The entire concept of.dll files flies in the face of software regression testing. If the software that I deliver to you can be changed because you installed software from Adobe, Microsoft, or AOL (that replaced a shared.dll), what good was my testing?
Dude. The entire concept of Open Source Software flies in the face of regression testing. If the software that I deliver to you can be changed because your workstation admin thinks he knows how to better implement by algorhithm, what good was my testing? You have to understand that regression can only guarantee software in a clean-room environment. Only closed-source, one-file applications could be safe from this. But that limitation really raises the bar for what needs to be done to release a (security, performance, or bug) fix, and makes it much less likely to be done.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the very kernel that your software is running on is not under your control either. What good was your testing when a user upgrades from kernel 2.1.1.23.123.123 to 2.1.1.23.123.124? Apparently nothing... Oh yeah, that's right, you trust that the kernel developers won't break documented features that they expose - the same is true with library developers: a library developer can be trusted to not break functionality between minor versions. A good one anyway.
This is why you don't have to rebuild every windows application that uses MFC 6.0 or above. Features can be added, undocumented/unsupported features can be removed, and internal implementations can change and it shouldn't affect your app - As long as your application doesn't use any features that weren't documented/supported.
You act like "modern software" is somehow better than older software. In fact, the number of bugs that exist in the typical business application dwarfs its equivalent from a decade ago.
Yeah. Office 2000 and Photoshop 6.0 crash on me all the time. Buggy as hell. You're right.
It is a basic principle of dynamic libraries that versions and functionality changes between releases. Ever notice how many different versions of Microsoft's DLLs you have on your Windows box? That's no coincidence - Windows developers are forced to incorporate the version of the DLL that works with their application. Linux provides a far superior development model, allowing publishers to statically link the correct library into their binary. Mozilla does it; Oracle does it; why can't the rest of the vendors get a clue and do the same thing?
Ugh. Is this a troll? Am I missing something? Staticically linked libraries are not a 'far superior' development model. Seriously. If you want to use your system efficiently, you really don't want every application completely self-contained. That's a lot of redundancy, and thereofre, al ot of waste. Not to mention the distribution of bug fixes. Linux or Windows, it's much nicer if I can download/build a new.so or.dll to fix a problem in a library used in a number of applications, without having to rebuild every single one.
If you want everything self-contained, then throw yourself back to some single-tasked OS from the 70's. If you want to take advantage of modern advances in application and systems design, you're just going to have to get "used to" the idea of some standard that applications can conform to. This could be the LSB or a guide from the OS vendor to which an application is tailored, but you have to have something. Otherwise, your wasting alot of (system/manpower) resources maintaining n-hundred copies of the same statically-linked library distributed throughout your system.
Welcome to the world of modern software. Have a nice day.
If BitchX was some sort of closed-source product, how long might this have taken to show up? Many eyes lock down all backdoors.
Anti-GPL people (read Microsoft and their lackies) may try and take this as a weakness in OSS, but I look at it as a strength. If one of their developers gets something like this into one of their products (either on his/her own or with the blessing of the company, the world may never know). With OSS, it's out in the open for everyone to see/fix.
Please. It's open for everyone who has nothing better to do than read slashdot or bugtraq, maybe. What much of OSS needs but doesn't have is strict maintainers, who know what contributions are made to the product and know what they'll do before they're let in. Fortunately, some of the bigger projects have this (Linux kernel, *BSD, Mozilla), but alot of OSS today is about people being too lazy or incompetent to double check some 15-year-old hax0r's crappy-ass contribution until it's too late.
The other thing OSS needs to enforce a little better is something along the lines of code signing. From what I can tell, it looks like somebody hijacked the bitchx FTP domain on some routes and is returning trojaned copies to the downloaders who are going through it. This is a weakness of OSS. It's much easier for me to grab a piece of Open Source software, drop some malicious code in it, and redistribute it from a hijacked domain than it is for me to do so with something I don't have the source to. Granted, it's still possible, if I inject code into the compiled version, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do it with source.
The simplest move is to use MD5's for major releases and have some 3rd-party location to verify them. Freshmeat? Sourceforge? This, at least, could add some security, and would a central point for people to watch out for hijacking...
Get your head out of the damned OSS-as-a-religion sand and look at what needs to be done to make it viable to people who don't fuck around reading about the next idiot to shoot himself into space in a backyard rocket.
Trying to block communications technologically is attacking the problem at the wrong level. Instant messaging can be a great benefit to work for alot of people, because it allows for a very quick exchange of information. He can ask an old co-worker for help or his ideas on a problem, or his wife can tell him to stop and get milk on the way home. If the worker doesn't have IM, he'll probably just use email or a phone anyway - and it sucks up a lot more time to write a full email or make a phone call than it does to IM "MathWhizz42" with "What's 2+2?".
If your users really shouldn't be using IM, it's time to just pay attention to what they're doing on the job. If they skip out on work to chat on IM, they're probably quite likely to be blowing time reading Slashdot or playing Hearts, too.
Employees are alot like kids - don't try to install all kind of technological gadgets to try to stop them from doing things - they'll always find a way around it. Try just paying attention to them directly instead. Employees are not "set it and forget it" things.
Chris writes "Hungarian researchers succeed in controlling the rotation of micromachines that are powered by light. They have succeeded in reversing the rotation of a micro-rotor trapped in optical tweezers. The crucial element of this system is an oil-immersed objective lens with a very high numerical aperture. Changing the position of the objective lens controls the direction of rotation. The team now hopes to make complex integrated systems where all the components of a micromechanical system are integrated. This could find applications such as measuring the properties of large biological molecules and making components such as miniature pumps and actuators for lab-on-a-chip devices."
The article doesn't mention that the "7,000 macro viruses" attack Microsoft products (leaving uses of a Mac only as a web server completely protected from them)
Irrelevant: Ok, sure. If I run a web-server only (Windows) PC with Apache the daemon, I'm invulnerable, too. What does that have to do with Mac vs. PC. That's just a matter of software (which happens to be cross-platform). If you don't run Microsoft client software, you are protected.
nor does it quote any statistics about how many Mac vs. Windows viruses exist, and it doesn't address the real- world fact that Macs are hit with viruses far less often than Windows machines. This one's a little more reasonable, but really, let's look at this article. It clearly is implying that the Mac, as a platform, is theorectically prone to virus attacks, like any system. Now, as long as it has only marginal market share it won't be a target, and won't have as many viruses, but that won't last long if everybody switches to it for that reason.
Mac vs. PC vs. Alpha vs. whatever is just not the place to be talking about security. Security, as of this moment, is not really a part of the hardware-layer of systems. If you want to talk about security, you need to talk about applications - like those made by microsoft - but those applications are becoming more and more cross-platform...
-Andrew
Since everybody just wants to look at the pictures
on
E3 Controller Previews
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm still hoping that someone will get the MMORPG right in the not so distant future.
Cross your fingers. If Neverwinter Nights turns out to be any good, it has the potential to be a peer-to-peer MMORPG. You can supposedly interconnect realms hosted on various machines through 'portals'. Granted, you may not be able to get 1000 users in one specific realm if some schmuck is running it in his basement on an overclocked 486, but with sufficient linking of portals, you can really pretend it's a huge single realm.
In other words, the DMCA requires that programmers be able to access parts of a computer program "to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs" (i.e. porting a windows program to linux). If that access isn't provided then the programmer can legally circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the essential parts of that program for the purposes of porting.
Who says that such access isn't provided? The CIFS licence above is for Royalty-free licensing. If you contact Microsoft and can negotiate a reasonable licensing agreement with them, then it certainly is provided. In which case, it's not a violation. Just because it can't be done free doesn't mean that it can't be done.
With 350 CD's your a prime candidate for Sony's 400 CD changer. They have a couple models and they all work like a charm. They're also outfitted with Sony's S-Link technology which allows you to chain the units seamlessly when you get your 51st new CD. There's also a gadget out there called the S-link-e (Slinky, get it?) or some such that you can find out there on the internet. It uses S-Link, IR, and a PC interface to automate as much of your AV devices as you want, and it only costs about $50. My friend hooked it up to an old laptop he got for $100 bucks from Ebay, and has his whole music collection catalog with a great interface for building and running playlists and what not.
What you were doing is still available free. What ahoo! is charging for is POP3 access to your yahoo.com account. You will still be able to use Yahoo! web mail to retrieve your POP3 mail from other hosts free of charge.
Yahoo! is only planning on charging for their Yahoo! Delivers service. This is the service that permits you to access their POP3 and SMTP servers, or forward your yahoo.com mail to another address. Previously, the expense was that you had to sign up for opt-in spam through Yahoo!, but apparently, that wasn't working for them.
Yahoo!'s web mail will still be free, and if you really need the POP3/SMTP/forwarding service, $20 a year really isn't that bad.
Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates.
Compression be damned, with a 100GB drive, arguments of MP3 vs. MD vs. Ogg Vorbis can be moot. You can rip all your music to wav files and still get almost 200 CD's worth on this thing! I think that ought to do, don't you?
It's a good wish to get Blender ousted into the open-source domain, but unfortunately unlikely. If they are decalring bankruptcy, that means they have creditors that they owe. And if they owe money, they (usually - maybe not in Amsterdam?) will be encouranged to liquidate their assets, like Blender, to another company who will pay for the technology. So getting it open-sourced is probably not an option on the table.
Frankly, if I had the choice of cashing in my frequent flyer miles for a trip to space, or for my choice of Time, Maxim, and all the other crap for the rest of my life, I think my head would explode.
Once the first card reader is compromised, or even if someone just reverse-engineers the chip, the whole system is compromised. Once bank information is on them -- and I have no doubt that that bit of the proposal is only on hold, not really dropped -- how long will it be before someone builds a remote reader that can pull info just by walking within a few feet of one?
I'll just hastily comment that it would only be the most idiotic roll out of smartcards with private information on them that would not use a PIN, password, or biometric verification to prevent improper use. It's like your darn ATM card - the reader is already "compromised" with those. The data is useless without a PIN or other way of identifying that it probably is an authorized use.
Quit your ignorant whining about the non-existant inadequacies of the system, and focus on real concerns, whatever the hell those are.
I think it's because PGP and GPG have such a sucky interface. It takes me forever to read the manual every time, and the integration with current mail programs sucks! Evolution seems to be fixing this and I know mutt and pine can support it, but it's just too much work to setup if no one else you e-mail can do it too!
If you really think so, take a look at Cypherus by APMSafe.com. We designed it to be really easy to use, for exactly that reason. Granted, it's currently Windows-only, and closed-source, but I imagine that works for alot of people. When I was still working there, we did a whole lot of work with windows internal stuff to be able to get it integrated into everything from your desktop, to Eudora and Outlook, to even Outlook Express (which we didn't even think was possible, at first). Check it out.
Unfortunately, the things still too slashdotted for me to get through, so I'm just going to have to base this one what you said.
First: Yes, geeks writing philosophy is a mistake waiting to happen. I agree with you there.
But the other thing your saying is that the 20th century American conception of what is a "right" and what is a "fact" are absolutes. They are not. And it is the most supreme arrogance to assume they are. Humanity flourished for 20,000 without today's Western "knowledge" of natural science and the scientific method. Also with varying interpretations of what someone's right is. The worst mistake any of us can make is to blindly assume that the society in which we live is the greatest society ever, and it's a mistake too many of us have made.
There's nothing anyone can say that will change your mind on the absoluteness of materialism and empiricism, today's overriding philosophies, but I wish, with all hope, that you take the time to thoroughly question the fundamental axioms upon which these philosophies are based.
I'm not being philosophical, here, I'm being skeptical of that which is otherwise presumed true. And there's nothing a geek's more suited for than skepticism.
Yet 81 percent of Americans told the Gallup they blame the Internet for Columbine.
That doesn't seem to be true. Gallup publishes most of their social anaylsis polls on their website.
Not once does this seemed to be claimed in their polls. Even mainstream alarmist media knows that they have to follow up and be able to prove references. Once again, though, JonKatz decides that he's going to make some groundless, alarmist, speculatory social commentary, taking advantage of his own celebrity, and then tries to back it up with fake data.
From what I've read in the past few months, it seems the only reasonable writer for Slashdot is jamie. (Editors, like CmdrTaco, don't conut...). Maybe JonKatz should find some journalistic responsibility, or else hop over to a site/paper that's more openly tabloid-ish. Or maybe go on Oprah.
The logic is in that the guys who get money off the stadium want you to fill it up. Most stadiums have a local blackout policy if the stadium doesn't sell out. It's an incentive that keeps people in the crowd (good for the team AND the stadium-owners).
Not *that* illogical. Sometimes, though, there's not enough interest in the sport and it doesn't work out. So the team eventually moves because it's a losing business. Sports == Economics.
First of all - linux still is a kooky side show. Admit that to yourself.
Secondly - Although I'm a big proponent of vegetarianism, for a number of reasons (bad industry, ineffienct production, and morally questionable), make sure your arguments are right. The reason so may people eat meat now, and why things like Mammoths are extinct, is because biologically, humans do eat meat. The fact that the food stays in your system for a while is a good thing when you only get to eat twice a week, and don't have preservatives or refrigeration. However, that doesn't make carnivorism excusable now. You can (and many think you should) make the concious choice not to eat meat. But don't say that humans eating meat is unnatural, or isn't biologically sensible. It is. But we don't need to do it anymore.
Humans are omnivores by nature, but now we live in a world where we an afford to be herbivores. Now go out and do it.
Ok. My numbers are thus: Computerworld reference to the Jupiter/MM study. According to this, MSN and Yahoo! were each trailing behinf AIM by approximately 8 million users (of 18 million on AIM). And that was as of November 2000. I seriously doubt either has fully surpassed that gap since, but I admit it may be closing.
I only meant that because AOL users implicitly use the same communications network as AIM users. SO if you are only counting people who use the AIM software to people who use the MSN software, your results won't represent the number of users on each network.
Slashdot Mirror
See:
Escient Fireball
Audieorequest ARQ2 Pro
-Andrew
The entire concept of .dll files flies in the face of software regression testing. If the software that I deliver to you can be changed because you installed software from Adobe, Microsoft, or AOL (that replaced a shared .dll), what good was my testing?
Dude. The entire concept of Open Source Software flies in the face of regression testing. If the software that I deliver to you can be changed because your workstation admin thinks he knows how to better implement by algorhithm, what good was my testing? You have to understand that regression can only guarantee software in a clean-room environment. Only closed-source, one-file applications could be safe from this. But that limitation really raises the bar for what needs to be done to release a (security, performance, or bug) fix, and makes it much less likely to be done.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the very kernel that your software is running on is not under your control either. What good was your testing when a user upgrades from kernel 2.1.1.23.123.123 to 2.1.1.23.123.124? Apparently nothing... Oh yeah, that's right, you trust that the kernel developers won't break documented features that they expose - the same is true with library developers: a library developer can be trusted to not break functionality between minor versions. A good one anyway.
This is why you don't have to rebuild every windows application that uses MFC 6.0 or above. Features can be added, undocumented/unsupported features can be removed, and internal implementations can change and it shouldn't affect your app - As long as your application doesn't use any features that weren't documented/supported.
You act like "modern software" is somehow better than older software. In fact, the number of bugs that exist in the typical business application dwarfs its equivalent from a decade ago.
Yeah. Office 2000 and Photoshop 6.0 crash on me all the time. Buggy as hell. You're right.
-Andrew
It is a basic principle of dynamic libraries that versions and functionality changes between releases. Ever notice how many different versions of Microsoft's DLLs you have on your Windows box? That's no coincidence - Windows developers are forced to incorporate the version of the DLL that works with their application. Linux provides a far superior development model, allowing publishers to statically link the correct library into their binary. Mozilla does it; Oracle does it; why can't the rest of the vendors get a clue and do the same thing?
.so or .dll to fix a problem in a library used in a number of applications, without having to rebuild every single one.
Ugh. Is this a troll? Am I missing something? Staticically linked libraries are not a 'far superior' development model. Seriously. If you want to use your system efficiently, you really don't want every application completely self-contained. That's a lot of redundancy, and thereofre, al ot of waste. Not to mention the distribution of bug fixes. Linux or Windows, it's much nicer if I can download/build a new
If you want everything self-contained, then throw yourself back to some single-tasked OS from the 70's. If you want to take advantage of modern advances in application and systems design, you're just going to have to get "used to" the idea of some standard that applications can conform to. This could be the LSB or a guide from the OS vendor to which an application is tailored, but you have to have something. Otherwise, your wasting alot of (system/manpower) resources maintaining n-hundred copies of the same statically-linked library distributed throughout your system.
Welcome to the world of modern software. Have a nice day.
-Andrew
If BitchX was some sort of closed-source product, how long might this have taken to show up? Many eyes lock down all backdoors.
Anti-GPL people (read Microsoft and their lackies) may try and take this as a weakness in OSS, but I look at it as a strength. If one of their developers gets something like this into one of their products (either on his/her own or with the blessing of the company, the world may never know). With OSS, it's out in the open for everyone to see/fix.
Please. It's open for everyone who has nothing better to do than read slashdot or bugtraq, maybe. What much of OSS needs but doesn't have is strict maintainers, who know what contributions are made to the product and know what they'll do before they're let in. Fortunately, some of the bigger projects have this (Linux kernel, *BSD, Mozilla), but alot of OSS today is about people being too lazy or incompetent to double check some 15-year-old hax0r's crappy-ass contribution until it's too late.
The other thing OSS needs to enforce a little better is something along the lines of code signing. From what I can tell, it looks like somebody hijacked the bitchx FTP domain on some routes and is returning trojaned copies to the downloaders who are going through it. This is a weakness of OSS. It's much easier for me to grab a piece of Open Source software, drop some malicious code in it, and redistribute it from a hijacked domain than it is for me to do so with something I don't have the source to. Granted, it's still possible, if I inject code into the compiled version, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do it with source.
The simplest move is to use MD5's for major releases and have some 3rd-party location to verify them. Freshmeat? Sourceforge? This, at least, could add some security, and would a central point for people to watch out for hijacking...
Get your head out of the damned OSS-as-a-religion sand and look at what needs to be done to make it viable to people who don't fuck around reading about the next idiot to shoot himself into space in a backyard rocket.
Meh. Enough ranting, for now.
-Andrew
Trying to block communications technologically is attacking the problem at the wrong level. Instant messaging can be a great benefit to work for alot of people, because it allows for a very quick exchange of information. He can ask an old co-worker for help or his ideas on a problem, or his wife can tell him to stop and get milk on the way home. If the worker doesn't have IM, he'll probably just use email or a phone anyway - and it sucks up a lot more time to write a full email or make a phone call than it does to IM "MathWhizz42" with "What's 2+2?".
If your users really shouldn't be using IM, it's time to just pay attention to what they're doing on the job. If they skip out on work to chat on IM, they're probably quite likely to be blowing time reading Slashdot or playing Hearts, too.
Employees are alot like kids - don't try to install all kind of technological gadgets to try to stop them from doing things - they'll always find a way around it. Try just paying attention to them directly instead. Employees are not "set it and forget it" things.
-Andrew
that last phrase has gone missing
That last link has gone missing, methinks: "http://slashdot.org/<A HREF=". A pretty wierd link for a newsforge story...
Where are the editors?
-Andrew
Chris writes "Hungarian researchers succeed in controlling the rotation of micromachines that are powered by light. They have succeeded in reversing the rotation of a micro-rotor trapped in optical tweezers. The crucial element of this system is an oil-immersed objective lens with a very high numerical aperture. Changing the position of the objective lens controls the direction of rotation. The team now hopes to make complex integrated systems where all the components of a micromechanical system are integrated. This could find applications such as measuring the properties of large biological molecules and making components such as miniature pumps and actuators for lab-on-a-chip devices."
.5 seconds to say that.
And it only took him
-Andrew
The article doesn't mention that the "7,000 macro viruses" attack Microsoft products (leaving uses of a Mac only as a web server completely protected from them)
Irrelevant: Ok, sure. If I run a web-server only (Windows) PC with Apache the daemon, I'm invulnerable, too. What does that have to do with Mac vs. PC. That's just a matter of software (which happens to be cross-platform). If you don't run Microsoft client software, you are protected.
nor does it quote any statistics about how many Mac vs. Windows viruses exist, and it doesn't address the real- world fact that Macs are hit with viruses far less often than Windows machines.
This one's a little more reasonable, but really, let's look at this article. It clearly is implying that the Mac, as a platform, is theorectically prone to virus attacks, like any system. Now, as long as it has only marginal market share it won't be a target, and won't have as many viruses, but that won't last long if everybody switches to it for that reason.
Mac vs. PC vs. Alpha vs. whatever is just not the place to be talking about security. Security, as of this moment, is not really a part of the hardware-layer of systems. If you want to talk about security, you need to talk about applications - like those made by microsoft - but those applications are becoming more and more cross-platform...
-Andrew
Found this elsewhere:
The 40-button behemoth
-Andrew
I'm still hoping that someone will get the MMORPG right in the not so distant future.
Cross your fingers. If Neverwinter Nights turns out to be any good, it has the potential to be a peer-to-peer MMORPG. You can supposedly interconnect realms hosted on various machines through 'portals'. Granted, you may not be able to get 1000 users in one specific realm if some schmuck is running it in his basement on an overclocked 486, but with sufficient linking of portals, you can really pretend it's a huge single realm.
-Andrew
In other words, the DMCA requires that programmers be able to access parts of a computer program "to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs" (i.e. porting a windows program to linux). If that access isn't provided then the programmer can legally circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the essential parts of that program for the purposes of porting.
Who says that such access isn't provided? The CIFS licence above is for Royalty-free licensing. If you contact Microsoft and can negotiate a reasonable licensing agreement with them, then it certainly is provided. In which case, it's not a violation. Just because it can't be done free doesn't mean that it can't be done.
-Andrew
With 350 CD's your a prime candidate for Sony's 400 CD changer. They have a couple models and they all work like a charm. They're also outfitted with Sony's S-Link technology which allows you to chain the units seamlessly when you get your 51st new CD. There's also a gadget out there called the S-link-e (Slinky, get it?) or some such that you can find out there on the internet. It uses S-Link, IR, and a PC interface to automate as much of your AV devices as you want, and it only costs about $50. My friend hooked it up to an old laptop he got for $100 bucks from Ebay, and has his whole music collection catalog with a great interface for building and running playlists and what not.
-Andrew
What you were doing is still available free. What ahoo! is charging for is POP3 access to your yahoo.com account. You will still be able to use Yahoo! web mail to retrieve your POP3 mail from other hosts free of charge.
-Andrew
Yahoo! is only planning on charging for their Yahoo! Delivers service. This is the service that permits you to access their POP3 and SMTP servers, or forward your yahoo.com mail to another address. Previously, the expense was that you had to sign up for opt-in spam through Yahoo!, but apparently, that wasn't working for them.
Yahoo!'s web mail will still be free, and if you really need the POP3/SMTP/forwarding service, $20 a year really isn't that bad.
Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates.
Compression be damned, with a 100GB drive, arguments of MP3 vs. MD vs. Ogg Vorbis can be moot. You can rip all your music to wav files and still get almost 200 CD's worth on this thing! I think that ought to do, don't you?
-Andrew
It's a good wish to get Blender ousted into the open-source domain, but unfortunately unlikely. If they are decalring bankruptcy, that means they have creditors that they owe. And if they owe money, they (usually - maybe not in Amsterdam?) will be encouranged to liquidate their assets, like Blender, to another company who will pay for the technology. So getting it open-sourced is probably not an option on the table.
-Andrew
Frankly, if I had the choice of cashing in my frequent flyer miles for a trip to space, or for my choice of Time, Maxim, and all the other crap for the rest of my life, I think my head would explode.
-Andrew
Once the first card reader is compromised, or even if someone just reverse-engineers the chip, the whole system is compromised. Once bank information is on them -- and I have no doubt that that bit of the proposal is only on hold, not really dropped -- how long will it be before someone builds a remote reader that can pull info just by walking within a few feet of one?
I'll just hastily comment that it would only be the most idiotic roll out of smartcards with private information on them that would not use a PIN, password, or biometric verification to prevent improper use. It's like your darn ATM card - the reader is already "compromised" with those. The data is useless without a PIN or other way of identifying that it probably is an authorized use.
Quit your ignorant whining about the non-existant inadequacies of the system, and focus on real concerns, whatever the hell those are.
-Andrew
I think it's because PGP and GPG have such a sucky interface. It takes me forever to read the manual every time, and the integration with current mail programs sucks! Evolution seems to be fixing this and I know mutt and pine can support it, but it's just too much work to setup if no one else you e-mail can do it too!
If you really think so, take a look at Cypherus by APMSafe.com. We designed it to be really easy to use, for exactly that reason. Granted, it's currently Windows-only, and closed-source, but I imagine that works for alot of people. When I was still working there, we did a whole lot of work with windows internal stuff to be able to get it integrated into everything from your desktop, to Eudora and Outlook, to even Outlook Express (which we didn't even think was possible, at first). Check it out.
-Andrew
Unfortunately, the things still too slashdotted for me to get through, so I'm just going to have to base this one what you said.
First: Yes, geeks writing philosophy is a mistake waiting to happen. I agree with you there.
But the other thing your saying is that the 20th century American conception of what is a "right" and what is a "fact" are absolutes. They are not. And it is the most supreme arrogance to assume they are. Humanity flourished for 20,000 without today's Western "knowledge" of natural science and the scientific method. Also with varying interpretations of what someone's right is. The worst mistake any of us can make is to blindly assume that the society in which we live is the greatest society ever, and it's a mistake too many of us have made.
There's nothing anyone can say that will change your mind on the absoluteness of materialism and empiricism, today's overriding philosophies, but I wish, with all hope, that you take the time to thoroughly question the fundamental axioms upon which these philosophies are based.
I'm not being philosophical, here, I'm being skeptical of that which is otherwise presumed true. And there's nothing a geek's more suited for than skepticism.
-Andrew
Yet 81 percent of Americans told the Gallup they blame the Internet for Columbine.
That doesn't seem to be true. Gallup publishes most of their social anaylsis polls on their website.
Not once does this seemed to be claimed in their polls. Even mainstream alarmist media knows that they have to follow up and be able to prove references. Once again, though, JonKatz decides that he's going to make some groundless, alarmist, speculatory social commentary, taking advantage of his own celebrity, and then tries to back it up with fake data.
From what I've read in the past few months, it seems the only reasonable writer for Slashdot is jamie. (Editors, like CmdrTaco, don't conut...). Maybe JonKatz should find some journalistic responsibility, or else hop over to a site/paper that's more openly tabloid-ish. Or maybe go on Oprah.
-Andrew
The logic is in that the guys who get money off the stadium want you to fill it up. Most stadiums have a local blackout policy if the stadium doesn't sell out. It's an incentive that keeps people in the crowd (good for the team AND the stadium-owners).
Not *that* illogical. Sometimes, though, there's not enough interest in the sport and it doesn't work out. So the team eventually moves because it's a losing business. Sports == Economics.
-Andrew
First of all - linux still is a kooky side show. Admit that to yourself.
Secondly - Although I'm a big proponent of vegetarianism, for a number of reasons (bad industry, ineffienct production, and morally questionable), make sure your arguments are right. The reason so may people eat meat now, and why things like Mammoths are extinct, is because biologically, humans do eat meat. The fact that the food stays in your system for a while is a good thing when you only get to eat twice a week, and don't have preservatives or refrigeration. However, that doesn't make carnivorism excusable now. You can (and many think you should) make the concious choice not to eat meat. But don't say that humans eating meat is unnatural, or isn't biologically sensible. It is. But we don't need to do it anymore.
Humans are omnivores by nature, but now we live in a world where we an afford to be herbivores. Now go out and do it.
-Andrew
Ok. My numbers are thus: Computerworld reference to the Jupiter/MM study. According to this, MSN and Yahoo! were each trailing behinf AIM by approximately 8 million users (of 18 million on AIM). And that was as of November 2000. I seriously doubt either has fully surpassed that gap since, but I admit it may be closing.
-Andrew
I only meant that because AOL users implicitly use the same communications network as AIM users. SO if you are only counting people who use the AIM software to people who use the MSN software, your results won't represent the number of users on each network.
-Andrew