Hey Jon, have you ever considered that the whole damn thing might have been a government/corporate conspiracy just to generate a political whirlwind that would make it easy to pass freedom-restricting laws in the wake of a furious public?
To shout out conspiracy seems a bit over the top but definetly some of the evidence presented so far is questionable. For example:
Arabic flight training manuals and Quran - These were apparently left in one of the cars of the hijakers at the airport. First of all, why the hell would the hijaker, who we are told planned this for years in advance, be doing a bit of last minute revision in the car before the flight? I mean, maybe the night before in his hotel. Or the weeks coming up to the attack. But in the car on the way to the airport? This doesn't sound like someone who had trainned for a couple of years. Also, why in Arabic? Did the florida flight school train them in Arabic? Do Boeing 747's and 757's have Arabic fligh controls? I mean for people who have apprently lived in the US for a long time and spoke perfect English it is very unlikely they would have Arabic flight trainning manuals even if there first language was Arabic. Any Arab who has studied anything in a Western University will tell you that. And guess what, they were found next to a Quran, how covenient! I can almost here the FBI agents saying, "What evidence should we plant to suggest and Islamic millitant?"
Phone call home - Apparently a phone call was intercepted a few hours after the bombing saying that the two missions had been completed. Now I ask you, why would someone make a phone call like this, when everyone else in the world had already seen what had happenned on TV. I mean the whole world saw it. So why hours later would someone be idiotic enough to phone and say it had been successful? Surely, the people behind this would have known as soon as the first CNN broadcasts came out and definetly after all their careful planning wouldn't have risked a phone call like this.
Drinking together in a bar - Apparently some of the hijakers were seen drinking together in a bar a few days before the attack. So imagine hypothetically that these hijaker did actually work for Osama bin Laden. Why were they in a bar drinking? This seems a bit strange since their boss has adopted a life style where people are flogged for drinking alcohol. They don't sound like Islamic extremeists to me.
I don't want to support a conspiracy theory but I do ask people to demand complete evidence. The tensions in the world are already high enough. Please lets make sure we get the right people. Any evidence given should be accountable. That is third parties should be able to re-examine it. Just going into Afghanistan and taking out Osama bin Laden without evidence is going to destabilise the world even more. There may at the moment only be a few hundred terrorists but there are millions the sympathise with their cause.
She has much greater options here than in Afghanistan. It is called freedom, you know.
Any society has to make up its mind where to draw a line on a number of issues. For exmaple, dress code, pornography, alchohol, drugs, prostitution, adultery. Different societies will have different laws. This is true even between the US and the UK who are the "closest allies". I mean in the US you have execution as a punishment for some crimes whereas in the UK they don't. Similarly you have different laws on alcohol and drugs etc. If you mean by freedom the right to do anything without any laws then I think you will find yourself in the minority. Most people want to have at least some level of laws to protect their civilised lifestyle. What you have to realise is that not everyone is the same. Some people want a stricter lifestyle and some wanted a liberal lifestyle. What the US has to realise is that it can't go dictating lifestyles in other societies that aren't wanted there. It is non of their business. To the average Afghani, the US lifestyle is repulsive. They hate your liberal laws on alcohol, drugs, pornography etc. In fact, although you feel they degrade their women they feel the same about the US. So where is the balance? You have to have tolerance. You have to learn to understand that not everyone in the world is the same and has the same ideals. Only by recognising this fact can the world move forward.
F**k this. They attacked our country and we have every right to pursue guilty parties without bothering with neutral parties etc...
Doesn't this go against the Western ideals that you are claiming to uphold? Don't get me wrong, the guilty party should be brought to justice. What I am trying to say though is that there has to be some accountability for what is done. The US can't just go into Afghanistan and execute Osama bin Laden and then hide their claimed evidences behind statements like, "we have to protect our sources of intelligence." It goes against everything the West stands for. The new assination law will allow them to "take out" any person that they perceive to be a threat. Who is going to see the evidence? This isn't the freedom the the people in the US want. It is a police state where every one is scared of voicing their opinion because they don't want to be incriminated. For what? Having a different point of view? Where is the freedom?
I am more inclined to trust BBC and other news agencies then some bunch of dictators.
Well I am not asking you to listen to a dictator or even to stop listening to the BBC or CNN. I listen to them myself every day. All I am saying is that you should approach what is happenning with an open mind. Searching for the truth without blind following of what the government tells us. Use your mind to weigh things up for yourself. To be honest, most of the evidence that we have been presented with so far, through the media, is at best questionable. It defintely isn't substantial enough to put the finger on Osama bin Laden.
You are talking about sites supporting regime that punishes women for not dressing to their liking
And you live in a country that would do the same. I am sure if a woman starts walking down your streets naked she would soon be arrested. You too have laws the prohibit woman or men dressing as they like. The only difference is the level that is deemed acceptable. The trouble with the US is they don't think that people are allowed an opinion that differs from their own. Also, they always pick on the laws about woman but never mention in countries like Afghanistan men too have a strict dress code. Also, why don't the US attack countries like Saudi. Their women also have to cover their faces. Is it because of the oil? Double standards man!
let alone allowing people to freely express their opinion.
And that is precisely my point. Your freedom is an illusion. You are free to do what ever your government will allow you to do but nothing more. As soon as you start calling people to something else you are going to get in trouble with them. Did you ever read Azzam Publications site? They didn't ever have anything that outrageous. Except that they supported certain Taleban policies. Consequently they disagreed with others. So why was their freedom of speech taken away? The problem that half of the world has with the US is their double standards. One rule of the US and another rule for everyone else. Iraq gets bombed to pieces for breaking UN resolutions but Israel can break as many as they like (so far they have broken more than Iraq) and the US will still fund them. Saudi can make their women cover their faces because they are giving the US oil but the Taleban are an evil regime that must be fought.
Believe me I have every sympathy for the people who died in the US, it is a just awful. But if the US don't start to review what they have done to the developing world to make themselves so hated then they will never stamp out terrorism.
The thing that really annoys me is that the people in the US and the UK take everything that their goverments say as being true. But where is the accountability. If Osama bin Ladem is the culprit then the evidence should be shown in a neutral place. But Cowboy Bush is shouting out "Dead or Alive". He is making himself Judge, Jury and Executioner. Totally in contrast with what the West stand for but the people in the US and the UK are ready for it because of their propoganda.
I was shocked to see on Sky News pictures of the Libyians celebrating what happened in NY. However, the caption underneath in Arabic clearly stated they were celebrating the anniversary of Gaddaffi coming to power. Sky News told us how they were celebrating the events in the US! So why were they holding up pictures of Gaddaffi? And you think you don't have proaganda in the West? You believe everything you are told? How foolish. Similarly, the clips shown of the Palestians celebrating supposedly celebrating what happenned in the US where actually filmed back in 1991. I know someone who still has the original clip on video. However, CNN and Sky News have failed to respond when questioned about this.
I am not intending to stir up a conspiracy theory. Although, there does seem to be big holes in the evidence so far. However, please think about what you are told and weigh it up for yourselves. Try to look through the propaganda and at the facts. Brighter future for mankind can only be built on truth, tolerance and without double standards.
The UN is an international organization that does nothing but solve problems between nations. Had Afganistan leaders spoken to the UN, their complaint would be considered and addressed in front of a world leaders, and a world wide audience.
I can't believe how naive and ill-informed some people are. Do you really think UN care about Afghanistan? For a fact, the Taleban have contacted the UN several times asking for the sanctions against them to be softened because the people in the country are starving. The Taleban have even applied to the UN to be a member as they have fullfilled all of the UN's necessary requirements. The UN refused membership!
The UN sent a representative eariler this year to assess the situation in Afghanistan. The representative recommended that the sanctions should be softened becuase the people were dying of starvation. The UN choose to ignore the advice or their representative! The fact is no country as poor as Afghanistan has ever faced such tough sanctions.
The UN sent another group to ask the Afghan permission to send in a group to preserve some mud statues of Buddah. They wanted to spend several million dollars to protect and preserve the statues. The Taleban told the group that they were crazy and that there are millions of people dying in the country and all they care about is some mud statue. The Taleban asked them to give the money for the starving people instead but the UN refused. No wonder the Taleban blew up the statues.
I would give you proof of these but unfortuneatly all the sites on the internet that don't sing the tune of the US have been taken down. The events that I have mentioned were all documented on sites like Azzam Publications and the Taleban site. Does anyone feel the irony of freedom of speech?
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
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Sorry I meant condem...my english is not my strong point. I think if you read what I actually said...you will see tha this is what I really meant. I sincerely appologise.
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"The statement by bin laden that non-muslims cannot live in a muslim country is false - 100% false."
And your statement that bin Laden has said this is false. It might actually suprise some some readers on this site that the Afghan Taleban have even allowed a Synagog to stay open. The ruling by the Muslim scholars in Afghan was that other religions should be practiced behind closed doors. You can be a Christian or a Jew in a Muslim land but don't come out and preach it and display it publically. This *is* the ruling of Islam and yes you do have a choice. You can leave and go to non-Muslim land.
Unfortuneatly, when reporting about Afghanistan, the news in the West concentrates fully on what the West don't like. Christians on trial for preaching. They knew what the law of the land was and they took their chances. Why though do the West always mention this and not the fact the Churches are open?
There is discussion of Jihad in the Qu'ran and when and why it is appropriate. It is never an offensive tactic.
What happenned in NY is sickenning and wrong. There is no doubt about this. However, it is time that the US woke up and acknowledged what their own dirty hand has played in this. I don't think that the American people realise what the US government are doing overseas. Sure you have freedom in the US but the US is oppressing the freedom abroad. The loss of life in NY is outrageous but don't forget the 1 million children that have died in Iraq since the sanactions, don't forget the US helicopters firing missles into Lebonese ambulances in 1996, don't forget 17,500 innocent civilians killed in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, don't forget the unprovoked bombing of a medical factory in Sudan that supplied 80% of the countries malaria medicine in a country where people die of malaria everyday, don't forget the millions of refugess in Palestine and Afghanistan that are starving to death today. Wrong it is, but the US have woken up to what they have inflicted on others for years.
So is the Jihad the Palestians are fighting offensive? Come on, they have been occupied for 34 years and are desperately trying to defend their human rights by what ever means they can find. Israel has broken more UN security resolutions than Iraq but are covered and protected by US diplomacy. Does the US really think it can bank roll a war against the Palestians with no back lash?
I just hope that when the US come to terms with what has happenned they don't make thing worse by an all out military strike. It will do nothing but unite the Arabs because they feel so deeply about the Palestian issue. I totally condone the attacks on the WTC but I just pray that if the US truely want a peaceful and free world that they re-examine their foreign policy. Let the Palestians have the small portion of land they are asking for and withdraw the US troops from the Arabian peninsular. Freedom should mean freedom for all....not just the Americans.
When was it that medicine turned away from being something to heal the ill in society and turned to being a profitable business for making the richer even richer and the expense of the poor. It makes me sick that people in Brazil, or other places in the world, will die of diseases just becuase some hugh pharmacutical company want to make even more bucks.
I wonder if you would be able to explain to an 8 year old Brazilian girl dying of AIDS why she can't have the medicine. Not because they can't make it...but because some rich people thousands of miles away want to become richer. There is nothing right about this and it is a twisted mind that feels coporate success and money is worth more than life and death.
It is not funny at all. It is just the most obvious thing that any geek reading this posting would have responded. I mean, the poster should have realised that what he was writing, by itself, isn't valid XML.
If you remember the first release of Windows 95 they struggled to get a decent TCP/IP stack included because they had totally misjudged the massive take-up of the Internet. They were still trying to push their crap MSN alternative. It wasn't until later releases of Windows 95 that they got a TCP/IP stack which was anything near decent.
They didn't get "it" then and they still don't. I know they are successfull in a financial sense but I don't think that making yourself incompatible with others is the way forward. There comes a time when it back fires. I know may companies that would have to move away from using a SAMBA solution under the UNIX machines and move to deploying some sort of fileserver on the Windows machines if MS take this approach. The result is, they aren't doing themselves any favours. In the networking world, interoperability is everything.
Why don't they realise that they only reason the Internet has been so successfull is because it works by using a set of standard protocols that anyone can adopt and use. The best thing about the Internet is that I can run Linux on all my office machines and still access the Windows based services that others provide. By taking this road MS are in danger of marginalising themselves and not Linux. There simply has to be interoperability between different platforms in the modern business world.
In my company, for example, all of the tech guys use UNIX and all of the admin and sales use Windows. We have to interact with each other. If MS aren't going to allow it through their tools, it just means companies like mine will have to migrate to non-MS solutions for even the Windows machines. I just feel that MS are shooting themselves in the foot by taking this sort of approach.
Base 10 was your grandmother's number system. Why not evolve and use binary or hexadecimal?
For human use I don't think that binary would ever really be useful. Imagine going into a shop and being told that will cost $1010011010.
Base 16 would be better than base 10 but personnally I think for human use base 12 would be the best. Base 12 is divisable by two primes 2 and 3 where as Base 16 is only divisable by 2. Base 12 would therefore make maths a lot easier. For exampe, in base 12 you can easily work out 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 whereas Base 16 you can only easily work out 1/2 and 1/4....Just a thought.
As a devote Muslim, I quite often look on at the situation in Afganistan with sadness. It is a shame that the Taliban have lost sight of tolerence when our own Islamic history is full of tolerence. The most peaceful time in Palestine/Isreal was during the Muslim rule before the crusades. The Muslims of the time let the Christians ans Jews pratice their religions in peace. The same in Muslim Spain before the inquisition. Even in the life time of the Prophet Muhammed, the Muslims took protection with their Allies...the Christians.
Today many Muslim groups have lost sight of this in a way that is sickening. However, the particular situation in Afganistan is one of sadness and desperation. The Taliban without a doubt are wrong for what they are doing. However, in the West we should also take reponsiblity for our own part in the downfall of Afganistan.
The Afghanistan Mujahideen fought the Russian Army and defeated them. They were backed by the US and the UK who trained them and gave them weapons. The US and the UK were so keen on having the Russians defeated but they didn't want to fight the war themselves. The defeat of the Russian army by the Afghanistan Mujahideen brought about the down fall of the Soviet state and hence the end of the cold war. The general peace in the world that we face today is partly due to the courage and sacrifices of the Afghan Mujahideen. However, once Afghanistan had won all the other Soviet states found the strenth to seek freedom and indepence. However, at the end of the war the US and the UK pulled all support and left Afghanistan in ruins. A country with no infrastrucutre, completely destroyed by years of war with nothing exept a bunch of Armed people who knew nothing except how to fight. Of course they felt betrayed by what the West had done to them. They felt completely let down. And now today, Osama bin Laden is hunted as the world's number one terrorist when only a few years ago, he was the hero.
The West played its part in creating the Afghanistan today. If you want to make the world a better place then first correct your own mistakes. Its too easy for us to mock the Afghan people and the Taliban for what they are doing wrong. It isn't going to make the situation better though.And if you go to Arghan today, you will see that the lack of Internet, is the least of their worries.
I think that if the Mozilla team had concentrated on bringing out this kind of browser, just the browser, they could have been done much earlier and captured so much more market share.
I don't think that is true. Mozilla is aimed at all users, Windows, Mac users and of course UNIX users. However, it is not specifically aimed at geeks. What you forget is most people can't distinguish between Web, Email and Usenet. They want to have the "Internet" through one package. They think that IE is a tool for using the internet. Any alternative has to implement all of the functions that the average user expects. That is why Mozilla is so bloated. It has to be that way.
If you don't like it, then run galeon. It is fast and lightweight and I like it for those reasons. But it doesn't have the functionality that an average user would expect from it. It is aimed at a different group of people.
One of the things people like about Google is that their page isn't cluttered my adverts. However, if you search for things of commercial interest you will find that there are "sponsored links" at the top of the page. This is where companies have paid specifically to have their page at the top when people search for particular words. Cars are a good example, look at
bmw and
fiat.
If they are against intellectual property, why do they have those and will they sue if someone use this name?.....I would really want to get an answer from Bob on this.
Well, if you actually read what he says....
"As such copyrights and patents are good things. Of course too much of a good thing no longer is a good thing.
In other words, Bob isn't saying that *all* intellectual property is bad, rather he is saying...
"The problem we have today is that intellectual property law expansion now includes copyright terms for the life of the author plus 70 years and patents that can now cover business methods, genetic sequences, or broad ideas, not just inventions.
He also mentions in the article that each case in IP has to be dealt differently. You can't just imply the same rules to genetics, software, trademarks and ideas. You have to look at each individually. He points out that the Center of Public Domain is about raising awareness about these issues and these issues have to be re-examined. So, Bob has already answered your question.
That's not quite what it is saying rather you have only highlighted part of it. It also says...
not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient software which includes the Software,
Which doesn't necessarily mean you are distributing it with free software but that you used free software as a "tool" in its development. This would in fact cover many things as was mentioned in the original/. post.
I think you have hit the nail on the head here. If people want to live on the bleeding edge and always have the latest release installed then they will encounter these problems. However, for the average user, if they don't really know what they are doing, they are best sticking to the stable distributions. Anyway, things like Ximian are good at keeping the average user upto date. It has definitely aided new Linux users in my office to upgrade their work stations with packages.
We should remember, code reuse is something that makes the Bizaar model or programming so strong. The fact that we take code from here and there and save ourselves the time of reinventing the wheel. I don't think there is any problem in relying on many libraries. In fact, I think it is better than developing something that is just complete bloatware.
Also, developers always have to look ahead at future releases of libraries. Some developers may choose to, lets say, use a development release of glib because the functionality is just what they are looking for. They're thinking that by the time they finish developing and their work becomes stable the glib they are using will also be stable. Sometimes it doesn't quite work like that. However, don't complain if you want to run the latest version but the requirements are to difficult to meet. The only time you might want to complain, in a polite way that is, is if there is a vital security bug fixed that you can't upgrade to without breaking everything else on your system. In such a case, developers should really release a patch for the previous version.
Mainly because HTML is crap! The main problem with HTML is that it has such bad structure making it incredibly hard to parse. Whats more, companies like Microsoft have allowed people to get away with writing badly formed HTML so that a majority of the pages on the internet suffer from malformed HTML. Writing a HTML browser that strictly follows standards would cripple most web pages. WML gets around this problem by being XML based rather than SGML based. XML enforces much stricter rules on the structure of tags. For example, in XML tags have to be closed in the reverse order to which they were opened. Consequently, the parser is easier to write and a lot smaller. This is vital for phones and PDA that don't have hugh memory and processing powers. HTML is definitely not the way forward but is rather something we should consider dropping altogether.
And any University with a reputation for letting the education get in the way of future employment for their students is gonna start losing students quickly.
I can't say that I agree with you. Here in the UK most of the better Universities are the ones that teach more theory whereas the less good ones teach more practical applications. For example, the University that teaches Visual Basic, that I referred to in my comment, is City University. Hardly a University renown for its computer science. Consequently, the computer graduates from there that I have come across know next to nothing. They didn't need a 3-4 year degree to learn Visual Basic programming! Down the road at UCL and Imperial they teach a lot more theory, several languages and guess what, the students that graduate are generally clued up.
As for employers I think they understand the difference too. I definitely do when I look for people. I know the difference between someone who has done some training and knows particular applications and someone who has studied computing and knows a lot of theory. I usually find a simple set of problems to solve at a job interview weeds out the difference. And I for sure would prefer to employ someone who has a grasp of theory because then they will easily be able to pick up the many different programming languages that we use in our company.
I agree with you in that Java is fine for an education language but it definitely shouldn't be limited to that. For example, one of the new recruits in my company has just graduated from a university where they were only taught Java. Consequently, he doesn't know what a pointer is, he doesn't know what linking object files means and he doesn't know anything about memory allocation.
As I see it, University (College) is about education not about industrial training. You shouldn't be taught specific tools at university rather you should be taught theory. That way, when you leave university you will be able to apply your theory to different languages or applications. For example, one of the Universities here in the UK teaches all the programming in Visual Basic. I mean what is that all about? How can you possibly claim you know how to program when all you know is Visual Basic! A good programmer should pick a language to use like a carpenter picks a tool for a job. Different languages are good for different jobs and university should give you the theory so that you can easily understand new languages.
A university should really teach you a mixture, pure object-oriented (like Smalltalk), imperative (like modula-2 or C), functional (like Miranda) etc. The student will then have firm foundations for being a good programmer.
"...but I mean Mozilla 1.0 without major glaring bugs."
I don't know if this is relevant really. I mean, since when did Microsoft ever release any software package without glaring bugs in it. Remember Windows 95 that used to crash after every 57 days (or however many) when the clock cycled. IE hasn't been much better. They nearly always release an updated version within days of the first release. Obviously Netscape releasing Netscape 6 so early is another sign that really the version number means nothing. The difference is with the Mozilla guys is that they are being patient and wisely not pushing something out until they are 100% ready. However, it doesn't mean that Mozilla isn't already stable in 99% of the cases. Actually, I can't even remember when my Mozilla last crashed. I can't even say that it is slow, sluggish, lacking important features. Sometimes, I even wonder why they don't just release 1.0 because I can't see anything wrong with the latest builds. However, they are being meticulous and should be commended for that.
I don't think it really matters if they end up taking 4 years to fix up Mozilla enough for a 1.0 release. At the end of the day, when 1.0 does finally come, at least the Mozilla team will be able to comfortable say they delivered a storming browser.
Also, in many ways I think the superiority of IE may already start to crumble away. There definately haven't been many good innovations in IE for a long time. And for non-Web stuff like reading emails Mozilla already kicks IE. Outlook Express is one of the biggest piles of trash that MS have ever written. They should be embarrased to release such a thing.
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Hey Jon, have you ever considered that the whole damn thing might have been a government/corporate conspiracy just to generate a political whirlwind that would make it easy to pass freedom-restricting laws in the wake of a furious public?
To shout out conspiracy seems a bit over the top but definetly some of the evidence presented so far is questionable. For example:
I don't want to support a conspiracy theory but I do ask people to demand complete evidence. The tensions in the world are already high enough. Please lets make sure we get the right people. Any evidence given should be accountable. That is third parties should be able to re-examine it. Just going into Afghanistan and taking out Osama bin Laden without evidence is going to destabilise the world even more. There may at the moment only be a few hundred terrorists but there are millions the sympathise with their cause.
She has much greater options here than in Afghanistan. It is called freedom, you know.
Any society has to make up its mind where to draw a line on a number of issues. For exmaple, dress code, pornography, alchohol, drugs, prostitution, adultery. Different societies will have different laws. This is true even between the US and the UK who are the "closest allies". I mean in the US you have execution as a punishment for some crimes whereas in the UK they don't. Similarly you have different laws on alcohol and drugs etc. If you mean by freedom the right to do anything without any laws then I think you will find yourself in the minority. Most people want to have at least some level of laws to protect their civilised lifestyle. What you have to realise is that not everyone is the same. Some people want a stricter lifestyle and some wanted a liberal lifestyle. What the US has to realise is that it can't go dictating lifestyles in other societies that aren't wanted there. It is non of their business. To the average Afghani, the US lifestyle is repulsive. They hate your liberal laws on alcohol, drugs, pornography etc. In fact, although you feel they degrade their women they feel the same about the US. So where is the balance? You have to have tolerance. You have to learn to understand that not everyone in the world is the same and has the same ideals. Only by recognising this fact can the world move forward.
F**k this. They attacked our country and we have every right to pursue guilty parties without bothering with neutral parties etc ...
Doesn't this go against the Western ideals that you are claiming to uphold? Don't get me wrong, the guilty party should be brought to justice. What I am trying to say though is that there has to be some accountability for what is done. The US can't just go into Afghanistan and execute Osama bin Laden and then hide their claimed evidences behind statements like, "we have to protect our sources of intelligence." It goes against everything the West stands for. The new assination law will allow them to "take out" any person that they perceive to be a threat. Who is going to see the evidence? This isn't the freedom the the people in the US want. It is a police state where every one is scared of voicing their opinion because they don't want to be incriminated. For what? Having a different point of view? Where is the freedom?
I am more inclined to trust BBC and other news agencies then some bunch of dictators.
Well I am not asking you to listen to a dictator or even to stop listening to the BBC or CNN. I listen to them myself every day. All I am saying is that you should approach what is happenning with an open mind. Searching for the truth without blind following of what the government tells us. Use your mind to weigh things up for yourself. To be honest, most of the evidence that we have been presented with so far, through the media, is at best questionable. It defintely isn't substantial enough to put the finger on Osama bin Laden.
You are talking about sites supporting regime that punishes women for not dressing to their liking
And you live in a country that would do the same. I am sure if a woman starts walking down your streets naked she would soon be arrested. You too have laws the prohibit woman or men dressing as they like. The only difference is the level that is deemed acceptable. The trouble with the US is they don't think that people are allowed an opinion that differs from their own. Also, they always pick on the laws about woman but never mention in countries like Afghanistan men too have a strict dress code. Also, why don't the US attack countries like Saudi. Their women also have to cover their faces. Is it because of the oil? Double standards man!
let alone allowing people to freely express their opinion.
And that is precisely my point. Your freedom is an illusion. You are free to do what ever your government will allow you to do but nothing more. As soon as you start calling people to something else you are going to get in trouble with them. Did you ever read Azzam Publications site? They didn't ever have anything that outrageous. Except that they supported certain Taleban policies. Consequently they disagreed with others. So why was their freedom of speech taken away? The problem that half of the world has with the US is their double standards. One rule of the US and another rule for everyone else. Iraq gets bombed to pieces for breaking UN resolutions but Israel can break as many as they like (so far they have broken more than Iraq) and the US will still fund them. Saudi can make their women cover their faces because they are giving the US oil but the Taleban are an evil regime that must be fought.
Believe me I have every sympathy for the people who died in the US, it is a just awful. But if the US don't start to review what they have done to the developing world to make themselves so hated then they will never stamp out terrorism.
The thing that really annoys me is that the people in the US and the UK take everything that their goverments say as being true. But where is the accountability. If Osama bin Ladem is the culprit then the evidence should be shown in a neutral place. But Cowboy Bush is shouting out "Dead or Alive". He is making himself Judge, Jury and Executioner. Totally in contrast with what the West stand for but the people in the US and the UK are ready for it because of their propoganda.
I was shocked to see on Sky News pictures of the Libyians celebrating what happened in NY. However, the caption underneath in Arabic clearly stated they were celebrating the anniversary of Gaddaffi coming to power. Sky News told us how they were celebrating the events in the US! So why were they holding up pictures of Gaddaffi? And you think you don't have proaganda in the West? You believe everything you are told? How foolish. Similarly, the clips shown of the Palestians celebrating supposedly celebrating what happenned in the US where actually filmed back in 1991. I know someone who still has the original clip on video. However, CNN and Sky News have failed to respond when questioned about this.
I am not intending to stir up a conspiracy theory. Although, there does seem to be big holes in the evidence so far. However, please think about what you are told and weigh it up for yourselves. Try to look through the propaganda and at the facts. Brighter future for mankind can only be built on truth, tolerance and without double standards.
The UN is an international organization that does nothing but solve problems between nations. Had Afganistan leaders spoken to the UN, their complaint would be considered and addressed in front of a world leaders, and a world wide audience.
I can't believe how naive and ill-informed some people are. Do you really think UN care about Afghanistan? For a fact, the Taleban have contacted the UN several times asking for the sanctions against them to be softened because the people in the country are starving. The Taleban have even applied to the UN to be a member as they have fullfilled all of the UN's necessary requirements. The UN refused membership!
The UN sent a representative eariler this year to assess the situation in Afghanistan. The representative recommended that the sanctions should be softened becuase the people were dying of starvation. The UN choose to ignore the advice or their representative! The fact is no country as poor as Afghanistan has ever faced such tough sanctions.
The UN sent another group to ask the Afghan permission to send in a group to preserve some mud statues of Buddah. They wanted to spend several million dollars to protect and preserve the statues. The Taleban told the group that they were crazy and that there are millions of people dying in the country and all they care about is some mud statue. The Taleban asked them to give the money for the starving people instead but the UN refused. No wonder the Taleban blew up the statues.
I would give you proof of these but unfortuneatly all the sites on the internet that don't sing the tune of the US have been taken down. The events that I have mentioned were all documented on sites like Azzam Publications and the Taleban site. Does anyone feel the irony of freedom of speech?
Sorry I meant condem...my english is not my strong point. I think if you read what I actually said...you will see tha this is what I really meant. I sincerely appologise.
"The statement by bin laden that non-muslims cannot live in a muslim country is false - 100% false."
And your statement that bin Laden has said this is false. It might actually suprise some some readers on this site that the Afghan Taleban have even allowed a Synagog to stay open. The ruling by the Muslim scholars in Afghan was that other religions should be practiced behind closed doors. You can be a Christian or a Jew in a Muslim land but don't come out and preach it and display it publically. This *is* the ruling of Islam and yes you do have a choice. You can leave and go to non-Muslim land.
Unfortuneatly, when reporting about Afghanistan, the news in the West concentrates fully on what the West don't like. Christians on trial for preaching. They knew what the law of the land was and they took their chances. Why though do the West always mention this and not the fact the Churches are open?
There is discussion of Jihad in the Qu'ran and when and why it is appropriate. It is never an offensive tactic.
What happenned in NY is sickenning and wrong. There is no doubt about this. However, it is time that the US woke up and acknowledged what their own dirty hand has played in this. I don't think that the American people realise what the US government are doing overseas. Sure you have freedom in the US but the US is oppressing the freedom abroad. The loss of life in NY is outrageous but don't forget the 1 million children that have died in Iraq since the sanactions, don't forget the US helicopters firing missles into Lebonese ambulances in 1996, don't forget 17,500 innocent civilians killed in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, don't forget the unprovoked bombing of a medical factory in Sudan that supplied 80% of the countries malaria medicine in a country where people die of malaria everyday, don't forget the millions of refugess in Palestine and Afghanistan that are starving to death today. Wrong it is, but the US have woken up to what they have inflicted on others for years.
So is the Jihad the Palestians are fighting offensive? Come on, they have been occupied for 34 years and are desperately trying to defend their human rights by what ever means they can find. Israel has broken more UN security resolutions than Iraq but are covered and protected by US diplomacy. Does the US really think it can bank roll a war against the Palestians with no back lash?
I just hope that when the US come to terms with what has happenned they don't make thing worse by an all out military strike. It will do nothing but unite the Arabs because they feel so deeply about the Palestian issue. I totally condone the attacks on the WTC but I just pray that if the US truely want a peaceful and free world that they re-examine their foreign policy. Let the Palestians have the small portion of land they are asking for and withdraw the US troops from the Arabian peninsular. Freedom should mean freedom for all....not just the Americans.
The single most unstable box I've ever had to use was Solaris x86.
You should try Windows
When was it that medicine turned away from being something to heal the ill in society and turned to being a profitable business for making the richer even richer and the expense of the poor. It makes me sick that people in Brazil, or other places in the world, will die of diseases just becuase some hugh pharmacutical company want to make even more bucks.
I wonder if you would be able to explain to an 8 year old Brazilian girl dying of AIDS why she can't have the medicine. Not because they can't make it...but because some rich people thousands of miles away want to become richer. There is nothing right about this and it is a twisted mind that feels coporate success and money is worth more than life and death.
You can find Alan's kernel patches Here
ok i give up, why is this funny?
It is not funny at all. It is just the most obvious thing that any geek reading this posting would have responded. I mean, the poster should have realised that what he was writing, by itself, isn't valid XML.
The only advantage I can think of is when you tell someone what browser you are using they don't say, "Huh, never heard of it!"
If you remember the first release of Windows 95 they struggled to get a decent TCP/IP stack included because they had totally misjudged the massive take-up of the Internet. They were still trying to push their crap MSN alternative. It wasn't until later releases of Windows 95 that they got a TCP/IP stack which was anything near decent.
They didn't get "it" then and they still don't. I know they are successfull in a financial sense but I don't think that making yourself incompatible with others is the way forward. There comes a time when it back fires. I know may companies that would have to move away from using a SAMBA solution under the UNIX machines and move to deploying some sort of fileserver on the Windows machines if MS take this approach. The result is, they aren't doing themselves any favours. In the networking world, interoperability is everything.
Why don't they realise that they only reason the Internet has been so successfull is because it works by using a set of standard protocols that anyone can adopt and use. The best thing about the Internet is that I can run Linux on all my office machines and still access the Windows based services that others provide. By taking this road MS are in danger of marginalising themselves and not Linux. There simply has to be interoperability between different platforms in the modern business world.
In my company, for example, all of the tech guys use UNIX and all of the admin and sales use Windows. We have to interact with each other. If MS aren't going to allow it through their tools, it just means companies like mine will have to migrate to non-MS solutions for even the Windows machines. I just feel that MS are shooting themselves in the foot by taking this sort of approach.
Base 10 was your grandmother's number system. Why not evolve and use binary or hexadecimal?
For human use I don't think that binary would ever really be useful. Imagine going into a shop and being told that will cost $1010011010.
Base 16 would be better than base 10 but personnally I think for human use base 12 would be the best. Base 12 is divisable by two primes 2 and 3 where as Base 16 is only divisable by 2. Base 12 would therefore make maths a lot easier. For exampe, in base 12 you can easily work out 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 whereas Base 16 you can only easily work out 1/2 and 1/4....Just a thought.
As a devote Muslim, I quite often look on at the situation in Afganistan with sadness. It is a shame that the Taliban have lost sight of tolerence when our own Islamic history is full of tolerence. The most peaceful time in Palestine/Isreal was during the Muslim rule before the crusades. The Muslims of the time let the Christians ans Jews pratice their religions in peace. The same in Muslim Spain before the inquisition. Even in the life time of the Prophet Muhammed, the Muslims took protection with their Allies...the Christians.
Today many Muslim groups have lost sight of this in a way that is sickening. However, the particular situation in Afganistan is one of sadness and desperation. The Taliban without a doubt are wrong for what they are doing. However, in the West we should also take reponsiblity for our own part in the downfall of Afganistan.
The Afghanistan Mujahideen fought the Russian Army and defeated them. They were backed by the US and the UK who trained them and gave them weapons. The US and the UK were so keen on having the Russians defeated but they didn't want to fight the war themselves. The defeat of the Russian army by the Afghanistan Mujahideen brought about the down fall of the Soviet state and hence the end of the cold war. The general peace in the world that we face today is partly due to the courage and sacrifices of the Afghan Mujahideen. However, once Afghanistan had won all the other Soviet states found the strenth to seek freedom and indepence. However, at the end of the war the US and the UK pulled all support and left Afghanistan in ruins. A country with no infrastrucutre, completely destroyed by years of war with nothing exept a bunch of Armed people who knew nothing except how to fight. Of course they felt betrayed by what the West had done to them. They felt completely let down. And now today, Osama bin Laden is hunted as the world's number one terrorist when only a few years ago, he was the hero.
The West played its part in creating the Afghanistan today. If you want to make the world a better place then first correct your own mistakes. Its too easy for us to mock the Afghan people and the Taliban for what they are doing wrong. It isn't going to make the situation better though.And if you go to Arghan today, you will see that the lack of Internet, is the least of their worries.
I think that if the Mozilla team had concentrated on bringing out this kind of browser, just the browser, they could have been done much earlier and captured so much more market share.
I don't think that is true. Mozilla is aimed at all users, Windows, Mac users and of course UNIX users. However, it is not specifically aimed at geeks. What you forget is most people can't distinguish between Web, Email and Usenet. They want to have the "Internet" through one package. They think that IE is a tool for using the internet. Any alternative has to implement all of the functions that the average user expects. That is why Mozilla is so bloated. It has to be that way.
If you don't like it, then run galeon. It is fast and lightweight and I like it for those reasons. But it doesn't have the functionality that an average user would expect from it. It is aimed at a different group of people.
One of the things people like about Google is that their page isn't cluttered my adverts. However, if you search for things of commercial interest you will find that there are "sponsored links" at the top of the page. This is where companies have paid specifically to have their page at the top when people search for particular words. Cars are a good example, look at bmw and fiat.
If they are against intellectual property, why do they have those and will they sue if someone use this name?.....I would really want to get an answer from Bob on this.
Well, if you actually read what he says....
In other words, Bob isn't saying that *all* intellectual property is bad, rather he is saying...
He also mentions in the article that each case in IP has to be dealt differently. You can't just imply the same rules to genetics, software, trademarks and ideas. You have to look at each individually. He points out that the Center of Public Domain is about raising awareness about these issues and these issues have to be re-examined. So, Bob has already answered your question.
That's not quite what it is saying rather you have only highlighted part of it. It also says...
not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient software which includes the Software,Which doesn't necessarily mean you are distributing it with free software but that you used free software as a "tool" in its development. This would in fact cover many things as was mentioned in the original /. post.
I think you have hit the nail on the head here. If people want to live on the bleeding edge and always have the latest release installed then they will encounter these problems. However, for the average user, if they don't really know what they are doing, they are best sticking to the stable distributions. Anyway, things like Ximian are good at keeping the average user upto date. It has definitely aided new Linux users in my office to upgrade their work stations with packages.
We should remember, code reuse is something that makes the Bizaar model or programming so strong. The fact that we take code from here and there and save ourselves the time of reinventing the wheel. I don't think there is any problem in relying on many libraries. In fact, I think it is better than developing something that is just complete bloatware.
Also, developers always have to look ahead at future releases of libraries. Some developers may choose to, lets say, use a development release of glib because the functionality is just what they are looking for. They're thinking that by the time they finish developing and their work becomes stable the glib they are using will also be stable. Sometimes it doesn't quite work like that. However, don't complain if you want to run the latest version but the requirements are to difficult to meet. The only time you might want to complain, in a polite way that is, is if there is a vital security bug fixed that you can't upgrade to without breaking everything else on your system. In such a case, developers should really release a patch for the previous version.
Mainly because HTML is crap! The main problem with HTML is that it has such bad structure making it incredibly hard to parse. Whats more, companies like Microsoft have allowed people to get away with writing badly formed HTML so that a majority of the pages on the internet suffer from malformed HTML. Writing a HTML browser that strictly follows standards would cripple most web pages. WML gets around this problem by being XML based rather than SGML based. XML enforces much stricter rules on the structure of tags. For example, in XML tags have to be closed in the reverse order to which they were opened. Consequently, the parser is easier to write and a lot smaller. This is vital for phones and PDA that don't have hugh memory and processing powers. HTML is definitely not the way forward but is rather something we should consider dropping altogether.
And any University with a reputation for letting the education get in the way of future employment for their students is gonna start losing students quickly.
I can't say that I agree with you. Here in the UK most of the better Universities are the ones that teach more theory whereas the less good ones teach more practical applications. For example, the University that teaches Visual Basic, that I referred to in my comment, is City University. Hardly a University renown for its computer science. Consequently, the computer graduates from there that I have come across know next to nothing. They didn't need a 3-4 year degree to learn Visual Basic programming! Down the road at UCL and Imperial they teach a lot more theory, several languages and guess what, the students that graduate are generally clued up.
As for employers I think they understand the difference too. I definitely do when I look for people. I know the difference between someone who has done some training and knows particular applications and someone who has studied computing and knows a lot of theory. I usually find a simple set of problems to solve at a job interview weeds out the difference. And I for sure would prefer to employ someone who has a grasp of theory because then they will easily be able to pick up the many different programming languages that we use in our company.
I agree with you in that Java is fine for an education language but it definitely shouldn't be limited to that. For example, one of the new recruits in my company has just graduated from a university where they were only taught Java. Consequently, he doesn't know what a pointer is, he doesn't know what linking object files means and he doesn't know anything about memory allocation.
As I see it, University (College) is about education not about industrial training. You shouldn't be taught specific tools at university rather you should be taught theory. That way, when you leave university you will be able to apply your theory to different languages or applications. For example, one of the Universities here in the UK teaches all the programming in Visual Basic. I mean what is that all about? How can you possibly claim you know how to program when all you know is Visual Basic! A good programmer should pick a language to use like a carpenter picks a tool for a job. Different languages are good for different jobs and university should give you the theory so that you can easily understand new languages.
A university should really teach you a mixture, pure object-oriented (like Smalltalk), imperative (like modula-2 or C), functional (like Miranda) etc. The student will then have firm foundations for being a good programmer.
What makes you think they are waking up. More like they are still on their hacking session from the night before.
Does appear though that the link is already /. ed
"...but I mean Mozilla 1.0 without major glaring bugs."
I don't know if this is relevant really. I mean, since when did Microsoft ever release any software package without glaring bugs in it. Remember Windows 95 that used to crash after every 57 days (or however many) when the clock cycled. IE hasn't been much better. They nearly always release an updated version within days of the first release. Obviously Netscape releasing Netscape 6 so early is another sign that really the version number means nothing. The difference is with the Mozilla guys is that they are being patient and wisely not pushing something out until they are 100% ready. However, it doesn't mean that Mozilla isn't already stable in 99% of the cases. Actually, I can't even remember when my Mozilla last crashed. I can't even say that it is slow, sluggish, lacking important features. Sometimes, I even wonder why they don't just release 1.0 because I can't see anything wrong with the latest builds. However, they are being meticulous and should be commended for that.
I don't think it really matters if they end up taking 4 years to fix up Mozilla enough for a 1.0 release. At the end of the day, when 1.0 does finally come, at least the Mozilla team will be able to comfortable say they delivered a storming browser.
Also, in many ways I think the superiority of IE may already start to crumble away. There definately haven't been many good innovations in IE for a long time. And for non-Web stuff like reading emails Mozilla already kicks IE. Outlook Express is one of the biggest piles of trash that MS have ever written. They should be embarrased to release such a thing.