Our largest local bookstore carries their books but has angered the scientologists by placing them in the "Science Fiction" section right next to the likes of the Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek, and all the other fantasy books.
What's Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons ever done to them? What Science Fiction series is bad enough to deserve being placed next to a $cientology $creed?
You cannot find any rational defense of Scientology because there isn't a rational defense of Scientology. It is very much like Nazism: Only charlatans and loonies are in favor of it, and they are in no position to give fact-based reviews.
All of the facts say one thing: Scientology is an evil cult that was started by a genuine madman. It has killed before, repeatedly, and it will kill again if it gets the chance. The people who run xenu.net are trying to deny it that chance. They are very successful: Thousands of people know the truth about Xenu, Scientology, and Hubbard because of Operation Clambake. That is why Scientology is trying so hard to destroy it.
Does anyone get the feeling sometimes, that MS might be employing people to try and stir up linux communitys?
No, MS and other corporate types like to use astroturf: Paid shills who boost a product, not put another down. At least, that's what they're known to do. Simple extension of advertising, after all.
Just ive noticed lots of very weird trolling type posts that even a bored, twisted person would not bother writing.
Then you don't know how bored and twisted some people can get. Why do you think Slashdot has such a great moderation system? Why do you think we have a way to identify friends and foes now? They're not just good ideas, they're damn near essential in an open forum as large as this one.
Look at Usenet. Huge forum, completely open. What do all good newsreaders have? Killfiles. A way to make certain people disappear. A constant level of annoying BS is completely anticipated by design. Think about that for a while. Nobody I know of has ever astroturfed Usenet. Not enough average lusers make use of it for corps to spend ad money painting billboards on it, fly-by-night spammers notwithstanding. The BS those well-developed killfiles filter is the BS lonely, bored, disturbed private individuals create.
This is as close to Usenet as a webpage can be. No censorship. No deletion. Free access. Therefore, it must emulate the killfile system as well as it possibly can or it will surely collapse under the BS. The BS created by private morons for their own purposes.
MS does not need to spend cash to get people to rile the Penguinistas. Moronic trolls do it for free.
I'm gonna be the complete dick, but what tells us that you're not the rich kid of some communist nomenklatura official?
Well, we always knew the Chinese made the best astroturf, now didn't we? It's a wonder this place isn't swamped with Chinese people calling for free trade (maybe just this once and never in things like ideas) and peaceful change to a glorious future (oddly dominated by people who are old enough to remember Mao).
Maybe they're all having trouble accessing the Real Internet through those Cisco servers.
Who are you to tell me what I can expect of those I do business with? If I tell you I'm only going to buy your widgets if you dress up like a leprechaun, you damn well better be wearing green knickers and shoes with buckles next time I see you if you want to make the sale. I see you've defined capitalism and democracy nicely, but you seem to have forgotten that these ideas only apply to human societies. In a human society, such as we have here, we can influence each others behavior with a wide variety of subtle and not-so-subtle pressures, of which the law and the dollar are but two. For instance, if I see a tobacco company executive or a tobacco farmer on the street, I won't hesitate to let that person know what a worthless, parasitical waste of flesh that person is. I'd defend their right to grow and sell tobacco, but I'd think that they're scum for doing it.
And so we have the method to fight Cisco and Yahoo and everyone's favorite Evil Empire, Microsoft: Boycott. Make it socially unacceptable to buy products from anyone who has dealings with the enemy (any country that restricts free expression) and the problem will disappear of its own accord. It will disappear without our government mimicing China's by regulating foreign trade, and that is the best victory.
Don't think boycott can work? Montgomery, Alabama (Hell, it's Black History Month!) in the 1960s saw an effective form of boycott and the busses hurt. The busses really hurt. Blacks could soon sit wherever they wanted to. India, 1940s, saw another boycott, this one on goods from a real Evil Empire: Great Britain. Gandhi's followers made salt in the sun to avoid paying British companies to support British domination. They had a homespun revolution.
The software industry is fiercely competitive even today. Nobody can claim a lock on anything, no matter how much the DoJ wants to pretend. A boycott would be insanely effective.
Since written history, God/gods have been described as the source of life. Now, the last what....at most 150 years we have evolution....whatever.
Tell me, is the Earth flat? After all we've only thought it was round since Rome was an empire. Does the Earth orbit the sun, or the other way around? Galileio and Kepler far postdate the beginning of recorded history, after all.
where is your evidence of the species in between say the fish and the walking animals, why do these branches still exist? why do we find many of the SAME types of animals in fossils.??? when they would prob. be the transition species.
Why can't you people come up with new arguments? Do some serious research into the evolutionist point of view and report back to me. Short replies: Animal lines constantly undergo small changes, occasionally undergo large ones (punctuated equilibrium), and do disappear. But only if they can no longer reproduce and spread. Fish still exist because the fish body-type was and is a successful model. And we do see plenty of fossils of beings that no longer exist. Where, exactly, would one go to see a living trilobite? Or a living Homo erectus?
As for your religious stuff: All I'm asking is that you give me physical evidence that points unambiguously to the existence of a deity. That's all. Plenty of evidence points towards evolution, no evidence points towards creationism. Yea, it's that simple.
So do me a favor: Open your mind, just a little, and let the sun shine in, or at least a few facts and ideas that aren't found in some ancient Middle-Eastern fairy tale.
Okay, I was wrong about the appendix. Yes, all scientists are willing to accept their own mistakes. It's called learning.
You still haven't addressed the rest of my post. A logical fallacy (neatly grouping me, and all other evolutionists, with Hitler and Mao) doesn't count as an argument where I'm from.
Then where, pray tell, does the appendix come in? Or cancer? Or AIDS? Or cholera? Or smallpox? Are you saying that a malevolent, or at least basically incompetent, intelligence designed life? Well, the burden of proof is on you. Back up your claim with evidence, just as real scientists worldwide have done for centuries.
Uh, could you all make up your minds? That's what I love about SlashDot, the hypocracy!!
I'm sorry we're not all mindless drones. It might make it easier for your eight-bit brain to process slashdot if it was a hivemind collective, but the borg add-ons would ruin my boyish good looks.:-)
Come on, TiVo is easy to use, my playstation 2 is easy to use, why is my computer so hard?
Because your computer is a general-purpose machine. You can use it for a wider range of things than just playing games (PS2) or just watching TV (TiVo). You can instruct it to do a wide range of things, and that means the user interface has to accept a wide range of input from the user. Remember, computers aren't psychic. Nor are they intelligent. They are just simple input-output devices with a lot of flash glued on. To do interesting things, they need instructions more complex than what your TiVo takes.
Besides, who wants to be talked down to by a computer?:-)
Why don't you build a new box, you poor bastard? For god's sake, I'm a uni student living in the equivalent of a cardboard box (paid for by myself) with several computers of different architecture (paid for by myself) with a fair DSL line (you get the idea). Now, not withstanding, I'm in debt. What the hell are student loans for anyway? In thoery, I should be making enough to pay it all off in 3 years after college, and that's not a bad deal, concidering I come from a very middle class family. Grow up, and stop whining about your inadequices; do something about it. And teach your SO how to use a freaking comp, jerk!
I remember hearing that in WWII they used other languages, like some american indian language to do encryption.
They used Navajo, hence the Navajo Code Talkers. They were very highly regarded. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." [Taken from the first link on my list.] Good websites are easily findable on Google:
Summary: Clear Channel Communications has not just banned songs. It has released a memo listing songs stations might want to think about not playing. It's a suggestion, not a policy.
Okay, I can accept you if you can accept me. I'm tolerant. But I just want to clear up my own image.
For one thing, I'm not a Liberal. I'm a Libertarian, which means I'm right of center on economic issues, but I support individual rights more than either major political party. I think Clinton and Gore are both assholes who corrupted their respective offices and should never have been elected, let alone re-elected. I think people should have the right to make a living without 'environmentalists' (read: nutballs) wrapping chains around trees to kill them and living in trees daring them to commit homicide. Protecting the environment does not involve putting people in harm's way. I'm pro-choice, pro-seperation of church and state, anti-welfare, and pro-flat tax. I think the DMCA is anti-Constitutional in that it spits on the fundamental freedoms the Constitution guarantees.
Okay, are you still with me? Good. That was a hell of a rant. Sorry.:-)
Now, more about why I like Linux. I'm more than willing to learn a complex system if it makes my life easier. And that is what Linux promises: It isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn, but the investment of my time is paid off thousandfold whenever I have to, say, delete massive amounts of files with a certain kind of name in a directory. Say what you will about 'intuitiveness' and 'ease of learning', being able to pound a few keys and do something that would have taken hours on a GUI-centric system is a highly useful feature. And with the piping command I can link features in ways that do rather complex tasks (like searching for all files that match a certain type, convert them into a different type, and compress them into one file, for example). With cron, I can automate complex tasks so they're done on the second Tuesday of every other month, for example. I can do all that using simple, powerful commands that sacrifice a little intutitiveness for sheer useability. A good tradeoff, in my book.
I can give you something to read as a parting shot as well. In the beginning was the command line... is a useful, yet concise, overview of not only the history of computing, but the philosophies of different operating systems and groups. It's worth a read, and will hopefully get you thinking about computers in very different ways.
Microsoft has some advantages. So does authoritarian government. It simply isn't for me. Just for your edification, The New Linux Myth Dispeller. If you want to be anti-Linux, be anti-Linux for the right reasons, and don't spread BS. (Not that you did.) It doesn't help your position.
Well, it's been interesting debating with you. Neither one of us has convinced the other, but I don't think either one of us expected to. I guess I'll be happily piping commands and adding to my crontab while you keep your NT machine running, and we'll just take divergent roads. Good luck keeping NT functional, by the way.:-)
You know, people like you are on the verge of convincing me. After all, a small Cessna with a nuke and a pilot on a suicide mission (whether the pilot knows it at the time or not) could give as effective an airburst as an ICBM could provide. And the ship in the harbor example is classic (someone suggested it before Hiroshima, in fact) and is still very feasble. But if someone does launch an ICBM at us, we ought to have some way of defending ourselves. Maybe being better able to detect radiation from space is the better plan. If we could see the radiation coming off of fissile materials from satellite altitudes, we could stop bombs (and track potential prerequistie materials) no matter how the delivery system works. I'll have to think on this.
I use a computer at work, so I've never personally paid for the Windows OS that runs my computer, either. So what's your point? "It's free, therefore it's better?" Thats's the same rationale used for stealing copyrighted music with the help of Napster and Gnutella. "I CAN download the music for free, therefore it's alright." I don't agree.
I buy my computers. And software. I like getting a good deal for my money. Linux is that good deal. Windows is not.
Why shouldn't Microsoft (or any software vendor) be paid for the products they produce?
They should be paid by those who choose to use their software. Nobody is losing out because numerous people worldwide made the choice to make Linux free.
Why is it evil to make a profit?
It isn't.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "There's no such thing as a free lunch?" I believe it.
Even to the point of discounting evidence to the contrary?
If I buy into the Linux philospohy, I'll have to PAY in terms of the time I spend learning how to install it first; then I'll have to hunt for the FREE software and install it; then I'll have to learn how to USE the software and hope it does what I want it to do. Finally, if/when something goes wrong, I'll either have to teach myself how to change the code or rely on the good intentions of strangers to fix my problems in their own good time, with NO guarantee whatsoever.
And if you buy a Microsoft product, you'll have to SPEND ~$100 at least, SPEND time learning to use it, SPEND time staring at error messages and BSODs (Blue Screens Of Death), SPEND time you should be working fixing those bugs, and HOPE you can get an answer out of Microsoft Tech Support, when there is NO guarantee you'll be able to get through to a helpful person. No thanks. I'd rather use something someone took pride in making work and still maintains because he/she wants to.
Ah, the not-so-subtle insult hurled at non-Linux users. If you're not using Linux, you're a rank newbie, right? In other words, you're an idiot if you're not using Linux. Only the smartest people use Linux. Yada-yada-yada.
Sorry, no. I meant the exact opposite. Linux is becomig increasingly newbie-friendly, in fact, as those graphical setup interfaces prove.
Then it ISN'T "free," is it? My time is more valuable to me than the cost involved in purchasing a Windows OS. Why should I spend countless hours finding a "free" downloadable Linux OS, only to find out that I'm going to have to spend countless hours learning how to install and actually USE it?
It's as free as you want it to be. If you decide your time is more important, go ahead and buy a distro. That's what I did. If you're short on cash, go online and learn something and then find a download site (not too hard if you can use Google), then spend some time loading it and configuring it. Simple as that.
Don't understand the "free beer" reference. But, again, I have no need or desire to look at the source code. I don't want to create a better operating system; I just want to use one that will perform certain tasks reasonably well. Windows does that quite nicely. It seems to me that you are captivated by the idea that Linux is FREE and FREE and did I mention that Linux is FREE?
Asking why Linux is better is a little like asking why breathing oxygen is better than breathing methane. Linux has so much going for it it's tough to even imagine using anything else. Some of it may be chauvinism, but Linux hardly needs chauvinistic support. It just needs pragmatic support, and computer users are some of the most pragmatic people around. Here are ten listed reasons why Linux is better than commerical OSes. Here is a well-written article on the subject.
Perhaps the most pragmatic reason is that Linux is the cheapest OS in existence. You can find the latest release free for the taking on many servers worldwide. The time and the technical skills needed to actually make this option work are prohibitive, however, and few people will actually do it. For the rest of us, plenty of CDs are sold (or given away with big, useful instruction manuals (hey, that's how I got Red Hat 7.1!)) for under a hundred bucks. These CDs, called 'distros', or distributions, are made by various corporations, like Red Hat, Caldera, Slackware, Debain, etc. and come loaded with thousands of dollars worth of software. They also come with friendly, graphical installation programs that can get even the rankest of newbies started with Linux.
Once you get Linux going, there is a plethora of free software online. The GNU's Not Unix project is the best-known source, but you can find thousands with a simple Google search. Most Linux software, and Linux itself, is free in two senses: Free beer and Free speech. Free speech? Yes. Free in that sense means you can look at the source code (it is Open Source, in other words) and modify it to your whims. It is liberated software, software anyone can modify, learn from, change, and improve.
That brings me to my next point. Linux is the most stable OS in the world. Programs can crash and burn, scream and die, and just plain quit and Linux soldiers on. That's why it's used in servers. Saves thousands, if not millions, in maintnence costs, compared to Microsoft products (the Blue Screen Of Death can be expensive if the server that handles financial transactions crashes). It's stable because it has an army of people the world over fixing what breaks. How many software companies can claim that skilled programmers volunteered their time to make sure their operating system works on every hardware imaginable? None. Only Linux, the operating system used by the people who write it and written by the people who use it.
That brings me to my last point (promise!:-)). Linux is a state of mind for many people. It is a declaration of independence from the closed model of software development. It is a great big 'up yours' to the bloated, insecure, crash-prone shit the Big Two (Microsoft and Macintosh) foist on the world. Eric Raymond wrote a book on the Linux Revolution called The Cathedral and the Bazaar, pointing up the superiority of the open development model (the Bazaar) over the closed development system (the Cathedral) by following one of the many successful open development projects, fetchmail. Linux is a community of people who want to make the best software for everyone. It can give you the best technical support because the guy who wrote the program you're having trouble with is probably reachable. And if not, reams of people who helped him fix bugs are. Your problems might influence the next version of the software, in fact. Because Linux is open, anything can happen. Microsoft doesn't stand a chance.:-)
All you need is infect someone with kamikaze style. Or failing that, smuggle some smallpox infected blankets over... It's been done!
[Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
And that's why the Giverment stopped issuing smallpox vaccines! The know we'll be helpless when the smallpox virus is spread by the black helicopters, and we'll come running to FEMA (also known as the FPMA (Federal Population Management Agency)), Aristotle Onassis' secret gang of Illuminatus that runs the Grays' whole organization from behind the scenes! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY... Ooooh, a bright, shiny tinfoil hat! Gimme!
[/Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer] :-)
'Balance of Terror' only works if the nation 1) Has something to lose in a war; and 2) Has a leader that cares if his/her people get bombed to hell. Iraq might fit the first one, but not the second. Ditto for Iran. But Serbia fits neither. Now that Milosevic is out, Serbia might no longer be a threat. Now that Milosevic is out, Serbia might be our worst threat. After all, we kidnapped their leader and turned their homeland into rubble. So what, exactly, will stop Serbia, or the Kurds (angry that we never helped them fight Saddam), or Saddam's crazy son, or one of a few other nations and/or states from launching an ICBM at New York, or San Francisco, or, or... this place (comic relief)! Nothing. That's why we need an ABM system in place, to stop it once the missile has been launched but before the missile can kill thousands or millions of Americans. Retaliaion can come without Americans being nuked.
And I thought they were talking about a novel about an unmanned ship illegally carrying biowar weapons and poised to spread them all over New York City. One man in a jet stops it, and I forget how. Ah, the schlock you find at second-hand stores!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe even performed with their corporate body, what might be termed, in a very subtle and euphemistic sense, a "yogic posture".
If you're going to call sticking your head in your ass a 'yogic posture', that would make both Redmond and Washington, DC hotbeds of yoga activity.
Intel: Fuckwickets Inside
Our largest local bookstore carries their books but has angered the scientologists by placing them in the "Science Fiction" section right next to the likes of the Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek, and all the other fantasy books.
What's Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons ever done to them? What Science Fiction series is bad enough to deserve being placed next to a $cientology $creed?
Oh, yeah: 'Battlefield Earth'.
You cannot find any rational defense of Scientology because there isn't a rational defense of Scientology. It is very much like Nazism: Only charlatans and loonies are in favor of it, and they are in no position to give fact-based reviews.
All of the facts say one thing: Scientology is an evil cult that was started by a genuine madman. It has killed before, repeatedly, and it will kill again if it gets the chance. The people who run xenu.net are trying to deny it that chance. They are very successful: Thousands of people know the truth about Xenu, Scientology, and Hubbard because of Operation Clambake. That is why Scientology is trying so hard to destroy it.
To get your sendmail patches, dial in to your friendly neighborhood BBS!
Can you still find modems with a standard WarDialer?
I don't want to be thought of as out of date, after all.
I don't think you could spot me a piece of Wrigley's, could ya?
Didn't think so.
Plus, corruption in this Asian nation is almost non-existent. Bloody incredible.
Yeah. Censor the media and corruption goes way down.
There's a lesson here somewhere.
Does anyone get the feeling sometimes, that MS might be employing people to try and stir up linux communitys?
No, MS and other corporate types like to use astroturf: Paid shills who boost a product, not put another down. At least, that's what they're known to do. Simple extension of advertising, after all.
Just ive noticed lots of very weird trolling type posts that even a bored, twisted person would not bother writing.
Then you don't know how bored and twisted some people can get. Why do you think Slashdot has such a great moderation system? Why do you think we have a way to identify friends and foes now? They're not just good ideas, they're damn near essential in an open forum as large as this one.
Look at Usenet. Huge forum, completely open. What do all good newsreaders have? Killfiles. A way to make certain people disappear. A constant level of annoying BS is completely anticipated by design. Think about that for a while. Nobody I know of has ever astroturfed Usenet. Not enough average lusers make use of it for corps to spend ad money painting billboards on it, fly-by-night spammers notwithstanding. The BS those well-developed killfiles filter is the BS lonely, bored, disturbed private individuals create.
This is as close to Usenet as a webpage can be. No censorship. No deletion. Free access. Therefore, it must emulate the killfile system as well as it possibly can or it will surely collapse under the BS. The BS created by private morons for their own purposes.
MS does not need to spend cash to get people to rile the Penguinistas. Moronic trolls do it for free.
I'm gonna be the complete dick, but what tells us that you're not the rich kid of some communist nomenklatura official?
Well, we always knew the Chinese made the best astroturf, now didn't we? It's a wonder this place isn't swamped with Chinese people calling for free trade (maybe just this once and never in things like ideas) and peaceful change to a glorious future (oddly dominated by people who are old enough to remember Mao).
Maybe they're all having trouble accessing the Real Internet through those Cisco servers.
Who are you to tell me what I can expect of those I do business with? If I tell you I'm only going to buy your widgets if you dress up like a leprechaun, you damn well better be wearing green knickers and shoes with buckles next time I see you if you want to make the sale. I see you've defined capitalism and democracy nicely, but you seem to have forgotten that these ideas only apply to human societies. In a human society, such as we have here, we can influence each others behavior with a wide variety of subtle and not-so-subtle pressures, of which the law and the dollar are but two. For instance, if I see a tobacco company executive or a tobacco farmer on the street, I won't hesitate to let that person know what a worthless, parasitical waste of flesh that person is. I'd defend their right to grow and sell tobacco, but I'd think that they're scum for doing it.
And so we have the method to fight Cisco and Yahoo and everyone's favorite Evil Empire, Microsoft: Boycott. Make it socially unacceptable to buy products from anyone who has dealings with the enemy (any country that restricts free expression) and the problem will disappear of its own accord. It will disappear without our government mimicing China's by regulating foreign trade, and that is the best victory.
Don't think boycott can work? Montgomery, Alabama (Hell, it's Black History Month!) in the 1960s saw an effective form of boycott and the busses hurt. The busses really hurt. Blacks could soon sit wherever they wanted to. India, 1940s, saw another boycott, this one on goods from a real Evil Empire: Great Britain. Gandhi's followers made salt in the sun to avoid paying British companies to support British domination. They had a homespun revolution.
The software industry is fiercely competitive even today. Nobody can claim a lock on anything, no matter how much the DoJ wants to pretend. A boycott would be insanely effective.
Blacklist hotmail.com and aol.com. Wouldn't that solve most of the spam problem?
Since written history, God/gods have been described as the source of life. Now, the last what....at most 150 years we have evolution ....whatever.
Tell me, is the Earth flat? After all we've only thought it was round since Rome was an empire. Does the Earth orbit the sun, or the other way around? Galileio and Kepler far postdate the beginning of recorded history, after all.
where is your evidence of the species in between say the fish and the walking animals, why do these branches still exist? why do we find many of the SAME types of animals in fossils.??? when they would prob. be the transition species.
Why can't you people come up with new arguments? Do some serious research into the evolutionist point of view and report back to me. Short replies: Animal lines constantly undergo small changes, occasionally undergo large ones (punctuated equilibrium), and do disappear. But only if they can no longer reproduce and spread. Fish still exist because the fish body-type was and is a successful model. And we do see plenty of fossils of beings that no longer exist. Where, exactly, would one go to see a living trilobite? Or a living Homo erectus?
As for your religious stuff: All I'm asking is that you give me physical evidence that points unambiguously to the existence of a deity. That's all. Plenty of evidence points towards evolution, no evidence points towards creationism. Yea, it's that simple.
So do me a favor: Open your mind, just a little, and let the sun shine in, or at least a few facts and ideas that aren't found in some ancient Middle-Eastern fairy tale.
Okay, I was wrong about the appendix. Yes, all scientists are willing to accept their own mistakes. It's called learning.
You still haven't addressed the rest of my post. A logical fallacy (neatly grouping me, and all other evolutionists, with Hitler and Mao) doesn't count as an argument where I'm from.
Life has order and design.
Then where, pray tell, does the appendix come in? Or cancer? Or AIDS? Or cholera? Or smallpox? Are you saying that a malevolent, or at least basically incompetent, intelligence designed life? Well, the burden of proof is on you. Back up your claim with evidence, just as real scientists worldwide have done for centuries.
"XBox SUCKS because it's just a PC"
:-)
"Let's run LINUX on it"
Uh, could you all make up your minds? That's what I love about SlashDot, the hypocracy!!
I'm sorry we're not all mindless drones. It might make it easier for your eight-bit brain to process slashdot if it was a hivemind collective, but the borg add-ons would ruin my boyish good looks.
Oh, and learn to spell hypocrisy.
Come on, TiVo is easy to use, my playstation 2 is easy to use, why is my computer so hard?
:-)
Because your computer is a general-purpose machine. You can use it for a wider range of things than just playing games (PS2) or just watching TV (TiVo). You can instruct it to do a wide range of things, and that means the user interface has to accept a wide range of input from the user. Remember, computers aren't psychic. Nor are they intelligent. They are just simple input-output devices with a lot of flash glued on. To do interesting things, they need instructions more complex than what your TiVo takes.
Besides, who wants to be talked down to by a computer?
Why don't you build a new box, you poor bastard? For god's sake, I'm a uni student living in the equivalent of a cardboard box (paid for by myself) with several computers of different architecture (paid for by myself) with a fair DSL line (you get the idea). Now, not withstanding, I'm in debt. What the hell are student loans for anyway? In thoery, I should be making enough to pay it all off in 3 years after college, and that's not a bad deal, concidering I come from a very middle class family. Grow up, and stop whining about your inadequices; do something about it. And teach your SO how to use a freaking comp, jerk!
:-)
Cry me a river with discount tears!
I remember hearing that in WWII they used other languages, like some american indian language to do encryption.
They used Navajo, hence the Navajo Code Talkers. They were very highly regarded. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." [Taken from the first link on my list.] Good websites are easily findable on Google:
The Navajo Code Talkers
Navy's FAQ on the Code Talkers.
Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary Scroll to the end to see the Marine Hymn translated into Navajo.
The Code Talkers have their own permanent Pentagon exhibit.
Snopes (Urban Legends Reference Pages) Tells All
Summary: Clear Channel Communications has not just banned songs. It has released a memo listing songs stations might want to think about not playing. It's a suggestion, not a policy.
Just to clear that all up.
Okay, I can accept you if you can accept me. I'm tolerant. But I just want to clear up my own image.
:-)
:-)
For one thing, I'm not a Liberal . I'm a Libertarian, which means I'm right of center on economic issues, but I support individual rights more than either major political party. I think Clinton and Gore are both assholes who corrupted their respective offices and should never have been elected, let alone re-elected. I think people should have the right to make a living without 'environmentalists' (read: nutballs) wrapping chains around trees to kill them and living in trees daring them to commit homicide. Protecting the environment does not involve putting people in harm's way. I'm pro-choice, pro-seperation of church and state, anti-welfare, and pro-flat tax. I think the DMCA is anti-Constitutional in that it spits on the fundamental freedoms the Constitution guarantees.
Okay, are you still with me? Good. That was a hell of a rant. Sorry.
Now, more about why I like Linux. I'm more than willing to learn a complex system if it makes my life easier. And that is what Linux promises: It isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn, but the investment of my time is paid off thousandfold whenever I have to, say, delete massive amounts of files with a certain kind of name in a directory. Say what you will about 'intuitiveness' and 'ease of learning', being able to pound a few keys and do something that would have taken hours on a GUI-centric system is a highly useful feature. And with the piping command I can link features in ways that do rather complex tasks (like searching for all files that match a certain type, convert them into a different type, and compress them into one file, for example). With cron, I can automate complex tasks so they're done on the second Tuesday of every other month, for example. I can do all that using simple, powerful commands that sacrifice a little intutitiveness for sheer useability. A good tradeoff, in my book.
I can give you something to read as a parting shot as well. In the beginning was the command line... is a useful, yet concise, overview of not only the history of computing, but the philosophies of different operating systems and groups. It's worth a read, and will hopefully get you thinking about computers in very different ways.
Microsoft has some advantages. So does authoritarian government. It simply isn't for me. Just for your edification, The New Linux Myth Dispeller. If you want to be anti-Linux, be anti-Linux for the right reasons, and don't spread BS. (Not that you did.) It doesn't help your position.
Well, it's been interesting debating with you. Neither one of us has convinced the other, but I don't think either one of us expected to. I guess I'll be happily piping commands and adding to my crontab while you keep your NT machine running, and we'll just take divergent roads. Good luck keeping NT functional, by the way.
You know, people like you are on the verge of convincing me. After all, a small Cessna with a nuke and a pilot on a suicide mission (whether the pilot knows it at the time or not) could give as effective an airburst as an ICBM could provide. And the ship in the harbor example is classic (someone suggested it before Hiroshima, in fact) and is still very feasble. But if someone does launch an ICBM at us, we ought to have some way of defending ourselves. Maybe being better able to detect radiation from space is the better plan. If we could see the radiation coming off of fissile materials from satellite altitudes, we could stop bombs (and track potential prerequistie materials) no matter how the delivery system works. I'll have to think on this.
I use a computer at work, so I've never personally paid for the Windows OS that runs my computer, either. So what's your point? "It's free, therefore it's better?" Thats's the same rationale used for stealing copyrighted music with the help of Napster and Gnutella. "I CAN download the music for free, therefore it's alright." I don't agree.
I buy my computers. And software. I like getting a good deal for my money. Linux is that good deal. Windows is not.
Why shouldn't Microsoft (or any software vendor) be paid for the products they produce?
They should be paid by those who choose to use their software. Nobody is losing out because numerous people worldwide made the choice to make Linux free.
Why is it evil to make a profit?
It isn't.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "There's no such thing as a free lunch?" I believe it.
Even to the point of discounting evidence to the contrary?
If I buy into the Linux philospohy, I'll have to PAY in terms of the time I spend learning how to install it first; then I'll have to hunt for the FREE software and install it; then I'll have to learn how to USE the software and hope it does what I want it to do. Finally, if/when something goes wrong, I'll either have to teach myself how to change the code or rely on the good intentions of strangers to fix my problems in their own good time, with NO guarantee whatsoever.
And if you buy a Microsoft product, you'll have to SPEND ~$100 at least, SPEND time learning to use it, SPEND time staring at error messages and BSODs (Blue Screens Of Death), SPEND time you should be working fixing those bugs, and HOPE you can get an answer out of Microsoft Tech Support, when there is NO guarantee you'll be able to get through to a helpful person. No thanks. I'd rather use something someone took pride in making work and still maintains because he/she wants to.
Ah, the not-so-subtle insult hurled at non-Linux users. If you're not using Linux, you're a rank newbie, right? In other words, you're an idiot if you're not using Linux. Only the smartest people use Linux. Yada-yada-yada.
Sorry, no. I meant the exact opposite. Linux is becomig increasingly newbie-friendly, in fact, as those graphical setup interfaces prove.
Then it ISN'T "free," is it? My time is more valuable to me than the cost involved in purchasing a Windows OS. Why should I spend countless hours finding a "free" downloadable Linux OS, only to find out that I'm going to have to spend countless hours learning how to install and actually USE it?
It's as free as you want it to be. If you decide your time is more important, go ahead and buy a distro. That's what I did. If you're short on cash, go online and learn something and then find a download site (not too hard if you can use Google), then spend some time loading it and configuring it. Simple as that.
Don't understand the "free beer" reference. But, again, I have no need or desire to look at the source code. I don't want to create a better operating system; I just want to use one that will perform certain tasks reasonably well. Windows does that quite nicely. It seems to me that you are captivated by the idea that Linux is FREE and FREE and did I mention that Linux is FREE?
Asking why Linux is better is a little like asking why breathing oxygen is better than breathing methane. Linux has so much going for it it's tough to even imagine using anything else. Some of it may be chauvinism, but Linux hardly needs chauvinistic support. It just needs pragmatic support, and computer users are some of the most pragmatic people around. :-)). Linux is a state of mind for many people. It is a declaration of independence from the closed model of software development. It is a great big 'up yours' to the bloated, insecure, crash-prone shit the Big Two (Microsoft and Macintosh) foist on the world. Eric Raymond wrote a book on the Linux Revolution called The Cathedral and the Bazaar, pointing up the superiority of the open development model (the Bazaar) over the closed development system (the Cathedral) by following one of the many successful open development projects, fetchmail. Linux is a community of people who want to make the best software for everyone. It can give you the best technical support because the guy who wrote the program you're having trouble with is probably reachable. And if not, reams of people who helped him fix bugs are. Your problems might influence the next version of the software, in fact. Because Linux is open, anything can happen. Microsoft doesn't stand a chance. :-)
Here are ten listed reasons why Linux is better than commerical OSes. Here is a well-written article on the subject.
Perhaps the most pragmatic reason is that Linux is the cheapest OS in existence. You can find the latest release free for the taking on many servers worldwide. The time and the technical skills needed to actually make this option work are prohibitive, however, and few people will actually do it. For the rest of us, plenty of CDs are sold (or given away with big, useful instruction manuals (hey, that's how I got Red Hat 7.1!)) for under a hundred bucks. These CDs, called 'distros', or distributions, are made by various corporations, like Red Hat, Caldera, Slackware, Debain, etc. and come loaded with thousands of dollars worth of software. They also come with friendly, graphical installation programs that can get even the rankest of newbies started with Linux.
Once you get Linux going, there is a plethora of free software online. The GNU's Not Unix project is the best-known source, but you can find thousands with a simple Google search. Most Linux software, and Linux itself, is free in two senses: Free beer and Free speech. Free speech? Yes. Free in that sense means you can look at the source code (it is Open Source, in other words) and modify it to your whims. It is liberated software, software anyone can modify, learn from, change, and improve.
That brings me to my next point. Linux is the most stable OS in the world. Programs can crash and burn, scream and die, and just plain quit and Linux soldiers on. That's why it's used in servers. Saves thousands, if not millions, in maintnence costs, compared to Microsoft products (the Blue Screen Of Death can be expensive if the server that handles financial transactions crashes). It's stable because it has an army of people the world over fixing what breaks. How many software companies can claim that skilled programmers volunteered their time to make sure their operating system works on every hardware imaginable? None. Only Linux, the operating system used by the people who write it and written by the people who use it.
That brings me to my last point (promise!
All you need is infect someone with kamikaze style. Or failing that, smuggle some smallpox infected blankets over... It's been done!
... Ooooh, a bright, shiny tinfoil hat! Gimme!
[Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
And that's why the Giverment stopped issuing smallpox vaccines! The know we'll be helpless when the smallpox virus is spread by the black helicopters, and we'll come running to FEMA (also known as the FPMA (Federal Population Management Agency)), Aristotle Onassis' secret gang of Illuminatus that runs the Grays' whole organization from behind the scenes! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY
[/Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
:-)
'Balance of Terror' only works if the nation 1) Has something to lose in a war; and 2) Has a leader that cares if his/her people get bombed to hell. Iraq might fit the first one, but not the second. Ditto for Iran. But Serbia fits neither. Now that Milosevic is out, Serbia might no longer be a threat. Now that Milosevic is out, Serbia might be our worst threat. After all, we kidnapped their leader and turned their homeland into rubble. So what, exactly, will stop Serbia, or the Kurds (angry that we never helped them fight Saddam), or Saddam's crazy son, or one of a few other nations and/or states from launching an ICBM at New York, or San Francisco, or, or ... this place (comic relief)! Nothing. That's why we need an ABM system in place, to stop it once the missile has been launched but before the missile can kill thousands or millions of Americans. Retaliaion can come without Americans being nuked.
And I thought they were talking about a novel about an unmanned ship illegally carrying biowar weapons and poised to spread them all over New York City. One man in a jet stops it, and I forget how. Ah, the schlock you find at second-hand stores!