> > Actually it is Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf [welovethei...nister.com]. Tariq Aziz was the deputy prime minister. Both were mouthpieces for Saddam's politcal machine, but Muhammed is much more fun to listen to. Check out all his quotes on the above website.
> You remind me, does anyone know of a website with Ari Fliescher's quotes?
Ari has great material too, but he doesn't seem to realize that the better part of humor lies in the delivery.
> Why would SCO cause themselves more difficulty by using a legal strategy that ultimately would cause them more harm then good? Most likely they have proof, or they wouldn't have said anything.
Yes, we all know that the plaintif always wins a lawsuit, because no one would be so foolish as to file a suit when they didn't have rock-solid proof in their briefcase.
> Hell, Stallman believes all code should be free. Why wouldn't one of his followers steal code given that philosophy?
A) Are Linux kernel hackers "followers" of RMS?
B) Does RMS advocate stealing code?
C) Which is the better way to put egg on the faces of closed source software shops such as SCO, to steal their code or to write your own code that does the same thing better, and give it away for free?
Your argument makes a great example of what is known as "special pleading". Hopefully the court will want facts rather than silly arguments such as yours, and SCO's "Linux couldn't have matured so fast if someone hadn't been stealing our code".
> > The sled was designed to cover the first 1.4 miles in 4.65 seconds, then speed up in the final stages and cover 1.8 miles in 1.3 seconds, Kurtz said. At the end, bolts were detonated to allow the missile to detach from the sled and successfully hit its target.
> I wonder if this has military implications?
General Franks might be interested in the "successfully hit its target" part.
> > But knowitall engineers use trensastors with inferious sound quality just to save a few bucks
> Size, reliability, long life, no need to heat, reduced power use, sound quality virtually identical, unbreakable. I could go on, but obviously it would be irrelevant to a Humanities student:):):)
If he were a humanities student he would have known how to spell his post right.
In other forums he probably whinges about how humanities students lord it over the phys ed majors.
> Its not just a drop in productivity while everyone learns the software. After you switch to linux on the desktops, what are your software deployment options? What are your workstation reimaging options? When you buy into a MS Active Directory (or NDS) model you are getting GPO, Intellimirror, and imaging options that GREATLY reduce desktop support calls. Sure you can save money on the inital software licensing cost up front going to linux, but will you have to increase your staff to support the users and install software? Those are the costs on the back end that kill you.
Remote updates for Linux are cheesy easy. I manage a cluster of workstations that I haven't even seen since I installed it. I just use a script that connects to each node in turn via SSH and executes whatever command(s) I pass as an argument, such as "ncftpget blah blah; rpm -Uhv blah blah ; blah blah...".
I don't expect to see any of the machines again until one of them breaks down. I'm thinking about moving to another town, but that wouldn't make the slightest difference to my ability to keep them up to date. I suppose I'd have to go stick a disk in them if I wanted to do a full upgrade, but I just upgrade them by component instead. Even a kernel upgrade is easy over SSH. Most software doesn't even require a reboot, let alone a personal visit.
> Also if you think about the machines on workers desktops should they all be switch to Linux as its free? I personally would say no as you will soon lose more with a drop in productivity as people have to learn something new.
As opposed to having to learn something new anyway, every time Microsoft or Apple come out with a new version of whatever product your people use?
Commercial companies are fond of gratuitous changes in UIs, because if they don't make gratuitous changes their customers will think last year's version is still good enough and not shell out for more.
> yeah, opensource is the logical choice if all you're doing is attempting to get software for free.. except that the city will hire IBM (or simlar) to consult them as to which software to use, and implement it, and maintain it.....
More likely Microsoft will pay them to to use Windows.
> free software? nothing's ever free. This will prevent them from just buying more of whatever they've currently got, which is always cheaper than buying new stuff.
Depends on whether you're thinking short term or long term.
Also, notice that a place that size is going to have to spend a lot of money on consulting, implementation, and maintenance regardless of whose software they buy. Might as well get the one that you don't have to buy again every year, especially when it has other advantages in the areas of virus resistance, remote maintainability, minimal hardware requirements, etc.
> If you want Windows people to use Linux, we need distributions to do a few things:
Maybe we should start by questioning some assumptions, such as: Do we want to roll Linux to appeal to Windows users, or do we want to let it seek its own niche?
The GNOME 2 "less is more" mantra may appeal to Windows users, but it makes some of us wonder how to get the missing functionality back. Let's not drag the whole game off in that direction.
> The goal of all the cognitive scientists I've met is to make machines think, just as with A.I.
You need to meet more then. Ask linguists whether they're studying cog sci and they'll give you an emphatic "yes". I think these days most research psychologists would say so as well (though maybe clinical psychologists wouldn't).
> In fact, I've always heard, and was told in my AI class, that A.I. is a branch of cognitive science.
Some AI is, but not all. It really depends on the individual researcher's goals.
> However, there are many approaches to machine thinking that are not considered part of A.I.: neural networks, SVMs, computer vision (signal interpretation), modeling.
Never heard of SVMs, but most AI researchers do think neural networks, computer vision, and certain kinds of modelling are subfields of AI.
Who taught your AI class?
> Cognitive scientists are usually more concerned with getting the machines to do what we want than they are with modeling human thinking techniques.
No, you have that backwards. AI researchers are concerned with getting machines to behave intelligently, and cog sci researchers are trying to understand human or animal cognition. And there is a fair amount of overlap, e.g. an AI/CogSci researcher may try to get a machine to behave intelligently as a model of human cognition.
You don't think cognition is a legitimate subject for scientists to study?
> which has replaced the older artificial intelligence scam
Not the same thing at all; AI will still be around, plodding along, though they may eventually get a boost from the results of cognitive scientists.
> with its more robust resistance to criticism
How so?
> and even more byzantine theories.
Sorry, but the theories have to go wherever the facts lead. General relativity and quantum mechanics aren't exacty obvious or intuitive, but that's where the investigations took us. We should expect the study of cognition to lead to some counterintuitive surprises as well.
BTW, the Byzantines maintained a high culture throughout the period the rest of Europe was practicing barbarism.
> One question is whether the $20,000 for the stamp is merely an additional cost, or if it includes the cost of transporting a kilogram or so of cargo.
Sounds like someone's thinking about becoming the system's first astrodealer. You reckon they smoke a lot of pot on the ISS?
Slashdot Mirror
>
You missed the fine print:
Might be a useful way of chasing off dorks who post HTML to Usenet.
As opposed to other MS products, which crap on you while you surf the net.
> > Wish I had some mod points for this one...
> For the stock quotes or the sig?
I think he wanted to mod the SCO stock price as "+5, funny".
> > Actually it is Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf [welovethei...nister.com]. Tariq Aziz was the deputy prime minister. Both were mouthpieces for Saddam's politcal machine, but Muhammed is much more fun to listen to. Check out all his quotes on the above website.
> You remind me, does anyone know of a website with Ari Fliescher's quotes?
Ari has great material too, but he doesn't seem to realize that the better part of humor lies in the delivery.
> > Actually it is Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
> AKA Comical Ali
LoL! Surely that's the funniest thing I ever read on Slashdot.
> Why would SCO cause themselves more difficulty by using a legal strategy that ultimately would cause them more harm then good? Most likely they have proof, or they wouldn't have said anything.
Yes, we all know that the plaintif always wins a lawsuit, because no one would be so foolish as to file a suit when they didn't have rock-solid proof in their briefcase.
> Hell, Stallman believes all code should be free. Why wouldn't one of his followers steal code given that philosophy?
A) Are Linux kernel hackers "followers" of RMS?
B) Does RMS advocate stealing code?
C) Which is the better way to put egg on the faces of closed source software shops such as SCO, to steal their code or to write your own code that does the same thing better, and give it away for free?
Your argument makes a great example of what is known as "special pleading". Hopefully the court will want facts rather than silly arguments such as yours, and SCO's "Linux couldn't have matured so fast if someone hadn't been stealing our code".
> > The sled was designed to cover the first 1.4 miles in 4.65 seconds, then speed up in the final stages and cover 1.8 miles in 1.3 seconds, Kurtz said. At the end, bolts were detonated to allow the missile to detach from the sled and successfully hit its target.
> I wonder if this has military implications?
General Franks might be interested in the "successfully hit its target" part.
> > But knowitall engineers use trensastors with inferious sound quality just to save a few bucks
> Size, reliability, long life, no need to heat, reduced power use, sound quality virtually identical, unbreakable. I could go on, but obviously it would be irrelevant to a Humanities student
If he were a humanities student he would have known how to spell his post right.
In other forums he probably whinges about how humanities students lord it over the phys ed majors.
> Just in case "It's dead, Jim" didn't quite cover it
Funny enough, they seem to think it needs a hairstylist rather than a doctor or a screenwriter.
Maybe the problem lies at the producer level?
[*] Is an italicized smilie a smirkie?
> Its not just a drop in productivity while everyone learns the software. After you switch to linux on the desktops, what are your software deployment options? What are your workstation reimaging options? When you buy into a MS Active Directory (or NDS) model you are getting GPO, Intellimirror, and imaging options that GREATLY reduce desktop support calls. Sure you can save money on the inital software licensing cost up front going to linux, but will you have to increase your staff to support the users and install software? Those are the costs on the back end that kill you.
Remote updates for Linux are cheesy easy. I manage a cluster of workstations that I haven't even seen since I installed it. I just use a script that connects to each node in turn via SSH and executes whatever command(s) I pass as an argument, such as "ncftpget blah blah; rpm -Uhv blah blah ; blah blah
I don't expect to see any of the machines again until one of them breaks down. I'm thinking about moving to another town, but that wouldn't make the slightest difference to my ability to keep them up to date. I suppose I'd have to go stick a disk in them if I wanted to do a full upgrade, but I just upgrade them by component instead. Even a kernel upgrade is easy over SSH. Most software doesn't even require a reboot, let alone a personal visit.
> Also if you think about the machines on workers desktops should they all be switch to Linux as its free? I personally would say no as you will soon lose more with a drop in productivity as people have to learn something new.
As opposed to having to learn something new anyway, every time Microsoft or Apple come out with a new version of whatever product your people use?
Commercial companies are fond of gratuitous changes in UIs, because if they don't make gratuitous changes their customers will think last year's version is still good enough and not shell out for more.
> yeah, opensource is the logical choice if all you're doing is attempting to get software for free.. except that the city will hire IBM (or simlar) to consult them as to which software to use, and implement it, and maintain it.....
More likely Microsoft will pay them to to use Windows.
> free software? nothing's ever free. This will prevent them from just buying more of whatever they've currently got, which is always cheaper than buying new stuff.
Depends on whether you're thinking short term or long term.
Also, notice that a place that size is going to have to spend a lot of money on consulting, implementation, and maintenance regardless of whose software they buy. Might as well get the one that you don't have to buy again every year, especially when it has other advantages in the areas of virus resistance, remote maintainability, minimal hardware requirements, etc.
Go for it, New York!
> Funnily, nematodes are called "sukkulamadot" in Finnish>
And if you think slashdotting is bad, wait until you've been sukkulamadotted.
> If you want Windows people to use Linux, we need distributions to do a few things:
Maybe we should start by questioning some assumptions, such as: Do we want to roll Linux to appeal to Windows users, or do we want to let it seek its own niche?
The GNOME 2 "less is more" mantra may appeal to Windows users, but it makes some of us wonder how to get the missing functionality back. Let's not drag the whole game off in that direction.
Carless? Slashdot doesn't pay very in the post-boom era, does it?
> The goal of all the cognitive scientists I've met is to make machines think, just as with A.I.
You need to meet more then. Ask linguists whether they're studying cog sci and they'll give you an emphatic "yes". I think these days most research psychologists would say so as well (though maybe clinical psychologists wouldn't).
> In fact, I've always heard, and was told in my AI class, that A.I. is a branch of cognitive science.
Some AI is, but not all. It really depends on the individual researcher's goals.
> However, there are many approaches to machine thinking that are not considered part of A.I.:
neural networks, SVMs, computer vision (signal interpretation), modeling.
Never heard of SVMs, but most AI researchers do think neural networks, computer vision, and certain kinds of modelling are subfields of AI.
Who taught your AI class?
> Cognitive scientists are usually more concerned with getting the machines to do what we want than they are with modeling human thinking techniques.
No, you have that backwards. AI researchers are concerned with getting machines to behave intelligently, and cog sci researchers are trying to understand human or animal cognition. And there is a fair amount of overlap, e.g. an AI/CogSci researcher may try to get a machine to behave intelligently as a model of human cognition.
> Noun ; 1. The current scientist scam
You don't think cognition is a legitimate subject for scientists to study?
> which has replaced the older artificial intelligence scam
Not the same thing at all; AI will still be around, plodding along, though they may eventually get a boost from the results of cognitive scientists.
> with its more robust resistance to criticism
How so?
> and even more byzantine theories.
Sorry, but the theories have to go wherever the facts lead. General relativity and quantum mechanics aren't exacty obvious or intuitive, but that's where the investigations took us. We should expect the study of cognition to lead to some counterintuitive surprises as well.
BTW, the Byzantines maintained a high culture throughout the period the rest of Europe was practicing barbarism.
> Great. First we have the trojan that downloads kiddie porn
Or just let it stand for Send Me The Porn, and find another protocol for e-mail.
> Even though it is composed of major spaghetti code...
Well after all, it implements the control program for a machine that makes spaghetti. What kind of code were you expecting?
>
Well, code does tend to become more spaghetti-like the longer it is maintained.
> DNA has not suffered a root level exploit yet!
Viruses exploit it all the time.
> "Geez, it says here that the next 24,000 lines of code are wholly dedicated to picking one's nose!"
Yes, but it's just a mutation of the scratch-your-arse code.
Think of it as OOP-style inheritance in action.
What's next, SG1-mail?
> One question is whether the $20,000 for the stamp is merely an additional cost, or if it includes the cost of transporting a kilogram or so of cargo.
Sounds like someone's thinking about becoming the system's first astrodealer. You reckon they smoke a lot of pot on the ISS?