Actually, it was more likely powerful lines of electromagnetic force that drew the charged plasma in the explosion back down to the surface. The sun's electromagnetic field is extremely intense.
I can't speak for anyone else, but as for myself, I won't even buy DRM free content as long as it's from a label that participates in the RIAA. Period.
I have absolutely no problems paying for music, but I will not give any of the RIAA-affiliated labels my money.
Them starting to offer some content DRM free is too little too late. If they break away from the RIAA and stop behaving like spoiled children, stop screwing artists, and stop suing their own customers, then and ONLY then will I reconsider.
In the interim, I'll keep doing what I have been doing... I buy used CDs online and rip them to mp3 on my own.
No DRM, no additional money lining the pockets of assholes who sue grandmothers and 12 year old girls, and most of the time I pay less than $7 or $8 for an entire album.
Not to mention, aren't mutations that happen during one's lifetime not technically genetic, and thus won't be carried to the next generation? I thought evolution was all about random mutations mostly at conception? I.e. you're BORN WITH a taller neck, therefore you can reach better food on the trees. Not your neck stretches out during your lifetime, that wouldn't breed.
Not necessarily. Mutations that happen during one's life can take the form of gene changes that get passed on, not necessarily physical traits.
The longer one lives, the more environmental stimulus can have an impact on one's genetic material (radiation, chemical, et cetera). Those genetic changes that happen over life can get passed on to offspring conceived later in life and THEY can cause the physical mutations of which you speak.
Actually, light itself isn't directly affected by gravity; that's a misconception that's always bothered me. In order to be affected by gravity, there has to be mass, and photons are energy, not matter. The space through which light travels is directly affected by gravity, however, which is what causes the gravitational "lensing" effect one observes near stars, black holes, and other massive objects.
Contrary to popular belief, black holes don't have "gravity so intense even light cannot escape", as so often is thrown around. Instead, it is more correct to assert that black holes have gravity so intense that the space through which light travels is warped back in on itself... which prevents light from escaping.
As far as light knows, it's always traveling in a straight line.:-)
You're that guy I get stuck behind all the goddamned time on my way to work, aren't you? The one driving 25 mph in a 35 mph zone, left lane, all the way across fricking town?
I don't even think Heinlein was proposing it as a "good" model... Heinlein was pretty good for taking a societal concept (such as public service as a condition for suffrage) and bringing it to its logical conclusions. While he did soapbox quite a bit in his work, not every system he diagrammed in every one of his novels was necessarily something he thought was a good idea.
"In my experience, people who are truly compassionate rarely use the word 'compassion' Those who do talk compassion generally intend to be compassionate with your money, not their own. It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that 'compassion.' "
You know, I've never even bothered compiling my own kernel in Slackware... the default kernel from the Slackware installation has always worked just fine for me.
I've run into Ubuntu problems on Dell hardware as well. At work I use an older Dell Poweredge 600 server as a workstation. Slackware 10.1 is what I have installed as my default OS on it, but when I try booting from any Ubuntu CD, it hangs about half the time, and works the other half. I'm not sure if it's just the optical drive or what -- but I've never had trouble on that machine booting from other live CDs... just Ubuntu.
It might not seem like the intuitive choice, but I kick myself for wasting my time with other distros before finally trying Slack. It's the most trouble-free, stable distro I've used, and that's why it's the only one I use anymore.
In my opinion, it's actually simpler than other distros because it forces you to learn the basics rather than depending out of the box on some GUI based tools that (in my experience, anyway) aren't very reliable yet in the Linux world.
And let's be serious here... the basics aren't that difficult.
By day I'm an admin in a Windows Server 2003 data center, but at home, I run all Slackware because frankly it's a lot simpler and less of a headache than even Windows is. And it's CERTAINLY easier to install and set up than Windows.
I even have it running on my laptop. The only piece of hardware on the laptop Slack didn't have working out of the box was the wifi, and after installing the MadWifi drivers, that worked too. Contrast that to installing XP on the same laptop: I needed to hold Windows' hand through identifying the sound module, the graphics chipset, the DVD rom, the modem, the integrated wifi, plus install 2+ hours' worth of fricking patches. Ugh.
To sum up:
- Slackware is a simpler, more stable distro than others I've tried (Red Hat, Mandriva, Ubuntu)
- If you can install Windows, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well Slackware sets up
The Maginot line was a military line created by the French before WWI, designed to stop an invasion from Germany. And as a note to all the people making fun of France it worked in WWI, even though it failed in WWII when Germany was better prepared and had vastly improved panzers.
Uh.... the Maginot line was built in stages starting in 1930 and completed in 1939.
World War I ended in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
Unless by "WWI" you are referring to something else?
Considering that I have to do that and more any time I install XP on my laptop (which, ironically enough, has one of those little metal plates on it that says "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP"), I honestly can't tell if you're referring to Windows or Linux in this post.
By comparison, even Slackware recognizes all my hardware out of the box on that same machine, and that's not even a "user friendly" distro like Ubuntu.
My responses on this thread have not been so much from the perspective of trying to get people to switch to Linux or stop using iPods.
It's been more along the lines of addressing the big misconception that iPods not working with Linux out of the box is somehow a Linux shortcoming, because of Apple's deliberate design decisions.
If you ask me, iPods don't "work" on Windows or Mac OS either. They're broken no matter what platform you plug one into.:-)
That's why I didn't buy one. That's also why my wife (a Mac user) probably won't get another one.
If 75% of the public likes a broken product that doesn't make it any less broken. Most of the public is still using Internet Explorer, too, remember.:-)
There is nothing overly technical about the iPod. Strip away Apple's intentional defects in its design and it's just another hard-drive based portable digital music device.
But they block you from loading music on it except with their software.
They block you from moving music off of it.
They do this on purpose.... these are not problems because Apple has made the iPod "more technical". They are problems because the designers of this device went the extra mile to make it as difficult as they could to use the device in any ways other than how they want you to.
The difficulty people have in Linux using iPods is not because of any level of complexity of the device itself... as I said, it's just another hard drive based portable digital music device, any number of other makes and models of which are perfectly usable in Linux. It is the intentional defects Apple included in the iPod's firmware that make it difficult.
The iPod has 75% MP3 Player marketshare in the US.
Not to mention, I'm sure that since the fact that the iPod is used by such a huge majority, that must mean it's the best. Since if a majority of people like it, that automatically means it's better?
As I pointed out to someone else already, Apple went well out of their way to ensure that the iPod only works on platforms they want it to.
My Archos MP3 player is about as cross-platform as anything I've seen... did they design it to work with Linux? No.
But they didn't go out of their way to prevent its use with Linux. Apple didn't HAVE to make it so you can't load songs on it with ONLY iTunes.
But for their own very good reasons, they did.
That is not a shortcoming of Linux.
People have pointed out numerous times in the discussion on this article that there are multiple ways to get iPods to work on Linux and even iTMS to work from a Linux workstation. Despite Apple's efforts, it is still possible to do it... not always the most user-friendly of methods, but it is still possible.
It would be easier if they didn't put so many obstacles in the path of users just wanting to use a product with their operating system of choice... as I mentioned above, my MP3 player manufactured by Archos works just fine. It's dirt simple to use. Plug it in, put whatever I want on it, songs, videos, playlists, photos, whatever. And it all just works. Even on Slackware.
By contrast, in order to get an iPod to work on the same laptop, I'd have to do some pretty stupid shit, and even then there's no guarantee.
I would think that a company as adept in the consumer electronics business as Apple would be a bit better at making something easy to use, and you know damned well they can. They simply chose not to.
Again I ask, how on earth is that a shortcoming of Linux?
Other MP3 players work just fine on it with no "workarounds" or hacks. Sounds to me like it's the iPod that has shortcomings.
My wife discovered one just today when she was trying to copy the songs off her iPod to her laptop so she could listen to music while she was working in a different room of the house and didn't want headphones on so she could hear if the phone rang. Apparently there's no way to copy music off of it without either downloading some 3rd party freeware utilities or digging around the device's file structure to find some hidden folder.
That utterly baffles me. People keep talking about how "easy to use" these things are, but at every turn Apple has placed barriers to do what I would consider to be very simple, intuitive things.
The more time goes by, the more glad I am I didn't buy one when I was contemplating doing so... the one my wife has is maddeningly frustrating on a number of levels, and all of it seems to be by design.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it was more likely powerful lines of electromagnetic force that drew the charged plasma in the explosion back down to the surface. The sun's electromagnetic field is extremely intense.
Exactly... to the really big-money offenders, a $1 million fine is just worked into their future budgets as a 'cost of doing business'.
It needs to be something that either puts them out of business, or scares them into more legitimate business models.
I can't speak for anyone else, but as for myself, I won't even buy DRM free content as long as it's from a label that participates in the RIAA. Period.
I have absolutely no problems paying for music, but I will not give any of the RIAA-affiliated labels my money.
Them starting to offer some content DRM free is too little too late. If they break away from the RIAA and stop behaving like spoiled children, stop screwing artists, and stop suing their own customers, then and ONLY then will I reconsider.
In the interim, I'll keep doing what I have been doing... I buy used CDs online and rip them to mp3 on my own.
No DRM, no additional money lining the pockets of assholes who sue grandmothers and 12 year old girls, and most of the time I pay less than $7 or $8 for an entire album.
Not to mention, aren't mutations that happen during one's lifetime not technically genetic, and thus won't be carried to the next generation? I thought evolution was all about random mutations mostly at conception? I.e. you're BORN WITH a taller neck, therefore you can reach better food on the trees. Not your neck stretches out during your lifetime, that wouldn't breed.
Not necessarily. Mutations that happen during one's life can take the form of gene changes that get passed on, not necessarily physical traits.
The longer one lives, the more environmental stimulus can have an impact on one's genetic material (radiation, chemical, et cetera). Those genetic changes that happen over life can get passed on to offspring conceived later in life and THEY can cause the physical mutations of which you speak.
Actually, light itself isn't directly affected by gravity; that's a misconception that's always bothered me. In order to be affected by gravity, there has to be mass, and photons are energy, not matter. The space through which light travels is directly affected by gravity, however, which is what causes the gravitational "lensing" effect one observes near stars, black holes, and other massive objects.
Contrary to popular belief, black holes don't have "gravity so intense even light cannot escape", as so often is thrown around. Instead, it is more correct to assert that black holes have gravity so intense that the space through which light travels is warped back in on itself... which prevents light from escaping.
As far as light knows, it's always traveling in a straight line. :-)
You're that guy I get stuck behind all the goddamned time on my way to work, aren't you? The one driving 25 mph in a 35 mph zone, left lane, all the way across fricking town?
This is likely because firefox, like most browsers these days, is blocking anything on non-standard internet ports "for your own protection".
Not organized enough or even remotely competent enough.
With their track record on most other things, a complete government ban on private gun ownership would lead to everyone owning a gun within 6 months.
I don't even think Heinlein was proposing it as a "good" model... Heinlein was pretty good for taking a societal concept (such as public service as a condition for suffrage) and bringing it to its logical conclusions. While he did soapbox quite a bit in his work, not every system he diagrammed in every one of his novels was necessarily something he thought was a good idea.
"In my experience, people who are truly compassionate rarely use the word 'compassion' Those who do talk compassion generally intend to be compassionate with your money, not their own. It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that 'compassion.' "
--Harry Browne
"Open Goatse" sounds like some sort of FOSS operating system, probably based on BSD.
You must be new here.
OMG why do you hate America?
You know, I've never even bothered compiling my own kernel in Slackware... the default kernel from the Slackware installation has always worked just fine for me.
I've run into Ubuntu problems on Dell hardware as well. At work I use an older Dell Poweredge 600 server as a workstation. Slackware 10.1 is what I have installed as my default OS on it, but when I try booting from any Ubuntu CD, it hangs about half the time, and works the other half. I'm not sure if it's just the optical drive or what -- but I've never had trouble on that machine booting from other live CDs... just Ubuntu.
*shrugs*
Another vote for Slackware from me.
It might not seem like the intuitive choice, but I kick myself for wasting my time with other distros before finally trying Slack. It's the most trouble-free, stable distro I've used, and that's why it's the only one I use anymore.
In my opinion, it's actually simpler than other distros because it forces you to learn the basics rather than depending out of the box on some GUI based tools that (in my experience, anyway) aren't very reliable yet in the Linux world.
And let's be serious here... the basics aren't that difficult.
By day I'm an admin in a Windows Server 2003 data center, but at home, I run all Slackware because frankly it's a lot simpler and less of a headache than even Windows is. And it's CERTAINLY easier to install and set up than Windows.
I even have it running on my laptop. The only piece of hardware on the laptop Slack didn't have working out of the box was the wifi, and after installing the MadWifi drivers, that worked too. Contrast that to installing XP on the same laptop: I needed to hold Windows' hand through identifying the sound module, the graphics chipset, the DVD rom, the modem, the integrated wifi, plus install 2+ hours' worth of fricking patches. Ugh.
To sum up:
- Slackware is a simpler, more stable distro than others I've tried (Red Hat, Mandriva, Ubuntu)
- If you can install Windows, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well Slackware sets up
You just wasted even more time replying to it. :-)
The Maginot line was a military line created by the French before WWI, designed to stop an invasion from Germany. And as a note to all the people making fun of France it worked in WWI, even though it failed in WWII when Germany was better prepared and had vastly improved panzers.
Uh.... the Maginot line was built in stages starting in 1930 and completed in 1939.
World War I ended in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
Unless by "WWI" you are referring to something else?
???
Considering that I have to do that and more any time I install XP on my laptop (which, ironically enough, has one of those little metal plates on it that says "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP"), I honestly can't tell if you're referring to Windows or Linux in this post.
By comparison, even Slackware recognizes all my hardware out of the box on that same machine, and that's not even a "user friendly" distro like Ubuntu.
Well said; I actually agree, for the most part.
:-)
My responses on this thread have not been so much from the perspective of trying to get people to switch to Linux or stop using iPods.
It's been more along the lines of addressing the big misconception that iPods not working with Linux out of the box is somehow a Linux shortcoming, because of Apple's deliberate design decisions.
If you ask me, iPods don't "work" on Windows or Mac OS either. They're broken no matter what platform you plug one into.
That's why I didn't buy one. That's also why my wife (a Mac user) probably won't get another one.
If 75% of the public likes a broken product that doesn't make it any less broken. Most of the public is still using Internet Explorer, too, remember. :-)
There is nothing overly technical about the iPod. Strip away Apple's intentional defects in its design and it's just another hard-drive based portable digital music device.
But they block you from loading music on it except with their software.
They block you from moving music off of it.
They do this on purpose.... these are not problems because Apple has made the iPod "more technical". They are problems because the designers of this device went the extra mile to make it as difficult as they could to use the device in any ways other than how they want you to.
The difficulty people have in Linux using iPods is not because of any level of complexity of the device itself... as I said, it's just another hard drive based portable digital music device, any number of other makes and models of which are perfectly usable in Linux. It is the intentional defects Apple included in the iPod's firmware that make it difficult.
The iPod has 75% MP3 Player marketshare in the US.
;-)
Not to mention, I'm sure that since the fact that the iPod is used by such a huge majority, that must mean it's the best. Since if a majority of people like it, that automatically means it's better?
Kinda like elected officials?
As I pointed out to someone else already, Apple went well out of their way to ensure that the iPod only works on platforms they want it to.
My Archos MP3 player is about as cross-platform as anything I've seen... did they design it to work with Linux? No.
But they didn't go out of their way to prevent its use with Linux. Apple didn't HAVE to make it so you can't load songs on it with ONLY iTunes.
But for their own very good reasons, they did.
That is not a shortcoming of Linux.
People have pointed out numerous times in the discussion on this article that there are multiple ways to get iPods to work on Linux and even iTMS to work from a Linux workstation. Despite Apple's efforts, it is still possible to do it... not always the most user-friendly of methods, but it is still possible.
It would be easier if they didn't put so many obstacles in the path of users just wanting to use a product with their operating system of choice... as I mentioned above, my MP3 player manufactured by Archos works just fine. It's dirt simple to use. Plug it in, put whatever I want on it, songs, videos, playlists, photos, whatever. And it all just works. Even on Slackware.
By contrast, in order to get an iPod to work on the same laptop, I'd have to do some pretty stupid shit, and even then there's no guarantee.
I would think that a company as adept in the consumer electronics business as Apple would be a bit better at making something easy to use, and you know damned well they can. They simply chose not to.
Again I ask, how on earth is that a shortcoming of Linux?
Other MP3 players work just fine on it with no "workarounds" or hacks. Sounds to me like it's the iPod that has shortcomings.
My wife discovered one just today when she was trying to copy the songs off her iPod to her laptop so she could listen to music while she was working in a different room of the house and didn't want headphones on so she could hear if the phone rang. Apparently there's no way to copy music off of it without either downloading some 3rd party freeware utilities or digging around the device's file structure to find some hidden folder.
That utterly baffles me. People keep talking about how "easy to use" these things are, but at every turn Apple has placed barriers to do what I would consider to be very simple, intuitive things.
The more time goes by, the more glad I am I didn't buy one when I was contemplating doing so... the one my wife has is maddeningly frustrating on a number of levels, and all of it seems to be by design.
The iPod has 75% MP3 Player marketshare in the US. Linux can't run iTunes. Thats a major shortcoming no matter how you try to spin it.
Apple went well out of their way to make sure the iPod only works on specific platforms. That is not a shortcoming of Linux.
That fact that there are so many workarounds available to MAKE iPods work with Linux if anything demonstrates a very serious plus for it.
And I don't like Outlook. I prefer Evolution. Until recently there was not a Win32 port of Evolution, it only ran on Unix or Linux.
And no matter how you want to spin it, that is not a shortcoming of Windows.