They don't have to dump poison on your property for it to end up in your well. They can dump it on their property, where it will leach into the groundwater and from there into your well. Because water, inconveniently, doesn't stop flowing at property lines.
Things like air and groundwater can't be sliced up into pieces and parceled out to different owners. That's not some hippie ideology, it's a physical fact (unless we develop the technology to prevent air and water from crossing property lines).
So, if a capitalist dumps poison in the groundwater used by all his neighbors because he's too lazy to clean up after himself, is he not infringing their rights? Shouldn't they be able to collectively (i.e. by petitioning the government to pass laws) decide to stop him?
I got a CS degree at a liberal arts school, and was able to get into a PhD program at one of the schools in the US. I ended up leaving with an MS and have had no trouble getting jobs since then.
At a liberal arts school, the CS program is going to be smaller, and if you're motivated you'll have the opportunity to work closely with professors and get involved in research. Since there are fewer students and they're likely to have less technical background on average, you have the chance to really distinguish yourself among your peers.
Also, a liberal arts school will give you a well-rounded education. The ability to write and speak eloquently will serve you well in just about any field. And while learning about history and literature probably won't make you a better programmer, it may well make you a better person.;-)
There are downsides, though. You'll have fewer CS courses to choose from, and they probably will be less challenging (I literally took every course offered in my CS department, plus some independent studies, and had plenty of slots left over for non-CS courses). And you'll have fewer peers who are really good at CS -- though you can make up for that to some extent by talking to your professors.
Going from a liberal arts school to grad school was also a hard adjustment -- I had plenty of knowledge, but culturally it was a vastly different environment, and I had trouble making the adjustment.
If all you care about is CS and math, or if you thrive in highly-competitive environments, an engineering school might be good for you. But you can get a very good CS education at a liberal arts school, and maybe have more fun doing it. And you can also learn to write well, and pick up a bit of a lot of different subjects that may interest you.
I think you're correct. It mentions the seatbelt thing on the results page for the PT cruiser tests. There's some additional padding to protect the legs of a passenger not wearing a seatbelt, but if you are wearing a seatbelt the pads just provide one more surface for you to smash into before the belt stops you.
a tractor and maybe some blight-proof hybrids would be nice. Spraying your fields with ammonia-nitrate solution is not the end-all be-all to industrialized farming.
Agreed. But spraying your fields with fertilizer is what I'm arguing about (and what the post I originally replied to was advocating). Organic farmers use tractors and blight-resistant hybrids, too. (Actually, the hybrids used in western industrial farming tend to be extremely vulnerable to disease, because they've been bred for yield above all else. Which is part of the reason we need so many pesticides.)
I'd actually be interested to read a credible and well-written book on the limits of organic farming/the benefits of industrial farming, but I haven't heard of any. I'm not dogmatic about fertilizer and pesticides, but I do think we overuse them, to our own detriment in the long run. I'm personally more concerned about getting my produce local (and fresh).
The revisions are so people can sell more books on nutrition.
Do you really think nutrition is that simple? Try living on sugar (carbs), shortening (fat), protein powder, and multivitamins, and let me know how you do.
For the third world it's hard to afford industrialized farming unless you already have industrialized farming. You can file it under economic reasons, but I think the problem is simpler than your ambiguous "political and economic" reasons, yet I believe it is still hard to fix.
"Not being able to afford it" sounds like an economic reason to me. But my point is that people in the third world aren't starving because they lack fertilizer. We tried giving it to them during the Green Revolution, and it was a disaster. The reasons are a lot more complicated than that, and I don't see how their situation lends any support to the belief that we need massive amounts of chemical fertilizer to feed the world.
I recommend this article, or "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by the same author to anyone who's interested in the complex issues surrounding food, agriculture, and nutrition.
The fact is, we don't fully understand nutrition yet (either for plants or humans). Reductionist explanations have repeatedly turned out to be wrong -- first we figured out fats, carbohydrates, and protein, and thought we had it solved. Then it turned out there were these things called vitamins, and they were important too -- but clearly that was the whole picture. Now we're finding out about things like antioxidants that are also important to health. It seems reasonable at this point to assume that there is still more going on that we haven't figured out yet.
The chemical composition of healthy soil is incredibly complex, and to assert that it's just a matter of nitrogen and carbon is absurd. We don't understand that whole picture yet, and it's certainly plausible (though not yet proven) that organic foods have certain health benefits.
Personally, what I think is dangerous is the idea that we can keep dumping poison (pesticides and chemical fertilizer) into the environment in massive quantities without consequences. Fertilizer and pesticides can increase yields, and in the long run we may need to employ them judiciously to feed a growing world population. But right now, yields aren't the problem. The first world has more food than it can eat, while people in the third world are starving mostly for political and economic reasons.
Perl -- whether you like it or not (I'm not particularly a fan), it was certainly an innovative language in it's day.
Ruby and Python, to a lesser extent.
Ruby on Rails.
Those are just the first few that came to mind. I'd argue they were more innovative than most commercial language/development products.
Of course, all of these are development tools and not end-user software. It's probably true that open source doesn't produce a lot of innovative end-user/GUI apps.
States' rights are a tough issue... the US system has always been somewhere in between complete state sovereignty and complete federal control. I wholeheartedly agree that the pendulum has swung too far in the latter direction.
Maybe, as you seem to think, the right of secession is ultimately necessary to safeguard the power of the states. Otherwise they're ultimately powerless against the federal government, and it seems the power does tend to concentrate when possible. I hadn't thought of it in that light before.
Wow... I seem to be having a civil, intelligent discussion on Slashdot, *and* I've reconsidered my position in light of a well-reasoned argument. Who'd have expected that to happen?;-)
It seems we're mostly in agreement on the facts, but differ in our interpretations. Personally, I don't think the South would have seceded without the extremely divisive issue of slavery to push them over the edge -- but I'm a programmer, not a historian, and I don't really have the evidence to back that opinion up.:)
In general I'm in favor of stronger states rights, but I don't think I'd go so far as to support the right to secession. It seems like it would lead to chaos, with states seceding left and right whenever they don't get their way. Plus it leads to sticky questions, like what happens to federally-owned property (military bases, etc), in the seceding states? I think that founding of a nation is somewhat more binding than a trade agreement (and AFAIK there's no "out" written into the Constitution).
I'm also not sure it's entirely accurate to characterize the north/south conflict entirely in terms of federal power vs. states' rights. Consider the fugitive slave laws which, while probably legal under the interstate commerce clause, certainly allowed the federal government to override the will of the states.
The actual situation is a lot more complex than your quote would suggest.
First of all, while there were broader tensions between north and south, it was the issue of slavery (mostly whether to allow slavery in new territories/states) the drove the South to secede. People often say "the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery", but it's more accurate to say that the Civil War wasn't fought for the purpose of emancipating the slaves. It was fought to keep the South in the Union, but the South never would have left if not for slavery.
As for Lincoln's own views, he was staunchly, if not radically, anti-slavery throughout his political career. He believed that the Founding Fathers intended slavery to die out over time, so he opposed the addition of new slave states. But he didn't support wholesale abolition until fairly late in the war.
On top of that, his speeches and policy throughout his presidency involved a lot of what we might call "triangulation" -- he was always weighing what he believed was right against what was possible, and what the people and the Congress would support. So while he believed that slavery was wrong, he avoided advocating emancipation because he knew it would be politically costly, and wouldn't accomplish anything.
Whether or not you consider the US a "shining example to the world" depends a lot on the time scale you consider. Over the last 20-30 years, not so much. But if you look back to the beginnings of the US, that's a different story. When the country was founded, and even up to the time of the civil war, the idea of a democratic country was revolutionary, and many people didn't think it could work.
These days, you're not even considered a respectable country unless you have a democratic government, and the US deserves a hell of a lot of the credit for it. If that's not being a shining example, I don't know what is.
In recent years, especially under the Bush administration, the US does seem to have lost its way. But this country has done some great things in the past, and (hopefully) will do say again.
My company writes effects plug-ins for film/video post-production, and a while back we got an email from one of our customers with a similar story. He had been playing around with our effects trying to simulate a look of noisy or damaged video. Suddenly his render failed with an "out of memory" error, and the screen filled with random digital garbage -- it was exactly what he wanted!
So he rendered it out the way it was, and we gained another happy customer.;-)
On top of that, some film/TV crews will do their editing on location -- for example, I have a friend who's going to spend a couple of months this summer following a film crew around South America, editing each day's footage on a laptop. I'd imagine they need some IT people to keep the editors up and running.
The downside is that it's probably hard to find steady, year-round work doing that kind of thing.
I dunno, corn prices might rise to the point where farmers can actually make a living growing it. As opposed to the current system, where farmers operate at a loss and rely on federal subsidies that are specifically designed to encourage overproduction and drive down the price of corn (to the benefit of agribusiness and the detriment of basically everyone else).
Kind of off-topic, but you should talk to a massage therapist, acupuncturist, or some other practitioner of "alternative" medicine. They are good at dealing with chronic pain, especially neck and back problems, and can often help people who mainstream doctors have given up on. At the very least, the placebo effect is a powerful thing.;-)
Since you're a student, money is probably an issue, but you can most likely find someone who will charge on a sliding scale or otherwise work out a reasonable fee with you.
For basic image viewing, kview does the trick for me. It's lightweight and supports plenty of image formats. Is there some particular feature from Irfanview that you need?
For a simple paint/image editing program, I like kolourpaint. It's pretty basic, but it's a step up from MSPaint, and it does the trick for me.
Open source folks are more than happy to implement your DRM if you have a completely open specification. If you can't release the specification because it depends on a "secret" part and releasing it would undermine the whole thing, then it's a crappy attempt at DRM that will be undermined by l33t Hax0rz one day anyway, so why bother.
The reason there's no open-source DRM software is not because the content companies are short-sighted or too dumb to make "good" DRM algorithms. It's because open-source DRM is flat-out impossible. When you distribute software that can play DRM files, it has to include
a) the decryption algorithm
b) the decryption keys
When you open-source that software, you've just given away everything. Anyone can tweak the software to output non-encrypted files, or take the keys and write their own. DRM only works if the software is closed-source.
Even if your symptoms are very localized, the cause probably involves your whole body. Everything in your body is connected, and if one area gets out of whack, the others will try to compensate and the problems will spread outward.
For example, if your quads are tight they will pull your upper body forward, making you slouch. Your back has to fight against that, but if those muscles aren't strong enough they'll get fatigued and tense up. Tension in your back/shoulders will affect the nerves and blood flow in your arms, until one day you discover you can't feel your fingers.
At that point, the obvious place to look is your hand and arm, but to really solve the problem you have to start with your legs, where the root of the problem is, and work up from there. (I speak from experience in this case).
Ergonomics, rest breaks, etc can help, but to really get your body sorted out you need to exercise. Weights can develop the muscles in your back, shoulders, and legs that you need for good posture. You don't need to bulk up as much as tone -- which can be done with lighter weights and high reps (2-3 sets of 40-50 reps). You also need to stretch a lot -- especially your legs and lower back, which are crucial to your posture.
A good chiropractor, physical therapist, or massage therapist can identify which areas you need to focus on and show you exercises and stretches. My massage therapist actually came to the gym with me and showed me what to do. Failing that, it's probably worthwhile to have a few sessions with a personal trainer so you know what you're doing at the gym.
Despite what the summary would imply, this device doesn't take over your body and completely control your movements. I was at SIGGRAPH and tried it out -- it just throws off your sense of balance, making it hard to walk in a straight line. The effect isn't strong enough to make you fall down, and you could probably learn to compensate for it pretty quickly if you tried.
The effect is good enough for video games, though -- as part of the demo they put you in front of a driving sim, and use the device to simulate the centripetal force when you go around corners. It was pretty cool.
For most people, it seemed to be painless, but after a little while my skin started to sting where the electrodes where attached.
This is how social security was _meant_ to work! The social security taxes you pay now support the current generation of retirees. When you retire, your social security will be paid for by the younger generation of workers.
Everyone benefits, unless the program is cancelled -- in which case the last generation gets screwed.
Actually, I write software for large financial institutions (order management software for mutual fund managers and the like). One of the biggest selling points of our product is -- you guessed it -- Excel integration.
The users can work out their orders in Excel and then easily import them in our software. And they love this feature. Not to mention that small shops (who can't afford software like ours) tend to do everything in Excel.
The stock market depends a lot more on Excel than you might think.
8-9 miles isn't realistic commuting distance? I do it every day -- and I get to work faster than I could on bus/subway. Many commuters travel farther than that. Especially in more rural areas where you don't have to stop frequently, longer distances are definitely feasible.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't have to dump poison on your property for it to end up in your well. They can dump it on their property, where it will leach into the groundwater and from there into your well. Because water, inconveniently, doesn't stop flowing at property lines.
Things like air and groundwater can't be sliced up into pieces and parceled out to different owners. That's not some hippie ideology, it's a physical fact (unless we develop the technology to prevent air and water from crossing property lines).
So, if a capitalist dumps poison in the groundwater used by all his neighbors because he's too lazy to clean up after himself, is he not infringing their rights? Shouldn't they be able to collectively (i.e. by petitioning the government to pass laws) decide to stop him?
I got a CS degree at a liberal arts school, and was able to get into a PhD program at one of the schools in the US. I ended up leaving with an MS and have had no trouble getting jobs since then.
;-)
At a liberal arts school, the CS program is going to be smaller, and if you're motivated you'll have the opportunity to work closely with professors and get involved in research. Since there are fewer students and they're likely to have less technical background on average, you have the chance to really distinguish yourself among your peers.
Also, a liberal arts school will give you a well-rounded education. The ability to write and speak eloquently will serve you well in just about any field. And while learning about history and literature probably won't make you a better programmer, it may well make you a better person.
There are downsides, though. You'll have fewer CS courses to choose from, and they probably will be less challenging (I literally took every course offered in my CS department, plus some independent studies, and had plenty of slots left over for non-CS courses). And you'll have fewer peers who are really good at CS -- though you can make up for that to some extent by talking to your professors.
Going from a liberal arts school to grad school was also a hard adjustment -- I had plenty of knowledge, but culturally it was a vastly different environment, and I had trouble making the adjustment.
If all you care about is CS and math, or if you thrive in highly-competitive environments, an engineering school might be good for you. But you can get a very good CS education at a liberal arts school, and maybe have more fun doing it. And you can also learn to write well, and pick up a bit of a lot of different subjects that may interest you.
I think you're correct. It mentions the seatbelt thing on the results page for the PT cruiser tests. There's some additional padding to protect the legs of a passenger not wearing a seatbelt, but if you are wearing a seatbelt the pads just provide one more surface for you to smash into before the belt stops you.
Agreed. But spraying your fields with fertilizer is what I'm arguing about (and what the post I originally replied to was advocating). Organic farmers use tractors and blight-resistant hybrids, too. (Actually, the hybrids used in western industrial farming tend to be extremely vulnerable to disease, because they've been bred for yield above all else. Which is part of the reason we need so many pesticides.)
I'd actually be interested to read a credible and well-written book on the limits of organic farming/the benefits of industrial farming, but I haven't heard of any. I'm not dogmatic about fertilizer and pesticides, but I do think we overuse them, to our own detriment in the long run. I'm personally more concerned about getting my produce local (and fresh).
Do you really think nutrition is that simple? Try living on sugar (carbs), shortening (fat), protein powder, and multivitamins, and let me know how you do.
For the third world it's hard to afford industrialized farming unless you already have industrialized farming. You can file it under economic reasons, but I think the problem is simpler than your ambiguous "political and economic" reasons, yet I believe it is still hard to fix."Not being able to afford it" sounds like an economic reason to me. But my point is that people in the third world aren't starving because they lack fertilizer. We tried giving it to them during the Green Revolution, and it was a disaster. The reasons are a lot more complicated than that, and I don't see how their situation lends any support to the belief that we need massive amounts of chemical fertilizer to feed the world.
I recommend this article, or "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by the same author to anyone who's interested in the complex issues surrounding food, agriculture, and nutrition.
Though I don't think there is conclusive evidence yet, there are some studies that suggest organic food does have more nutrients:
http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/12-27/health-benefits-of-organic-food-article.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/polyphenolics031203.cfm
The fact is, we don't fully understand nutrition yet (either for plants or humans). Reductionist explanations have repeatedly turned out to be wrong -- first we figured out fats, carbohydrates, and protein, and thought we had it solved. Then it turned out there were these things called vitamins, and they were important too -- but clearly that was the whole picture. Now we're finding out about things like antioxidants that are also important to health. It seems reasonable at this point to assume that there is still more going on that we haven't figured out yet.
The chemical composition of healthy soil is incredibly complex, and to assert that it's just a matter of nitrogen and carbon is absurd. We don't understand that whole picture yet, and it's certainly plausible (though not yet proven) that organic foods have certain health benefits.
Personally, what I think is dangerous is the idea that we can keep dumping poison (pesticides and chemical fertilizer) into the environment in massive quantities without consequences. Fertilizer and pesticides can increase yields, and in the long run we may need to employ them judiciously to feed a growing world population. But right now, yields aren't the problem. The first world has more food than it can eat, while people in the third world are starving mostly for political and economic reasons.
Perl -- whether you like it or not (I'm not particularly a fan), it was certainly an innovative language in it's day.
Ruby and Python, to a lesser extent.
Ruby on Rails.
Those are just the first few that came to mind. I'd argue they were more innovative than most commercial language/development products.
Of course, all of these are development tools and not end-user software. It's probably true that open source doesn't produce a lot of innovative end-user/GUI apps.
States' rights are a tough issue... the US system has always been somewhere in between complete state sovereignty and complete federal control. I wholeheartedly agree that the pendulum has swung too far in the latter direction.
;-)
Maybe, as you seem to think, the right of secession is ultimately necessary to safeguard the power of the states. Otherwise they're ultimately powerless against the federal government, and it seems the power does tend to concentrate when possible. I hadn't thought of it in that light before.
Wow... I seem to be having a civil, intelligent discussion on Slashdot, *and* I've reconsidered my position in light of a well-reasoned argument. Who'd have expected that to happen?
It seems we're mostly in agreement on the facts, but differ in our interpretations. Personally, I don't think the South would have seceded without the extremely divisive issue of slavery to push them over the edge -- but I'm a programmer, not a historian, and I don't really have the evidence to back that opinion up. :)
In general I'm in favor of stronger states rights, but I don't think I'd go so far as to support the right to secession. It seems like it would lead to chaos, with states seceding left and right whenever they don't get their way. Plus it leads to sticky questions, like what happens to federally-owned property (military bases, etc), in the seceding states? I think that founding of a nation is somewhat more binding than a trade agreement (and AFAIK there's no "out" written into the Constitution).
I'm also not sure it's entirely accurate to characterize the north/south conflict entirely in terms of federal power vs. states' rights. Consider the fugitive slave laws which, while probably legal under the interstate commerce clause, certainly allowed the federal government to override the will of the states.
The actual situation is a lot more complex than your quote would suggest.
First of all, while there were broader tensions between north and south, it was the issue of slavery (mostly whether to allow slavery in new territories/states) the drove the South to secede. People often say "the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery", but it's more accurate to say that the Civil War wasn't fought for the purpose of emancipating the slaves. It was fought to keep the South in the Union, but the South never would have left if not for slavery.
As for Lincoln's own views, he was staunchly, if not radically, anti-slavery throughout his political career. He believed that the Founding Fathers intended slavery to die out over time, so he opposed the addition of new slave states. But he didn't support wholesale abolition until fairly late in the war.
On top of that, his speeches and policy throughout his presidency involved a lot of what we might call "triangulation" -- he was always weighing what he believed was right against what was possible, and what the people and the Congress would support. So while he believed that slavery was wrong, he avoided advocating emancipation because he knew it would be politically costly, and wouldn't accomplish anything.
Whether or not you consider the US a "shining example to the world" depends a lot on the time scale you consider. Over the last 20-30 years, not so much. But if you look back to the beginnings of the US, that's a different story. When the country was founded, and even up to the time of the civil war, the idea of a democratic country was revolutionary, and many people didn't think it could work.
These days, you're not even considered a respectable country unless you have a democratic government, and the US deserves a hell of a lot of the credit for it. If that's not being a shining example, I don't know what is.
In recent years, especially under the Bush administration, the US does seem to have lost its way. But this country has done some great things in the past, and (hopefully) will do say again.
My company writes effects plug-ins for film/video post-production, and a while back we got an email from one of our customers with a similar story. He had been playing around with our effects trying to simulate a look of noisy or damaged video. Suddenly his render failed with an "out of memory" error, and the screen filled with random digital garbage -- it was exactly what he wanted!
;-)
So he rendered it out the way it was, and we gained another happy customer.
On top of that, some film/TV crews will do their editing on location -- for example, I have a friend who's going to spend a couple of months this summer following a film crew around South America, editing each day's footage on a laptop. I'd imagine they need some IT people to keep the editors up and running.
The downside is that it's probably hard to find steady, year-round work doing that kind of thing.
I dunno, corn prices might rise to the point where farmers can actually make a living growing it. As opposed to the current system, where farmers operate at a loss and rely on federal subsidies that are specifically designed to encourage overproduction and drive down the price of corn (to the benefit of agribusiness and the detriment of basically everyone else).
Kind of off-topic, but you should talk to a massage therapist, acupuncturist, or some other practitioner of "alternative" medicine. They are good at dealing with chronic pain, especially neck and back problems, and can often help people who mainstream doctors have given up on. At the very least, the placebo effect is a powerful thing. ;-)
Since you're a student, money is probably an issue, but you can most likely find someone who will charge on a sliding scale or otherwise work out a reasonable fee with you.
For basic image viewing, kview does the trick for me. It's lightweight and supports plenty of image formats. Is there some particular feature from Irfanview that you need?
For a simple paint/image editing program, I like kolourpaint. It's pretty basic, but it's a step up from MSPaint, and it does the trick for me.
The reason there's no open-source DRM software is not because the content companies are short-sighted or too dumb to make "good" DRM algorithms. It's because open-source DRM is flat-out impossible. When you distribute software that can play DRM files, it has to include
a) the decryption algorithm
b) the decryption keys
When you open-source that software, you've just given away everything. Anyone can tweak the software to output non-encrypted files, or take the keys and write their own. DRM only works if the software is closed-source.
I think you meant:
their to stupid too improve
I mean, if you're going to pick on someone else's grammar, get it right!
Even if your symptoms are very localized, the cause probably involves your whole body. Everything in your body is connected, and if one area gets out of whack, the others will try to compensate and the problems will spread outward.
For example, if your quads are tight they will pull your upper body forward, making you slouch. Your back has to fight against that, but if those muscles aren't strong enough they'll get fatigued and tense up. Tension in your back/shoulders will affect the nerves and blood flow in your arms, until one day you discover you can't feel your fingers.
At that point, the obvious place to look is your hand and arm, but to really solve the problem you have to start with your legs, where the root of the problem is, and work up from there. (I speak from experience in this case).
Ergonomics, rest breaks, etc can help, but to really get your body sorted out you need to exercise. Weights can develop the muscles in your back, shoulders, and legs that you need for good posture. You don't need to bulk up as much as tone -- which can be done with lighter weights and high reps (2-3 sets of 40-50 reps). You also need to stretch a lot -- especially your legs and lower back, which are crucial to your posture.
A good chiropractor, physical therapist, or massage therapist can identify which areas you need to focus on and show you exercises and stretches. My massage therapist actually came to the gym with me and showed me what to do. Failing that, it's probably worthwhile to have a few sessions with a personal trainer so you know what you're doing at the gym.
Despite what the summary would imply, this device doesn't take over your body and completely control your movements. I was at SIGGRAPH and tried it out -- it just throws off your sense of balance, making it hard to walk in a straight line. The effect isn't strong enough to make you fall down, and you could probably learn to compensate for it pretty quickly if you tried.
The effect is good enough for video games, though -- as part of the demo they put you in front of a driving sim, and use the device to simulate the centripetal force when you go around corners. It was pretty cool.
For most people, it seemed to be painless, but after a little while my skin started to sting where the electrodes where attached.
This is how social security was _meant_ to work!
The social security taxes you pay now support the current generation of retirees. When you retire, your social security will be paid for by the younger generation of workers.
Everyone benefits, unless the program is cancelled -- in which case the last generation gets screwed.
Actually, I write software for large financial institutions (order management software for mutual fund managers and the like). One of the biggest selling points of our product is -- you guessed it -- Excel integration.
The users can work out their orders in Excel and then easily import them in our software. And they love this feature. Not to mention that small shops (who can't afford software like ours) tend to do everything in Excel.
The stock market depends a lot more on Excel than you might think.
They have a tool called alien which turns RPMS into Debs. It seems to work pretty well, too.
So, software packed for debian (.debs) can't be installed elsewhere (AFAIK), but software packaged for LSB (rpms) can be installed on debian.
Of course, remelted ice is pretty scary in a car, too :)
You can get studded tires for bikes, which supposedly help out a lot on the ice.
8-9 miles isn't realistic commuting distance? I do it every day -- and I get to work faster than I could on bus/subway.
Many commuters travel farther than that. Especially in more rural areas where you don't have to stop frequently, longer distances are definitely feasible.