to access a web page. If it matters, it's always been a web site I don't want to waste any time with anyway.
Lynx does a far better job of blocking ads than FF+ABP. Without the censorship.
Shame, shame, shame on the ABP author. You make a nice tool, but I will never trust you again.
These customers stick around because, for some reason, they like Sun. Sun stuff Just Works and it has for a *long* time. I've been around Sun in the workplace since the mid '80s. Except for their desktop stuff which used to be first class [the Postscript interface was a cool idea, but X was available by then and abandoning SunView was a disaster, and I won't talk about the Titanic, I mean CDE], everything else has been slowly improved.
At work I currently have a choice between Solaris, RHEL and Microsoft Windows XP as my primary workstation O/S. I'm using Solaris because as distasteful as CDE is, the machine just stays up. (The RHEL we have to use defaults to GNOME which is worse than CDE and I'm not allowed to perform the proper upgrades to get it configured properly and running something decent, oh well).
I'm hard and I'm easy. I will not accept a machine and/or O/S that (ever) crashes or needs to be rebooted in normal usage (I've had this at home since System V/R2[*]) and I will not accept a user interface that does not give me (multiple instances of, sorry Darwin) XEmacs and zsh terminal windows and (sorry Darwin) multiple desktops. Anything else is just so 1980's. With all its other failings, I still do prefer Sun hardware and Solaris because if I'm ever given a choice, that's what I always seem to choose.
[*] In 1999 when I started working for ETL in Japan they gave me a notebook computer with my choice of O/S - I chose Turbolinux, of course. I suspended/restarted that thing every day and never had to reboot a single time in the entire time I worked there - about a year of uptime. Can anyone claim something similar for any version of Microsoft Windows?
Sun is looking to eat some of Linux's lunch. The question is, why is IBM interested? Unlike Sun, I see a lot of development activity on lkml coming from *@*ibm.com email addresses mainly aimed at the big iron. My best guess would be that Linux isn't quite up to snuff there yet. They certainly are not walking away.
Disclaimer: IANALKD, but it sure looks like IBM is pouring a lot of development effort into (big iron) Linux.
I didn't learn this until I was out in the real world working.
The same kind of logic explains why a US$10,000 hammer (built to MIL-SPEC) is a fair price. Over-design it, order them in quantity 50, no make that 20, no make that 10... At least enough people have gotten it that it's no longer the poster-child of "US corporate greed".
I've no idea where the Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started. You must be new, that's how things were filmed then. The first ever inter-racial (ie black-white) kiss was on classic Star Trek.
Roddenberry deliberately pushed the envelope whereever he could. Sulu, Chekov on the bridge, etc. The only way a woman could get on was to be married or be mistress to him - Nurse Chapel was his wife, Uhura was his mistress and so was the (can't remember her name and my own videos of the classic series are not handy) blonde babe ensign who was in Charley, etc.
Type M-x praise-be-unto-xemacs into your nearest sound-enabled XEmacs window. That (fair use!) snippet is from the episode where Kirk fathered a child with the American Indian-like people.
How is he fathering children if he isn't spreading his seed all over the galaxy?
That article was nothing more than a perfect example of a classic Dvorak troll. Read through the rest of the comments here. I think the article is dead on.
I've spent most of the last 4 1/2 years in the 3rd world and I may have seen a legally purchased copy of Microsoft Windows once, but I'm not sure. Many of the posters here are confirming that the same kind of copying goes on in the developed world too. Philippine internet cafe folks have to be able to run games because their strongest market is children playing games.
In regards to home users, not really much do discuss; most believe that MS Office is part of the OS and don't know where apps start and the OS ends, this will be a tough group to educate If that's the case, then any Linux distro would do just fine and there would be no need for any education. My mother did fine for years on a Linux box I set up (in 1998) and she was and still is computer illiterate.
I mean, why would I want a flight from NY to LA to take 20 minutes when it's going to cost me $30,000+? (estimated) I don't care how much money you make in a year. Anyone would be insane to waste that kind of money. For real jet-setters with their own planes, that's not very much money and the cost is going to be roughly constant wherever you go.
NY to LA isn't all that smart of a route to do that for though. The time doesn't make that much difference after you factor in all the local transportation costs (and security). Now, NY or LA to Tokyo or Singapore or Beijing in under an hour? That's a different matter. It costs about US$2000 and 12 - 18 hours now to fly across the Pacific from the west coast (somewhat less if you shop for tickets and are willing to ride steerage), but that's still within an order of magnitude.
I for one would welcome a fast way to get to our new Asian overlords who own most of the US debt.
Maybe the solution to the short comings in our government is to force them to take and pass advanced programming classes before being allowed to take office. They do not even read the bills they pass. This is wishful thinking at best.
Automatic sunset laws (with a super-majority vote required to extend -- if it's a good law, why isn't 2/3 or 3/4 or 4/5 majority a reasonable idea) and a requirement that lawmakers actually prove they read the bills before they are allowed to vote YEA on them would work for me. Of course, this would slow down the amount of new things government would be allowed to do, that is, in my opinion, a _good_ thing.
Sigh, I admit to living in the past. I also want every single Presidential Executive Order *immediately* rescinded and passed properly into law by congress too.
It's been a century since we had a decent president (Taft), and he couldn't survive a second term reelection, bringing in perhaps the worst president ever (The Fed, Income Tax and WWI - good job Woody, the "Man Who Kept Us Out Of War"!).
You seem to be confused. I don't want Microsoft Windows. Most other people wouldn't either if they had any clue what they were buying. My mother (who is computer illiterate) used a Linux box for years to do her stuff on the internet.
The big lie you and all the other Microsoft fan boys are propagating is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop because no one uses it. If Linux distros were sold like Microsoft is sold, the world wouldn't end and Linux would have a similar market share.
Linux was ready for the desktop in the last millennium. Plain and simple.
Amen! to your first two paragraphs, but not to the last one. Last weekend I went out to buy a notebook computer and the only way I could buy one without buying a Microsoft license was to get a Macintrash. So, I did. I live in the San Jose, CA area, it's not like I'm in a first world country like Japan or something.
I want to run Unix and when I ask for a command line I want zsh, be it Apple OS X, or Linux. Answer me this, Microsoft fan boys, why do I have to buy a computer with an O/S I will never use? (The Mac Powerbook Pro is a nice machine, I have to say... it plays WoW in a way I never dreamed was possible and it runs circles around Microsoft Windows XP in terms of usability and speed and stability. Now if it only installed XEmacs by default...).
at the very least you generally need the GNU tool chain to have something usable The Mac OS X version of World of Warcraft advertises itself as being built by GCC. Do you suggest it should be called GNU/World of Warcraft or World of Warcraft/GNU? Just asking.
Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition. Sorry, I'm not going to play that game. Microsoft is interesting as a case example, but not a role model.
I demand 100% source for the computer system that I depend on so I can fix bugs and also as a system that a dying company or product line can never take away from me. I learned my lesson from the AT&T Unix PC (which could have been a DOS killer, but as plenty of people have told me - AT&T couldn't market eternal life) and strip(1) on that system. Never more...
I personally do not care what the market share is. If you all are happy paying for the same bugs over and over and over again... whatever. More power to you.
(I've got karma to burn, so why not...) I've been playing around with Mac OS X for the past week, and I assure all you mac fan boys that that platform *will* have the same problems as Microsoft if it were ever to gain similar market share. Bad programming practice is bad programming practice whether or not it is on BSD, Linux or whatever. Installing and/or running binaries from off machine is stupid (certificates, trusted people or whatever)! Thank you Microsoft for making this an industry standard.
Mandarin Chinese. Follow the money. (There's no monopoly on stupidity, after gutting the US manufacturing sector, Japan has also sold Japan, Inc. to the Chinese).
RFID passports were a stupid idea in the first place. I do not want the id in my pocket broadcasting to the world "I'm an American Passport! Kidnap the holder!" (and kidnapping is an issue in places of the world I need to go, like where my in-laws and children are).
Slashdot Mirror
See http://merit.jink.org/. Sigh.
I have been trolled, hope I have a nice day.
Most insightful! Thanks.
I didn't use to like MAD, but now I do. It's really scary that nearly all of the US Presidential candidates are willing to use nukes in a preemptive strike. That's wrong.
"Hey Fred! Have you seen you seen my new XS3402 Tactical Nuclear Missile launcher? Bring a six pack over and I'll show it to you."
As RAH said, "an armed society is a polite society" and that sounds OK with me and I certainly wouldn't have a problem with a neighbor having a rocket launcher in his back yard, but I wouldn't screw around with his wife behind his back either.
The leading cause of death in the 20th century was government (WWI, WWII, the Ukraine & Stalin, China and the cultural purges, etc. etc. etc.)
Looks like this century will be no different.
(When I was playing NationStates, the government of my nation of Altair was explicitly banned by its constitution from possessing firearms, but the citizens were allowed to have backyard tactical nukes if they could afford them, and by the rules Altair had one of the most prosperous economies in the game).
Intelligent and well educated citizens ought to be able to possess weapons up to (and beyond) tactical nuclear weapons. History has proven that they'll make better decisions about using them than governments have been.
If you wish to mod me down, please adopt an Iraqi orphan from the US invasion of Iraq. Thanks.
You are posting in support of people who believe ad-blocking is a crime and you completely miss the point I'm trying to make.
...
First they came for the P2P music downloaders, but I stayed quiet because I don't download pirated music.
Then they came for the ad-blockers, but I stayed quiet because a few ads never hurt anyone.
Then they came for people who did not support the sponsored software that was preinstalled on their system, but I stayed quiet because it gave me a cheaper computer and I like Microsoft Windows anyway.
Then they came for me
OK, that's kind of cheesy, but if you want to view ads on your computer, go ahead -- it's your business and none of mine. Please don't force the rest of us to conform to your views.
I am one of the myriad of programmers who has given away free code for decades so that the internet could be built up in the first place. Wish we'd had a license on the internet like the GPL, but it's too late now. If you think it's fair that advertises must be paid on each web page accessad, pay me royalties for every email message you send (most of the code on your computer that is a derived work of mine would be email related). Fair is fair, or do you mean something else?
While I agree that this is +5 funny, it is also +5 insightful because that is indeed what they are claiming.
I don't know how it works; I've never seen the code. My fault in a way, but hey, /bin/rm -f /usr/share/man/man2/rmdir-considered-evil.2* as a side effect?
would one expect rmdir(2) to
I'm a computer fundamentalist (which didn't use to be a bad word). Either everything that happens on my computer is what I intended and/or is done with 100% legal software and if I can't fix it myself, I make it go away.
I view web pages the way I want them to be displayed (and my preferred browser is Lynx not Konqueror or Firefox, but sometimes I like to look at pictures, like a few days ago when my neighborhood in Manila was flooded and on the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer). the ads don't bother me.
I remember when the world was UUCP and the problem was finding an email path that actually worked, not blocking >90% of incoming email and it appears I have a different view point than yours.
"My Computer" is mine, any questions?
Now, the text of the message on that site equates ad-blocking with theft. Assume this is true, what about other similar situations? Look at Microsoft Window preinstalls on computers. We are being told that the cost of the system is being offset by 3rd party apps affectionately called "crapplets" here and that is why bare metal or Linux installs cost more than equivalent Microsoft Windows-based systems. The crapplet guys are paying for the privilege of being on your desktop. Does that not then make it theft to wipe the machine and do a clean install? Also, shouldn't you feel compelled to actually use them, after all someone paid money for them to be there. They have to recoup their investment, don't they?
I don't see any fundamental difference in the two cases. If it is theft to block ads, it must also be theft to remove programs from your computer that a vendor has paid to have put there.
With that in mind, let me fix the wording of your statement: Does it kill you *that* much to have to use the stuff that came preinstalled on your computer? Like it or not, the retail computer market is largely driven by 3rd party app support, and a lot of retail computer vendors would either disappear or be less comprehensive if they didn't have the incentive in place to keep providing low-cost computers. Be careful what you are asking for, you might get it.
There's exactly 0% chance I'm going to buy something online (or offline) due to an advertisement on somebody's web page. It's a waste of time to have it forced down my throat.
It's none of a web site author's business which client is used to access a web page. If it matters, it's always been a web site I don't want to waste any time with anyway.
Lynx does a far better job of blocking ads than FF+ABP. Without the censorship.
Shame, shame, shame on the ABP author. You make a nice tool, but I will never trust you again.
At work I currently have a choice between Solaris, RHEL and Microsoft Windows XP as my primary workstation O/S. I'm using Solaris because as distasteful as CDE is, the machine just stays up. (The RHEL we have to use defaults to GNOME which is worse than CDE and I'm not allowed to perform the proper upgrades to get it configured properly and running something decent, oh well).
I'm hard and I'm easy. I will not accept a machine and/or O/S that (ever) crashes or needs to be rebooted in normal usage (I've had this at home since System V/R2[*]) and I will not accept a user interface that does not give me (multiple instances of, sorry Darwin) XEmacs and zsh terminal windows and (sorry Darwin) multiple desktops. Anything else is just so 1980's. With all its other failings, I still do prefer Sun hardware and Solaris because if I'm ever given a choice, that's what I always seem to choose.
[*] In 1999 when I started working for ETL in Japan they gave me a notebook computer with my choice of O/S - I chose Turbolinux, of course. I suspended/restarted that thing every day and never had to reboot a single time in the entire time I worked there - about a year of uptime. Can anyone claim something similar for any version of Microsoft Windows?
Disclaimer:
IANALKD, but it sure looks like IBM is pouring a lot of development effort into (big iron) Linux.
I didn't learn this until I was out in the real world working.
... At least enough people have gotten it that it's no longer the poster-child of "US corporate greed".
The same kind of logic explains why a US$10,000 hammer (built to MIL-SPEC) is a fair price. Over-design it, order them in quantity 50, no make that 20, no make that 10
Roddenberry deliberately pushed the envelope whereever he could. Sulu, Chekov on the bridge, etc. The only way a woman could get on was to be married or be mistress to him - Nurse Chapel was his wife, Uhura was his mistress and so was the (can't remember her name and my own videos of the classic series are not handy) blonde babe ensign who was in Charley, etc.
Type M-x praise-be-unto-xemacs into your nearest sound-enabled XEmacs window. That (fair use!) snippet is from the episode where Kirk fathered a child with the American Indian-like people.
How is he fathering children if he isn't spreading his seed all over the galaxy?
I've spent most of the last 4 1/2 years in the 3rd world and I may have seen a legally purchased copy of Microsoft Windows once, but I'm not sure. Many of the posters here are confirming that the same kind of copying goes on in the developed world too. Philippine internet cafe folks have to be able to run games because their strongest market is children playing games. In regards to home users, not really much do discuss; most believe that MS Office is part of the OS and don't know where apps start and the OS ends, this will be a tough group to educate If that's the case, then any Linux distro would do just fine and there would be no need for any education. My mother did fine for years on a Linux box I set up (in 1998) and she was and still is computer illiterate.
NY to LA isn't all that smart of a route to do that for though. The time doesn't make that much difference after you factor in all the local transportation costs (and security). Now, NY or LA to Tokyo or Singapore or Beijing in under an hour? That's a different matter. It costs about US$2000 and 12 - 18 hours now to fly across the Pacific from the west coast (somewhat less if you shop for tickets and are willing to ride steerage), but that's still within an order of magnitude.
I for one would welcome a fast way to get to our new Asian overlords who own most of the US debt.
Automatic sunset laws (with a super-majority vote required to extend -- if it's a good law, why isn't 2/3 or 3/4 or 4/5 majority a reasonable idea) and a requirement that lawmakers actually prove they read the bills before they are allowed to vote YEA on them would work for me. Of course, this would slow down the amount of new things government would be allowed to do, that is, in my opinion, a _good_ thing.
Sigh, I admit to living in the past. I also want every single Presidential Executive Order *immediately* rescinded and passed properly into law by congress too.
It's been a century since we had a decent president (Taft), and he couldn't survive a second term reelection, bringing in perhaps the worst president ever (The Fed, Income Tax and WWI - good job Woody, the "Man Who Kept Us Out Of War"!).
You seem to be confused. I don't want Microsoft Windows. Most other people wouldn't either if they had any clue what they were buying. My mother (who is computer illiterate) used a Linux box for years to do her stuff on the internet.
The big lie you and all the other Microsoft fan boys are propagating is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop because no one uses it. If Linux distros were sold like Microsoft is sold, the world wouldn't end and Linux would have a similar market share.
Linux was ready for the desktop in the last millennium. Plain and simple.
Amen! to your first two paragraphs, but not to the last one. Last weekend I went out to buy a notebook computer and the only way I could buy one without buying a Microsoft license was to get a Macintrash. So, I did. I live in the San Jose, CA area, it's not like I'm in a first world country like Japan or something.
... it plays WoW in a way I never dreamed was possible and it runs circles around Microsoft Windows XP in terms of usability and speed and stability. Now if it only installed XEmacs by default ...).
I want to run Unix and when I ask for a command line I want zsh, be it Apple OS X, or Linux. Answer me this, Microsoft fan boys, why do I have to buy a computer with an O/S I will never use? (The Mac Powerbook Pro is a nice machine, I have to say
I demand 100% source for the computer system that I depend on so I can fix bugs and also as a system that a dying company or product line can never take away from me. I learned my lesson from the AT&T Unix PC (which could have been a DOS killer, but as plenty of people have told me - AT&T couldn't market eternal life) and strip(1) on that system. Never more
I personally do not care what the market share is. If you all are happy paying for the same bugs over and over and over again
(I've got karma to burn, so why not
Mandarin Chinese. Follow the money. (There's no monopoly on stupidity, after gutting the US manufacturing sector, Japan has also sold Japan, Inc. to the Chinese).
RFID passports were a stupid idea in the first place. I do not want the id in my pocket broadcasting to the world "I'm an American Passport! Kidnap the holder!" (and kidnapping is an issue in places of the world I need to go, like where my in-laws and children are).