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User: corbettw

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  1. Re:Yea me! on The Internet Is 'Built Wrong' · · Score: 4, Informative
  2. Re:Dear poor schools..... on Microsoft Pushes Windows To Battle Linux In Africa · · Score: 1

    The reason for poverty is not lack of resources, it is lack of a legal structure that delivers contract enforcement.

    This point can't be stressed enough. If resources were the sole cause of great wealth, Africa would be the wealthiest continent on the planet, and Nigeria would be the wealthiest nation. But because the legal systems for most African countries don't provide protections for property rights or contract enforcement, their people languish in abject poverty. And that's a problem that only the Africans can fix, no one can do it for them.

  3. Re:Yes, but.... on Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source · · Score: 1

    Someone needs to mod you Informative, I'd never heard of Puppet before but it sounds very promising.

  4. Re:Yes, but.... on Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source · · Score: 1

    I see what you're saying now. It's interesting, it would be nice if it could come to pass. If that's what you're working towards, good luck, it would benefit us all if you succeed.

  5. Re:Yes, but.... on Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source · · Score: 1

    That would be nice, but it won't happen. For one thing, RedHat has invested a lot of time, effort, and money into the RedHat Network and Satellite Servers. They're not going to rewrite it all to support a new package management system. Not to mention all those RHCEs out there, who spent thousands of dollars on a certification, who don't want that to go to waste. To top it all off, there's enough ill will between the Debian and Ubuntu teams and RedHat that I can't see either of the former switching from apt to rpm. Throw in the mavericks with Gentoo and Slackware, and you can completely forget about any common package management system among the distros.

  6. Re:Yes, but.... on Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source · · Score: 2, Interesting

    To be fair, the same thing can happen in Windows shops. I've seen places with a mishmash of 95, 98, NT4, 2000, and XP machines, all trying to work together.

    But you are right that some shops think being "Linux friendly" means letting multiple distros through the door. Screw that, pick one and go with that. At the very least, pick one package management system (apt, rpm/yum, whatever) and make it standard across the servers and desktops. Otherwise, nothing will ever get updated properly.

  7. Re:8 years ago.. on Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you have a hardware problem and call Intel they will solve your problem because the entire hardware stack is Intel (not so with AMD and others).

    Seriously? So if your RAID controller burns out, you can call Intel and they'll say something other than "Sorry, can't help, call your vendor"?

    You buy a hardware support contract from the vendor who assembled the hardware, not from one of the component manufacturers. And the purpose of a hardware support contract is to replace faulty hardware after the initial warranty, not to debug the problem in the first place.

  8. Re:Question on Schneier on Security · · Score: 1

    Another question: could Bruce Schneier design a system so secure, even he couldn't crack it?

  9. Re:Yes, but.... on Red Hat CEO Says Economic Crisis Favors Open Source · · Score: 5, Interesting

    and Linux engineers can command more salary simply because there are fewer of them than there are Windows engineers (oxymoron, I know.).

    True, but you need fewer of them. The rule of thumb I've always seen used is 1:25 admins to servers with Windows, but 1:50 (or 1:100 if the guy's good) with Linux (on desktops, that ratios on both are around 1:50 or more, but then desktops aren't usually pushed as hard as servers). This may not be as true as it once was, I understand Windows Server 2008 has made some impressive leaps, including a full command line shell and SSH server. But that's the historical reason for Linux (UNIX guys in general, really) commanding more dough: better rate of return on each dollar spent.

  10. Re:Only 37,964? on Number of ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy Is 37,964 · · Score: 1

    Depends on their motivation(s), and their methods. "Divide and conquer" worked well for Caesar, there's no reason it wouldn't work for E.T.

  11. Re:Only 37,964? on Number of ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy Is 37,964 · · Score: 1

    I beg to disagree. Me and a guy on the other side of town could have vastly different value systems; me and a guy in a tent in the desert have even more differences. An alien anthropologist (or invasion force) would be very interested in those differences, at least as much as the similarities.

  12. Re:Only 37,964? on Number of ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy Is 37,964 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I didn't bother to RTFA, but is this guy talking about 37,964 intelligent species, or 37,964 different civilizations? Because if our little planet is anything to go by, a single species can have multiple civilizations, concurrently. Depending on how you count them, there are up to 245 different civilizations just on earth.

    Life isn't Star Trek, there's no reason we should assume a single species has only a single cultural heritage for itself.

  13. Re:Where to find them? on Number of ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy Is 37,964 · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can tell by all the mini-malls and Chilis in orbit around Mars.

  14. Re:What a great example! on Number of ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy Is 37,964 · · Score: 1

    Overflow tag? 16 bits for a signed integer ought to be enough for anyone.

  15. Re:Suspiciously absent on Number of ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy Is 37,964 · · Score: 2, Funny

    If Trainspotting's taught me anything, it's that the Scots have a severe sense of self-loathing, after being colonized by "wankers" for centuries. So it's really not surprising that a Scottish astronomer would assume that other species are more advanced, rather than less so. I'm sure his English colleagues would (uniformly) disagree.

  16. Re:So what? on LittleBigPlanet Delayed Due To Qur'an-Sampling Audio · · Score: 1

    umm, scales being unequal and all that jazz, you're still a bigot.

    And that's when I stopped reading your post. If you can't avoid ad hominem attacks, then you've already lost the debate. You can't deny that millions of Muslims protest violently when someone "insults" their religion; the same simply isn't true of Christians (or Jews, or Buddhists, or many other religions). It's also historically true that Mohammad invaded other tribes' regions, enslaved their women, and killed their men. Calling me a bigot for pointing out historical truth is farcical.

  17. Re:Good luck with that on EFF Sues To Overturn Telecom Immunity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don't denigrate our men and women in uniform by suggesting they would willingly trample on the rights of the American people.

    I'm gonna go ahead and assume you never served in the military. Because if you had, you'd know that there are some seriously crazy mofos running loose in today's military.

    When I was first in the Navy, from '88 to '92, we used to shoot the shit on quiet midwatches, and one of the topics was what would happen if the officers staged a coup? The universal answer was always "We'd have some dead officers." And the JOs who would shoot the shit with us on those lonely vigils would universally agree, they'd be too busy shooting senior officers and admirals to worry whether or not Petty Officer Jones should be arrested for disobeying orders.

    I went back into the Naval Reserve after 9/11, and it was a different world. Some of the folks I worked with still had the same mindset ("Country and Constitution first, orders second"), but not all. A lot of them looked down on civilians as people who were not worthy of the rights they provided. Seriously, there are nutjobs in the military who think our Constitutional rights come from them! Not that these are natural rights that we have just because we're human.

    I don't know what the future holds, but I wouldn't bet my life, or the lives of my family, on some private not shooting into a crowd when ordered to do so. 20 years ago I would've, but things are just too different now.

  18. Re:Good luck with that on EFF Sues To Overturn Telecom Immunity · · Score: 1

    And your gun will do what, exactly, against tanks and choppers?

    How about shoot and kill the tank commander when he pops his head up? Or shoot and kill the mechanic who's working on the tank in the field? Or use the gunpowder to make an IED to blow a tread of the tank?

    If you honestly think a civilian populace with barely any arms or training can't give the most powerful military in the world a run for its money, you haven't been paying attention the last five years. Imagine Iraq, but with Americans (and their love of firearms and much larger population base) playing the part of the Iraqis. Still think it's hopeless?

  19. Re:Good luck with that on EFF Sues To Overturn Telecom Immunity · · Score: 1

    I think you missed the GP's point. Without the knowledge of how to make arms (or ammunition), your revolution would only last a few weeks at best. But with the ability to resupply your arms and munitions, you could theoretically continue the fight indefinitely.

    Amateurs think tactics, professionals think logistics.

  20. Re:To quote Bill Hicks on LittleBigPlanet Delayed Due To Qur'an-Sampling Audio · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but the execs don't have to worry about you cutting their heads off, so they'll just keep listening to the thin-skinned Mohammedeans. Sucks to be you.

  21. Re:So what? on LittleBigPlanet Delayed Due To Qur'an-Sampling Audio · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The scale is nowhere near the same, and you know it. When millions of Muslims protest (violently), but only dozens of Christians are involved in clinic bombings (and those haven't happened in many years), it's disingenuous to compare one with the other.

    Besides which, the real difference between the two aren't the modern followers, it's the founders. Jesus was a pretty nice guy who could be counted on to provide extra booze at a party (even if he was a mite touchy about conducting business in a temple). Mohammed raped and slaughtered thousands of people, kept slaves, and taught his followers to kill anyone who disagreed with them (and not in parables that people can take out of context, but in direct orders). Not even remotely similar.

  22. Re:no comment on First Official Photos From New Star Trek Movie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Look at some pictures of famous people in their late-20s and early-30s from two hundred years ago. They look like they're in their forties or fifties, compared to our standards for today. It's not a stretch to imagine that, in the 23rd century, a 30 year old will resemble (to our eyes) a young adult (16 to 22).

    Ref: Look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Declaration_independence.jpg. Notice how old Thomas Jefferson (tall figure in middle) looks. This painting is based on what he looked like 33, but he looks like an old man of 50.

  23. Re:USA + Bush = FAIL on President Signs Law Creating Copyright Czar · · Score: 1

    What about McKinney or Nader? Not that I would vote for either of them, but don't think you don't have other options.

  24. Re:What I always wanted to ask... on Yahoo Hacker 'Mafiaboy' Eight Years On · · Score: 1

    So really your problem was more about a lack of morals and (possibly) empathy than anything else. It sounds like you've learned some over the years, so that's good. But this is an example of why it's a bad idea to teach young kids to always question authority: they don't have enough experience yet to know when to question things, and what questions to ask in the first place.

    Questioning authority is something you should learn after high school, when you're old enough to also understand the consequences of your actions. It's unfair to a 15 year old to expect them to operate at the same level as a 25 year old.

  25. Re:What I always wanted to ask... on Yahoo Hacker 'Mafiaboy' Eight Years On · · Score: 1

    My advice, if you're finding it hard to get work based on your lack of education is to work for yourself for awhile.

    That, and volunteer with non-profits. They're usually not as picky about background and education as paying employers/clients. And once you've proved yourself to the board of that non-profit, they should be able to refer to paying gigs and a real job.