To someone like your or I, Word is simply a word processing program.
Not really. Word is, depending on your perspective, a "very valuable tool" or an "over-bloated word processor."
Spreadsheet. Hit tab, enter a value, add them up by hand. Excel is 'too confusing'
Word can also add up said table for you. If you just need REALLY simple numbers, Word can work as a spreadsheet.
Creating GIANT tables and using them for inventory, rather than an Access database
Access works on a wholly differnet paradigm than Word. For a small enough inventory, Word (or a scrap of paper, or a text file) will work.
Creating a 3,000 page document and keeping time/attendance records for ~ 250 employees. And wonder why it takes 10 minutes to load, and 10 minutes to save, doesn't scroll right....
OK, that one's just foolish. Next time you see someone do that, feel free to shoot them. I'm sure God will forgive you for it.
Yes but you are attributing this effect to the wrong cause.
No, I'm properly measuring whether or not our security system is working with the proper data set.
A better measure would be "attempts foiled", but we don't have good enough numbers on actual attempts to measure that--though we know the number is at least 2. (The Shoe-bomber and the dirty-bomb scare.)
You may be trying to argue that we're spending more than necessary on security--which is a different arugment than "our security isn't working."
Seems to me that if you have a machine which utilizes a database often used by law enforcement, then it's possible that it's only a matter of time before they start using it to stop people that aren't terrorists. You don't even have to be in trouble with the law at the time, you just have to show up on the radar, and suddenly you're being harrased about your Disney World vacation.
Sorry. Being anonymous from the police when they have a reason (heck, any reason) to look for you is not a civil liberty. Being free from police harassment is, but that's best accomplished through oversight and respect, not hostility and hand-tying.
Then there's the secondary issue of the machine's level of inaccuracy. If you do any travelling at all via airline, there's a possibility that you might get flagged as a terrorist, and if you're a frequent traveller, then you have an even better chance of flagged.
And if it's as bad as you say, then they won't rely soley on this system to determine who to stop.
Of course, this system doesn't change the "they might think you a terrorist" line one bit, you know.
Small price to pay for the security you might say. Well how exactly would you feel if they stopped someone in your family, told them, "We think you're a terrorist, you're coming with us, and we're going to keep you in this room until we think otherwise, your rights, and your lawyer be damned."
Not if you're an American citizen. And, within a year, not if you're anyone who doesn't have a threat ON them at the time. (Either Bush will lose in '04, or the legal case for the Guantanamo Bay innmates will succeed.)
You're right, we must do something, because it's better than nothing, but if the terror level is at Orange even with all this security, then it's probably not very good security. Why as a taxpayer am I paying for all this expensive, ineffective security?
Uhm, the security alert being Orange is the system in action, not a failure of a system. When's the last time you saw a terrorist attack on American soil? 9/11/01? Well, then, the system's working as far as anyone can measure.
Lastly, it still doesn't change the fact that a terrorist could land in Saskatchewan, rent a car to the border, take a stroll into the states, hop on a bus to some metropolitan area, and set off the dirty bomb in the briefcase he was carrying all that time.
The system, now, doesn't. But eventually, the system will be at every last border crossing, port, or airport--which will make the whole darn thing work better.
Y'see, the robo-men--or "marines", as we liked to call them--had the useful ability to actually fight and follow orders, and not go run off and fight for food or land or women. These "marines" are the perfect--nay, the ESSENTIAL--soldier for the Great War front back then.
How do I know that? Well, heck boy, I'm an officer! Got me a ten-year pass on leave, so I hopped into one've our time-machines, and sped forward to this time, to live among the mundanes and the civies.
Y'should remember that there ain't really no darn limits to technology, now that we got that thar time machines.
You really, REALLY need to brush up on some Supreme Court decisions.
There are literally dozens of circumstances where "freedom of speech" is trumped by a more vital right--rights to privacy, truth, and safety almost always trump the freedom of speach, and verifiable national security almost certainly does.
And, to be pendandic, even the gag order was not a "you may not speak." It was "you may not spread this specific information", which is the kind of thing that is perfectly acceptable to the founders of the American system.
Wouldn't the American colonists who would later rebel fit into this category?
No. They were democratic first, rebels later. In fact, the very first "rebellious" acts that were more than mere protest were the democratic consideration and then adoption of the Delcaration of Independance, followed by a war, followed by one bad government, and then finally followed by the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in (IIRC) 1789.
They were armed rebels against a foreign occupier (Great Britain), correct?
Again, no. Most colonists considered themselves "Britains" or "Englishmen" as much or moreso than they considered themselves "Americans."
Or perhaps I'm just a history major who knows nothing about history.
You don't, if you think that gureilla fighters with no political base have ever set up a democratic election. Historically, when no government has been in place and the guerillas win, they resort to rule by the warriors--why do you think that from Japan to Europe, the dominant pre-democratic forms of government were essentially rule by the military?
If the points made in this article were true, D&D would have absorbed the innovative features Whitewolf games have,
D&D did. Ravenloft was a direct result of White Wolf's world of darkness. d20 is a LOT more flexible than AD&D, due in no small part to the success of White Wolf and GURPS.
D&D could be a lot more like WW, but then it wouldn't be D&D--just like EQ won't ever be wholly displaced by a MMFPS.
and Whitewolf would be histroy. Yet Whitewolf has its own thriving playerbase that grows every day, in large part due to their many innovations (LARP?). There are always exceptions, and the points made in this article are most CERTAINLY not the rule.
White Wolf grows in player base because the RPG market is expanding, and WW is the preminent "want a simpler system than D&D" system. (The inverse, for those who for some reason can't get geeked out enough on D&D, is GURPS--which is losing rules-ground to d20 and ironically survives on (fairly good) sourcebooks, AFAIK.)
Um, use the wrong file, and you can wind up emailing the collected works of Led Zeppelin to your whole address book.
Not quite. There's a world of difference between grabbing a random wrong file and invoking the "USERMOD.MODULE" file in the/gpl folder (which you had for compatability testing or somesuch) intead of the "USERMOD.MODULE" file in the/lgpl folder (which, while less full-featured, is useable in your project).
It's hypothetical, and unlikely given proper precautions--but if you don't take the proper precautions, thinking "the GPL isn't viral, it won't hurt me", you might wind up committing serious copyright infringement.
You'd think people would think carefully before compiling code belonging to others.
Yes, they should. And knowing that "the GPL is viral", and what that really means, is something that they every last programmer who even goes near GPL'd code should know.
While I don't think it is quite the definition of a double-negative, it certainly hurts the eyes.:)
Sorry about that.
Try "Athiests are no more able to test everything that they are told than anyone else."
Some Atheists have made the claim that they do not take anything "on faith", and so are somehow intellecutally on sounder ground than someone with a traditional religion.
My point is that this simply isn't true; while Atheists do not believe the words of priests, they still believe the words of someone without empircially testing them; while an extreme of not believing anything is concievable, it's also qualifiably insane.
The goal isn't to trick people into "infecting" their closed software with GPL, it's to encourage open development by offering an advantage to other open developers; the right to use and distribute GPL code freely mixed with their own.
Yes, exactly.
And to do this, Stallman (quite rightly) constructed a fairly harsh license: you can use it for free, and you can make a derivitive work--but if you do so, you have to make the entierty of your derivitive work GPL'd.
The appropriate response from the FSF when Microsoft calls the GPL viral is "yeah, so? At least we're honest about our goals and guided by morality, not unbridled greed."
(Good thing MS doesn't make a UNIX anymore--or else we'd have zealous OS advocates arguing that GNU/HURD and Linux "aren't UNIX." [j/k])
Making a derivative work of a software program IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT.
Yes, it is. Set the wrong compile flag or use the wrong file, and you can wind up distributing GPL'd code instead of LGPL'd code, for example.
Remember: the anti-GPL argument is aimed at small mixed-market shops, that use some GPL'd code but make proprietary code that they sell as their primary revenue source.
To these people, even a single payment of damages can be enough to render the product worthless--and the only thing keeping the FSF from offering a "GPL it all and we'll forget the whole thing" offer is their goodwill, which isn't really something that a business can count on.
The GPL is viral by design, as intended by the FSF. If you have anything GPL'd on your system and you do software development, you need to be aware of this, and check your compile functions and sub-files appropriately.
(Realistically, the FSF is going to allow correction in almost every case, and require payment or "Liberation" [to coin a term] in only the largest of cases... like, oh, if MS included significant GPL'd code in the next version of Windows.)
I take that to mean that an atheist takes nothing simply on "faith", but instead requires imperical evidence.
1: It's "empirical". (bonus karma if you can catch the grammatical mistakes I'm bound to be making here--and no, that period-outside-of-a-quote is kosher.)
2: Atheists are no more able to not take things on faith than the rest of us; were that true, they wouldn't believe in some major historical figures.
Atheists, by and by, simply do not engage in religious discussions on the same level that "theists" do--and, honestly, that causes more confusion than anything else about atheism, even the whole strong/weak split.
(As for the original parent comment: I'm a chrisitan, and two moral compasses that I follow are "if everyone on earth did this, would the world be a better or a worse place" and "does this action hurt someone else to help the actor, or hurt the actor to hurt someone else?" Neither one of these requires a communication from the Almighty, which is, IMO, how He wants it.)
And remember, we've still found no sign of bin Laden
We've got lots of signs of Bin Laden. He's just moving faster than Saddam, so we haven't caught him.
and have no clue how the fundamentalist terrorist networks get or use their money.
Sure we do. THey get them from a rich ex-Saudi prince and various isalimc fundamentalist organizations. Mostly in cash, I wager. And they use these monies to purchase things, like bulletts and plain tickets.
Of course, we don't know WHICH fundamentalist organizations, and we don't know who's working as a middleman for the terrorists...
The "intelligence capabilities of the American forces" have shown themselves to be utterly incompetent at infiltrating or even understanding these networks.
We're not all that worse off than the enemy.
Think about it: On September 10, 2001 the World Trade Center was just another building, considered by many to be quite an eyesore. The next day, it became a symbol of america that utterly failed to demoralize us--and really isn't going to lead to us leaving the Middle East anytime soon.
If Osama knew the USA as well as you think we should know Al Quaeda, he'd have picked a target that would have actually demoralized us--the capital and the white house, or the Statue of Liberty and just one of the WTC.
Re:Iraqi, U.S., or international trial appropriate
on
Saddam Hussein Arrested
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The problem is, the USA opposes it.
Well, yeah. It'd be a political body in a political body that has often been used as an anti-us platform.
I can't think of a good reason why there can't be an exception for sodliers serving under a UN mandate; that'd kill both the US's fears of the court and the world's fear of the US in one fell swoop.
Sure, XP is now themeable, and you can modify little GUI artifacts more easily.
It's more than that.
You can re-arrange your start menu, choose which folders are one-level menus and which ones are trees, and decide what options appear and don't appear--all under "properties."
The @#$ing system tray, overloaded with little and often worthless mini-icons, now auto-hides--and each icon can be set a different value, and if you really want to the entire thing can be turned off.
Oh, and there's a few other things--like "System Restore" or "Desktop Cleanup Wizard"--which really do look like they're built in response to what Windows users do.
But the default is fucked up, and quite a divergence from anything previous; there should have least been an option.
There is. Windows XP comes with exactly two themes--"Windows XP" and "Windows Classic."
And, considering that everything is in the same place, does essentially the same thing, and has the same words on it, it's hardly "fucked up" for new users. (I know some techno-novices who went from 2k to XP without a hitch--and they didn't even change the theme back.)
As it stands, you've got to dig through things to fix what they 'enhanced'.
Right-click on the start menu, and the first screen that opens up asks you if you want "Start Menu" or "Classic Start Menu." And the same window (in a different tab) lets you change the tasbar's program groupings and the system tray's auto-hide on or off.
That's almost every UI they changed in the core OS, all in one place. And the only other major UI element is a new default option in explorer's "view" menu.
Your ignorance proceeds you. I doubt you've even used linux - there are no such thing as.exe's in linux-land. (I'm assuming you weren't speaking figuratively, being as you haven't previously.)
I have. I wonder if you've ever tried to do something creative with Windows.
_All_ versions of windows, even Windows XP, call "Explorer.exe" as its "shell". This prorgram handles what you see on the desktop, what you see for the taskbar, and how you browse files. Editing one text file is enough to change what shell you use.
For a good side-by-side comparison, I'd want to see KDE (not just konqorer) run on windows at least semi-natively--native enough that it doesn't lose anything when compared with Explorer.exe.
Now, I could reinstall Linux, and spend a few hours getting Linux to do what I want it to do, but that's a different discussion. (I'll list my few reasons why not below.)
Nearly every one of these isn't in IE.
Who the hell said I used that piece of crap? The only reason I didn't delete it from my PC is that some programs call it for internal HTML rendering, and Gecko doesn't have a drop-in replacement yet.
I use Firebird to browse the web.
As far as 'dumping nearly every piece of software that you use'... well, yeah. You likely do that already - going from PS 5 to PS 5.5, etc. Most of the major applications will work in WINE quite well, anyway. You really have very little to bitch about. Media players in linux are quite superior to those of Windows. Granted, there are soft spots, such as audio editing, but unless you have a bone to pick or some uncommon requirements, that's not a matter of concern.
1: "Quite well" isn't good enough. "Exactly as well as it runs on Windows" would be the place to start--and no fair arguing that Linux's supposed better reliability equals out the problems.
2: I rarely change appliations--and when I do, it's often just to a new version and not something entirely new. I could start using OpenOffice now--but there are a few small nagging things (like synicing with Documents to Go, or a proper word count) that keep me in MS Word.
3: Why do I care about media players? I've got Winamp and iTunes, which is more than I need for playing MP3s and seeing the odd movie
Look at the two 'major' - supposed - outcomes of such research: MS Bob and Windows XP's graphical interface.
You obviously don't use Windows.
MS Bob was neutered into Clippy due to user research, and then Clippy was removed due to the same.
Windows XP's UI is vastly improved over 2000's, 98's, or 95's. A lot of customization and small things are now built-in and easy to find that were only avaliable through very-hard-to-find options or third-party hacks. Sure, the primary-color interface is garish, but it can also be turned off with all of four mouse clicks.
Oh, and as for KDE: I don't use it because in order to use it, I'd have to dump nearly every piece of software that I do use. Show me a KDE.EXE that can replace EXPLORER.EXE, and I'll use it.
Unfortunately there are no vendor patches available at the time beign. A temporary fix is not to have any contact with these 'women' (this should not be a problem for usual/. reader)!
There is, however, a workaround. Simply find a female of sufficient compatability in goals and personality, and marry said female.
Sufficient time focused on said "honeypot female" will allow a male to operate relatively normally even in the presence of new attractive females.
Still no link... remember, as far as I care you're still under suspcicion for being a troll. Anyway...
that is the way to go, because then the worker is in charge of the means of production. As was mentioned earlier, Anarcho-Syndaclism or whatever that word is, where there is little or no state and the trade unions/guilds are federated to controll the economy, is a rather efficant means of enacting socialism.
f--k the proper words.
Were I given phenominal godlike power, I would:
Institute the "Great Dole", wherein anyone can live a happy existance not being a wage slave, and such behavior is encouraged if you don't have the drive to be productive. (And the dole doesn't totally go away until your income is triple the dole's base value, but rather reduces on a one-dollar-per-$.50-income basis.) (And it's not enough to live in the city and not do anything; you need to move to the country and farm some vegetables to survive.)
Eliminate corporate ownership. All stocks would be converted to bonds at a FMV (or less), and coroprations would all be "employee-owned."
Eliminate minimum wage and overtime laws. The "Great Dole" takes care of the first, and the second can be effected by employee negotiations and effectcively risk-free unemployment.
Eliminate the credit state; while the system would still be viable, credit cards as we know them would be heavily discouraged and home-ownership heavily encouraged.
Honestly, I'm not pro-farmer or pro-small business. I'm pro-efficiency and anti-waste. We live in an age of robots and computers--this means that we should have LESS people working for the same productivity, not more.
The goal, however, is merely to eliminate the concentration of wealth and power. Microsoft has amabssedors to other countries and a higher GDP than most of them, while there are people who can't make rent this month. Fuck them. Capitalism is an inherrintly evil thing. Economics are inherrently evil. things should be made for use, and given to who can use them. Exactly like GNU.
Again, that's attacking the current system (which never works with an intelligent ruling class, which we have), not promoting a better system (which no socialist since Lenin has done right--and even he messed up.)
Capitalism and greed may be evil--but they're bloody efficient, and the USSR failed not just because they had horrible appropriation of goals, but because they failed to align the base needs of the populace with the desires of the country--which, btw, China is doing right now.
Slashdot Mirror
To someone like your or I, Word is simply a word processing program.
Not really. Word is, depending on your perspective, a "very valuable tool" or an "over-bloated word processor."
Spreadsheet. Hit tab, enter a value, add them up by hand. Excel is 'too confusing'
Word can also add up said table for you. If you just need REALLY simple numbers, Word can work as a spreadsheet.
Creating GIANT tables and using them for inventory, rather than an Access database
Access works on a wholly differnet paradigm than Word. For a small enough inventory, Word (or a scrap of paper, or a text file) will work.
Creating a 3,000 page document and keeping time/attendance records for ~ 250 employees. And wonder why it takes 10 minutes to load, and 10 minutes to save, doesn't scroll right....
OK, that one's just foolish. Next time you see someone do that, feel free to shoot them. I'm sure God will forgive you for it.
Yes but you are attributing this effect to the wrong cause.
No, I'm properly measuring whether or not our security system is working with the proper data set.
A better measure would be "attempts foiled", but we don't have good enough numbers on actual attempts to measure that--though we know the number is at least 2. (The Shoe-bomber and the dirty-bomb scare.)
You may be trying to argue that we're spending more than necessary on security--which is a different arugment than "our security isn't working."
Seems to me that if you have a machine which utilizes a database often used by law enforcement, then it's possible that it's only a matter of time before they start using it to stop people that aren't terrorists. You don't even have to be in trouble with the law at the time, you just have to show up on the radar, and suddenly you're being harrased about your Disney World vacation.
Sorry. Being anonymous from the police when they have a reason (heck, any reason) to look for you is not a civil liberty. Being free from police harassment is, but that's best accomplished through oversight and respect, not hostility and hand-tying.
Then there's the secondary issue of the machine's level of inaccuracy. If you do any travelling at all via airline, there's a possibility that you might get flagged as a terrorist, and if you're a frequent traveller, then you have an even better chance of flagged.
And if it's as bad as you say, then they won't rely soley on this system to determine who to stop.
Of course, this system doesn't change the "they might think you a terrorist" line one bit, you know.
Small price to pay for the security you might say. Well how exactly would you feel if they stopped someone in your family, told them, "We think you're a terrorist, you're coming with us, and we're going to keep you in this room until we think otherwise, your rights, and your lawyer be damned."
Not if you're an American citizen. And, within a year, not if you're anyone who doesn't have a threat ON them at the time. (Either Bush will lose in '04, or the legal case for the Guantanamo Bay innmates will succeed.)
You're right, we must do something, because it's better than nothing, but if the terror level is at Orange even with all this security, then it's probably not very good security. Why as a taxpayer am I paying for all this expensive, ineffective security?
Uhm, the security alert being Orange is the system in action, not a failure of a system. When's the last time you saw a terrorist attack on American soil? 9/11/01? Well, then, the system's working as far as anyone can measure.
Lastly, it still doesn't change the fact that a terrorist could land in Saskatchewan, rent a car to the border, take a stroll into the states, hop on a bus to some metropolitan area, and set off the dirty bomb in the briefcase he was carrying all that time.
The system, now, doesn't. But eventually, the system will be at every last border crossing, port, or airport--which will make the whole darn thing work better.
Don't most computer come with a rudimentary work processor and spreadsheet
No. They come with either a full office suite, a Works-like "home office bundle", or just two cheap text editors.
I wonder how useful such robots actually were.
Very, actually.
Y'see, the robo-men--or "marines", as we liked to call them--had the useful ability to actually fight and follow orders, and not go run off and fight for food or land or women. These "marines" are the perfect--nay, the ESSENTIAL--soldier for the Great War front back then.
How do I know that? Well, heck boy, I'm an officer! Got me a ten-year pass on leave, so I hopped into one've our time-machines, and sped forward to this time, to live among the mundanes and the civies.
Y'should remember that there ain't really no darn limits to technology, now that we got that thar time machines.
It doesn't matter where *I* see it. It matters where the various state legislatures, congress, and most importantly the Supreme Court see it.
And, IIRC, they see it in the 10th amendment: "People have other rights, too."
You really, REALLY need to brush up on some Supreme Court decisions.
There are literally dozens of circumstances where "freedom of speech" is trumped by a more vital right--rights to privacy, truth, and safety almost always trump the freedom of speach, and verifiable national security almost certainly does.
And, to be pendandic, even the gag order was not a "you may not speak." It was "you may not spread this specific information", which is the kind of thing that is perfectly acceptable to the founders of the American system.
How does this make KDE any more useful to us , who don't really need accessibility.
I'm sure you can find a use for screen magnification, improved typing commands, and keyboard-mouse-control.
So it is more useful--about as "more useful" as that handicapped ramp you never appreciated until you have to roll a heavy desk up it.
Making KDE more accessible to physically handicapped people is sure nice and appriciable, but shouldn't it come down the list of things like
No. You can use KDE as-is. Others cannot use it without handicapped accessability at all.
'sides which, this is OSS "scratch an itch" software.
Wouldn't the American colonists who would later rebel fit into this category?
No. They were democratic first, rebels later. In fact, the very first "rebellious" acts that were more than mere protest were the democratic consideration and then adoption of the Delcaration of Independance, followed by a war, followed by one bad government, and then finally followed by the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in (IIRC) 1789.
They were armed rebels against a foreign occupier (Great Britain), correct?
Again, no. Most colonists considered themselves "Britains" or "Englishmen" as much or moreso than they considered themselves "Americans."
Or perhaps I'm just a history major who knows nothing about history.
You don't, if you think that gureilla fighters with no political base have ever set up a democratic election. Historically, when no government has been in place and the guerillas win, they resort to rule by the warriors--why do you think that from Japan to Europe, the dominant pre-democratic forms of government were essentially rule by the military?
If the points made in this article were true, D&D would have absorbed the innovative features Whitewolf games have,
D&D did. Ravenloft was a direct result of White Wolf's world of darkness. d20 is a LOT more flexible than AD&D, due in no small part to the success of White Wolf and GURPS.
D&D could be a lot more like WW, but then it wouldn't be D&D--just like EQ won't ever be wholly displaced by a MMFPS.
and Whitewolf would be histroy. Yet Whitewolf has its own thriving playerbase that grows every day, in large part due to their many innovations (LARP?). There are always exceptions, and the points made in this article are most CERTAINLY not the rule.
White Wolf grows in player base because the RPG market is expanding, and WW is the preminent "want a simpler system than D&D" system. (The inverse, for those who for some reason can't get geeked out enough on D&D, is GURPS--which is losing rules-ground to d20 and ironically survives on (fairly good) sourcebooks, AFAIK.)
Compressed
HTML
file.
A windows HTML-help file, used for reference & _VERY_ good for what it does.
Oh, and I should probably add "make bookmarked & structured PDFs", as OOo can't do that quite yet.
I wonder what the other 20% are doing that OO.org can't handle?
:" or "Ctrl + ;"?
Sectional word counts?
*.CHM export?
Auto-insert of date and time in an excel spreadsheet with "Ctrl +
Managed website (not single web-page) updates?
Um, use the wrong file, and you can wind up emailing the collected works of Led Zeppelin to your whole address book.
/gpl folder (which you had for compatability testing or somesuch) intead of the "USERMOD.MODULE" file in the /lgpl folder (which, while less full-featured, is useable in your project).
Not quite. There's a world of difference between grabbing a random wrong file and invoking the "USERMOD.MODULE" file in the
It's hypothetical, and unlikely given proper precautions--but if you don't take the proper precautions, thinking "the GPL isn't viral, it won't hurt me", you might wind up committing serious copyright infringement.
You'd think people would think carefully before compiling code belonging to others.
Yes, they should. And knowing that "the GPL is viral", and what that really means, is something that they every last programmer who even goes near GPL'd code should know.
While I don't think it is quite the definition of a double-negative, it certainly hurts the eyes. :)
Sorry about that.
Try "Athiests are no more able to test everything that they are told than anyone else."
Some Atheists have made the claim that they do not take anything "on faith", and so are somehow intellecutally on sounder ground than someone with a traditional religion.
My point is that this simply isn't true; while Atheists do not believe the words of priests, they still believe the words of someone without empircially testing them; while an extreme of not believing anything is concievable, it's also qualifiably insane.
The goal isn't to trick people into "infecting" their closed software with GPL, it's to encourage open development by offering an advantage to other open developers; the right to use and distribute GPL code freely mixed with their own.
Yes, exactly.
And to do this, Stallman (quite rightly) constructed a fairly harsh license: you can use it for free, and you can make a derivitive work--but if you do so, you have to make the entierty of your derivitive work GPL'd.
The appropriate response from the FSF when Microsoft calls the GPL viral is "yeah, so? At least we're honest about our goals and guided by morality, not unbridled greed."
(Good thing MS doesn't make a UNIX anymore--or else we'd have zealous OS advocates arguing that GNU/HURD and Linux "aren't UNIX." [j/k])
Making a derivative work of a software program IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT.
Yes, it is. Set the wrong compile flag or use the wrong file, and you can wind up distributing GPL'd code instead of LGPL'd code, for example.
Remember: the anti-GPL argument is aimed at small mixed-market shops, that use some GPL'd code but make proprietary code that they sell as their primary revenue source.
To these people, even a single payment of damages can be enough to render the product worthless--and the only thing keeping the FSF from offering a "GPL it all and we'll forget the whole thing" offer is their goodwill, which isn't really something that a business can count on.
The GPL is viral by design, as intended by the FSF. If you have anything GPL'd on your system and you do software development, you need to be aware of this, and check your compile functions and sub-files appropriately.
(Realistically, the FSF is going to allow correction in almost every case, and require payment or "Liberation" [to coin a term] in only the largest of cases... like, oh, if MS included significant GPL'd code in the next version of Windows.)
They're too limiting.
$100 for a console is limiting?
Think of it as an external self-contained special graphics card and a joystick; by that measure, even the X-Box at full price is a good deal.
Fantastic Four
new Superman
new Batman
A post-Matrix film from the Watchowskis
some other epic fantasy movie.
Even if just the movies, there's always something coming down the pipe worth living for.
I take that to mean that an atheist takes nothing simply on "faith", but instead requires imperical evidence.
1: It's "empirical". (bonus karma if you can catch the grammatical mistakes I'm bound to be making here--and no, that period-outside-of-a-quote is kosher.)
2: Atheists are no more able to not take things on faith than the rest of us; were that true, they wouldn't believe in some major historical figures.
Atheists, by and by, simply do not engage in religious discussions on the same level that "theists" do--and, honestly, that causes more confusion than anything else about atheism, even the whole strong/weak split.
(As for the original parent comment: I'm a chrisitan, and two moral compasses that I follow are "if everyone on earth did this, would the world be a better or a worse place" and "does this action hurt someone else to help the actor, or hurt the actor to hurt someone else?" Neither one of these requires a communication from the Almighty, which is, IMO, how He wants it.)
And remember, we've still found no sign of bin Laden
We've got lots of signs of Bin Laden. He's just moving faster than Saddam, so we haven't caught him.
and have no clue how the fundamentalist terrorist networks get or use their money.
Sure we do. THey get them from a rich ex-Saudi prince and various isalimc fundamentalist organizations. Mostly in cash, I wager. And they use these monies to purchase things, like bulletts and plain tickets.
Of course, we don't know WHICH fundamentalist organizations, and we don't know who's working as a middleman for the terrorists...
The "intelligence capabilities of the American forces" have shown themselves to be utterly incompetent at infiltrating or even understanding these networks.
We're not all that worse off than the enemy.
Think about it: On September 10, 2001 the World Trade Center was just another building, considered by many to be quite an eyesore. The next day, it became a symbol of america that utterly failed to demoralize us--and really isn't going to lead to us leaving the Middle East anytime soon.
If Osama knew the USA as well as you think we should know Al Quaeda, he'd have picked a target that would have actually demoralized us--the capital and the white house, or the Statue of Liberty and just one of the WTC.
The problem is, the USA opposes it.
Well, yeah. It'd be a political body in a political body that has often been used as an anti-us platform.
I can't think of a good reason why there can't be an exception for sodliers serving under a UN mandate; that'd kill both the US's fears of the court and the world's fear of the US in one fell swoop.
Sure, XP is now themeable, and you can modify little GUI artifacts more easily.
.exe's in linux-land. (I'm assuming you weren't speaking figuratively, being as you haven't previously.)
It's more than that.
You can re-arrange your start menu, choose which folders are one-level menus and which ones are trees, and decide what options appear and don't appear--all under "properties."
The @#$ing system tray, overloaded with little and often worthless mini-icons, now auto-hides--and each icon can be set a different value, and if you really want to the entire thing can be turned off.
Oh, and there's a few other things--like "System Restore" or "Desktop Cleanup Wizard"--which really do look like they're built in response to what Windows users do.
But the default is fucked up, and quite a divergence from anything previous; there should have least been an option.
There is. Windows XP comes with exactly two themes--"Windows XP" and "Windows Classic."
And, considering that everything is in the same place, does essentially the same thing, and has the same words on it, it's hardly "fucked up" for new users. (I know some techno-novices who went from 2k to XP without a hitch--and they didn't even change the theme back.)
As it stands, you've got to dig through things to fix what they 'enhanced'.
Right-click on the start menu, and the first screen that opens up asks you if you want "Start Menu" or "Classic Start Menu." And the same window (in a different tab) lets you change the tasbar's program groupings and the system tray's auto-hide on or off.
That's almost every UI they changed in the core OS, all in one place. And the only other major UI element is a new default option in explorer's "view" menu.
Your ignorance proceeds you. I doubt you've even used linux - there are no such thing as
I have. I wonder if you've ever tried to do something creative with Windows.
_All_ versions of windows, even Windows XP, call "Explorer.exe" as its "shell". This prorgram handles what you see on the desktop, what you see for the taskbar, and how you browse files. Editing one text file is enough to change what shell you use.
For a good side-by-side comparison, I'd want to see KDE (not just konqorer) run on windows at least semi-natively--native enough that it doesn't lose anything when compared with Explorer.exe.
Now, I could reinstall Linux, and spend a few hours getting Linux to do what I want it to do, but that's a different discussion. (I'll list my few reasons why not below.)
Nearly every one of these isn't in IE.
Who the hell said I used that piece of crap? The only reason I didn't delete it from my PC is that some programs call it for internal HTML rendering, and Gecko doesn't have a drop-in replacement yet.
I use Firebird to browse the web.
As far as 'dumping nearly every piece of software that you use'... well, yeah. You likely do that already - going from PS 5 to PS 5.5, etc. Most of the major applications will work in WINE quite well, anyway. You really have very little to bitch about. Media players in linux are quite superior to those of Windows. Granted, there are soft spots, such as audio editing, but unless you have a bone to pick or some uncommon requirements, that's not a matter of concern.
1: "Quite well" isn't good enough. "Exactly as well as it runs on Windows" would be the place to start--and no fair arguing that Linux's supposed better reliability equals out the problems.
2: I rarely change appliations--and when I do, it's often just to a new version and not something entirely new. I could start using OpenOffice now--but there are a few small nagging things (like synicing with Documents to Go, or a proper word count) that keep me in MS Word.
3: Why do I care about media players? I've got Winamp and iTunes, which is more than I need for playing MP3s and seeing the odd movie
Look at the two 'major' - supposed - outcomes of such research: MS Bob and Windows XP's graphical interface.
You obviously don't use Windows.
MS Bob was neutered into Clippy due to user research, and then Clippy was removed due to the same.
Windows XP's UI is vastly improved over 2000's, 98's, or 95's. A lot of customization and small things are now built-in and easy to find that were only avaliable through very-hard-to-find options or third-party hacks. Sure, the primary-color interface is garish, but it can also be turned off with all of four mouse clicks.
Oh, and as for KDE: I don't use it because in order to use it, I'd have to dump nearly every piece of software that I do use. Show me a KDE.EXE that can replace EXPLORER.EXE, and I'll use it.
Unfortunately there are no vendor patches available at the time beign. A temporary fix is not to have any contact with these 'women' (this should not be a problem for usual /. reader)!
There is, however, a workaround. Simply find a female of sufficient compatability in goals and personality, and marry said female.
Sufficient time focused on said "honeypot female" will allow a male to operate relatively normally even in the presence of new attractive females.
that is the way to go, because then the worker is in charge of the means of production. As was mentioned earlier, Anarcho-Syndaclism or whatever that word is, where there is little or no state and the trade unions/guilds are federated to controll the economy, is a rather efficant means of enacting socialism.
f--k the proper words.
Were I given phenominal godlike power, I would:
Institute the "Great Dole", wherein anyone can live a happy existance not being a wage slave, and such behavior is encouraged if you don't have the drive to be productive. (And the dole doesn't totally go away until your income is triple the dole's base value, but rather reduces on a one-dollar-per-$.50-income basis.) (And it's not enough to live in the city and not do anything; you need to move to the country and farm some vegetables to survive.)
Eliminate corporate ownership. All stocks would be converted to bonds at a FMV (or less), and coroprations would all be "employee-owned."
Eliminate minimum wage and overtime laws. The "Great Dole" takes care of the first, and the second can be effected by employee negotiations and effectcively risk-free unemployment.
Eliminate the credit state; while the system would still be viable, credit cards as we know them would be heavily discouraged and home-ownership heavily encouraged.
Honestly, I'm not pro-farmer or pro-small business. I'm pro-efficiency and anti-waste. We live in an age of robots and computers--this means that we should have LESS people working for the same productivity, not more.
The goal, however, is merely to eliminate the concentration of wealth and power. Microsoft has amabssedors to other countries and a higher GDP than most of them, while there are people who can't make rent this month. Fuck them. Capitalism is an inherrintly evil thing. Economics are inherrently evil. things should be made for use, and given to who can use them. Exactly like GNU.
Again, that's attacking the current system (which never works with an intelligent ruling class, which we have), not promoting a better system (which no socialist since Lenin has done right--and even he messed up.)
Capitalism and greed may be evil--but they're bloody efficient, and the USSR failed not just because they had horrible appropriation of goals, but because they failed to align the base needs of the populace with the desires of the country--which, btw, China is doing right now.