Except that this donation doesn't cost Microsoft a penny more than the trivial cost of media. Schools in Namibia could never afford to buy Microsoft software anyway so it's not like Microsoft is losing anything by giving them this "gift". Even if Microsoft gave them a complete suite of Windows-equipped software including the OS for every one of those computers Microsoft would still come out ahead because of the gains in PR and goodwill for the company, and the exposure of all those kids to Microsoft's brand and products. So everyone would win because MS is getting good publicity and exposure by doing something that doesn't cost them anything but greatly benefits the public of Namibia. That's what corporate philantropy should be like.
But, Microsoft wanted more. They wanted to turn this into a sales opportunity as well and grab a chance to lock even some of the world's poorest into their exploitative upgrade cycles. Make no mistake, if these people had taken this deal, all that money would be pure profit for MS.
So, really, MS has no interest in making actual donations - they really just want to milk everyone while making it look like they are making a meaningful contribution. This "gift" was nothing more than a sleazy sales tactic and I'm glad that Nambia isn't "buying" into it.
All these companies seem to think that the Web is like a magazine: their neat little layout is all anyone should be allowed to use. But they forget that the Web was intentially designed to facilitate deep linking and URL-typing for the purpose of transparent information exchange. They don't get to decide the layout and presentation of the data once they publish it so that it is accessible through an URL.
There is nothing about implicit permission to view here. I assert that they are EXPLICITLY granting permission to any and all to view the document when they publish it via a non-password protected URL.
That is the very foundation of the Web...without it we have interactive television.
I always just lie. I've used Windows enough that I can imagine what they are trying to do in my head, so I just fake that I'm doing it while actually doing the equivalent in Linux. e.g. "Go to Start, click Run, type w-i-n-i-p-c-f-g, hit OK, select the Ethernet adaptor from the pulldown list, and read me the MAC address" == "type ifconfig in bash". Works pretty well and so far none of them have ever figured out that I wasn't using Windows.
I don't think that you deserved the abusive flamebait moderation that you received, but I still disagree with you strongly.
I disagree that Paypal has not promoted itself as a secure option. Note this interview, linked on the front page of Paypal. Then surf on over to this page in which Paypal states that "The security of your information, transactions, and money is the core of our business and our top priority at PayPal." Looks to me like they are in fact promoting their business as something other than what it is. In my mind, that's unethical at best and fraud at worst.
So, I don't think everyone knows that Paypal has such poor security. You and I know that, because we make an effort to stay informed about such issues. But you sure wouldn't know that reading their site. And when I've mentioned PayPal's record to many of my less sophisticated Ebay using friends, they have in general been totally suprised and shocked to hear the evidence against Paypal.
I have NEVER suggested that Paypal should eat the costs of all consumer fraud, though you seem to think that's what I'm suggesting. I AM NOT. I agree that there is always some degree of risk in an online transaction, and that's not Paypal's fault. But just as people should take responsibility for the security of their own money, Paypal needs to take responsibility for what they have been doing. Instead, they try to hide behind a cloak of facelessness and claiming that they are exempt from the rules that apply to all other similar businesses.
This is by no means an issue of the government beating up on poor little Paypal and taking their right to run their business as they see fit. This is an issue of Paypal stealing from customers and aiding and abetting in fraud by others by refusing to even turn over evidence against those who perpetrate it.
I don't think PayPal should "eat" any costs for these fradulent transactions. They do not provide insurance on transfers. But I think they have an absolute obligation to investigate complaints of fraud, including publication of detailed contact information and tracking of illicit purchases such as this. Paypal could easily work with the merchant involved in that transaction and get the order stopped and the individual found through shipping information, etc. The could go to the FBI or some other authority with this data. But they refuse to do so because they do not want to employ even enough staff to do minimal protection of their customers.
It *is* a problem with their security because they don't have any security other than a password. A password will not magically protect you from all evildoers and is even a rather weak form of authentication when they could be using e.g. some sort of downloadable client with a private key signature scheme. This is necessary IMHO for these sorts of high risk environments like the one Paypal serves. And authentication alone is not enough - they must take steps to investigate claims of fraud and punish those who perpetrate it.
It is well known and has been for a long time among criminal elements online that Paypal is an easy target for fraud and that little investigation is done. This attracts more of this tyoe of person to Paypal.
I know I made the right decision when I closed my account with them a long time ago, when their abuses first began to surface. If they are handling people's money, security should be their foremost concern, and I didn't trust them with the security of my money. Not to mention that they are probably stealing people's money directly themselves.
I'd like to know why you seem to support this behavior as strongly as seem to based on your comment history. Do you have some interest in promoting Paypal?
Actually, I'm running Freetype 2.1.2 under XFree86 4.2.1, and I have the subpixel hinting because I compiled everything myself (it does help). I'm using the exact same fonts as I do under Windows XP because I simply mounted my NTFS partition and copied all the fonts that came with Windows. I'm using the correct fonts (I checked), and I have tweaked all my applications like Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc. to use them. And my fonts DO look loads better than they've ever looked in Linux before. Believe me, I've put a lot of effort into beautifying my Linux font rendering.
But: they still don't look quite as nice as ClearType does under XP with the same fonts and the same laptop. They look pretty good, but they still aren't as sharp and readable.
Main things I think still need improvement:
1. Ironing out the occasional font rendering glitches I've seen under Freetype2. Sometimes my fonts are just plain misrendered under X (glitches like parts of letters missing, etc).
2. Integration/standardization of font interfaces across different applications: I shouldn't have to individually tweak every application under Linux with special settings to make the fonts look good (for example, having to set the point size ranges, hinting, etc in Mozilla or OpenOffice). All applications should just ask the central font renderer for these things without me having to go in and tell them to do that.
I'm not saying that Linux has no hope, because it's gotten much much better in the last little bit. And I'm going to continue using Linux as my main OS regardless. I'm just saying that this area still needs some work before it can match Microsoft, much as I loathe them. If I had any desire to boot into XP I would take screenshots to show you the difference and prove that I actually have my Linux fonts set up correctly (I do). Someday I'll get around to doing that and I'll put them on my site, but not today.
Let me start by saying that I *despise* Windows XP, and not because I'm biased against Microsoft. I dual boot my desktop machine between Windows 2k and Linux and I have to say that the two are comparable in stability and performance (ie, neither ever crashes). I got XP Pro when it came preinstalled on my new laptop, and it is total crap. Applications crash far more often under XP with the *same* version as under 2k and I've seen the entire OS go down more than once in what little I've used it. And XP runs much slower than 2k does on my slower desktop machine! With UI bugs galore!
So, I basically use my laptop for Gentoo Linux now and only boot to XP when I need to use one of the few programs I have no replacement for under Linux (like Photoshop and Freehand). But, much as I dislike XP, I have to say that ClearType looks incredible on my laptop screen. It's the sharpest I've ever seen fonts (with the possible exception of Macs that friends had).
Now, why can't Linux have this kind of functionality? After much work, my fonts look pretty good in Fluxbox and various applications. But they still don't even come close to ClearType and I still often see misrendered fonts, etc. I personally think that X would benefit greatly from having some higher level functionality rolled into it (like fonts) so that fonts would look great in all apps with minimal effort. I know that isn't what X is meant for, but font rendering is pretty basic and necessary for most any GUI.
I agree, and you should have the right to wave either one (or any other flag you want) in public. I can't understand how flag waving could possibly be considered as anything other than free speech - it's CLEARLY political speech, which should have the highest protection of all. I don't think the flying of those flags should be enshrined in state law (unless a lot of people agree that it should be), but I should be able to show my support for any flag I want. Any attempt to suppress such flags is nothing less than sacrificing the _principle_ of free speech for something as trivial as people's feelings.
I doubt it. XML is specifically designed around interoperability, and I don't think MS can charge for use of a standard they don't own. That's why I think that they will break standards compatibility somehow.
Maybe I wasn't clear before, but an economic system does not carry values, good or bad. A system is good when it minimizes general human suffering, and no system exists that could do that better than capitalism at the moment. The problem with replacing the system as it exists is that there would be nothing to regulate wealth anymore. Environmental destruction is in some ways a failure by the government to regulate industry and a sign that power has swung too far from government, and in other ways it is the INEVITABLE consequence of massive overpopulation.
Companies are simply a tool for giving the economy (ie the "People") what they want, and the People are demanding more conveniences etc at the cost of the environment. The problem is not capitalism, it is the fact that we have 6 billion people and growing on a planet that should not be able to sustain even a fraction of that.
I disagree that it is possible to move towards a classless society. There is no way that everyone in the world could live at US standards of wealth without draining the Earth's resources, so those who have wealth now would have to give it up. And because wealth is power, that will never happen. It doesn't matter who has the power, the government or the rich, but someone WILL always have power because people are inherently selfish as individuals and some people will always be in a position to take advantage of others. That's not a flaw in the system, that's life.
How on earth could that possibly work? You're saying that the government should stay out of the economy, but that the economy should still take on goals of the common good. You can't make people do that unless you have government of other structural coercion, because an economy of the "people" will almost certainly lead to concentration of power around money, and the individuals who have money will likely not be interested in the goals of the average individual. It is inevitable that someone will have power over others in any functioning economy, be it the government in a socialist system or the greedy capitalists in ours. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it allows society to function without chaos and tyranny of the majority. The problem is just trying to make sure that there is a balance between different groups with power, rather than allowing it shift completely to one group.
There's nothing inherently wrong with capitalism, and much that is very good, since it tends to regulate itself pretty well. But it does need government checks from time to time, so it's important to have a strong government as well.
You can get PDF readers on virtually any platform, so I don't see a problem with it. Would you rather they post it in Microsoft Word format like quite a few braindead government sites I've seen do? PDF is actually a decent portable format as long as it isn't overused for things that aren't suited to it.
It'd be nice if the drivers for my laptop's Radeon would allow me to set XFree86 at even AGP 4X without massive instability - I still get hard lockups if I run it for more than 30 seconds at higher than 2X mode.
I also think this is the most likely explanation for the Founder's intent. I believe that the 2nd Amendment exists as a type of "right to revolution", so that the means would always exist to remove an abusive government. This makes the 2nd Amendment one of the most important parts of the Bill of Rights, since it protects all the other rights.
This "database" idea will have no effect on crime prevention or enforcement and will end up just being a means for the government to track who the honest gun owners are (since the dishonest ones will certainly not have their weapons in this database).
That's a problem with the police and the law, not with Mozilla. Technology should not be held back because of some irrational and uninformed fear of "bad information" and a mentality that they should try to nail everyone they can. It really seems to me that any decent lawyer would be able to get you off on a charge like that, especially given that they likely could prove that the page was doing it.
Re:Great... now fix the documentation
on
Gentoo Linux Reloaded
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I agree, the dependency hell was definitely the main reason I switched from Redhat to Gentoo. The *fact* that it runs much faster on my laptop as well is a nice bonus, but that's not what keeps me there. What keeps me using Gentoo is this:
1. Package versions are updated very promptly. If you're running a server, Gentoo has a nice mailing list with GLSA's (Gentoo Linux Security Announcements) that easily keep you up to date with what needs to be upgraded. When you do upgrade, it's basically a one-line command and I can let it build in the background (and I don't agree that the "compile time" makes the security upgrades less timely: for one, most server apps are pretty small and can be built in 5 minutes, and for another, Gentoo will come out with a new ebuild script much much sooner, in my experience, than Redhat, et al. So I can build the new one before Redhat even rolls a new RPM.) 2. I know exactly what I'm getting when I install something in Gentoo. Gentoo uses the official versions of everything rather than their own hacked up editions (reference the GCC 2.96 issue, etc). An exception is their custom kernel sources, but it is well documented what that contains. 3. Even though compile time exists, user hassle is reduced. Most installs require very little interaction from the user to complete. I got sick of going out and finding the RPM I needed, making sure it was the right kind of RPM (Mandrake, Redhat, Suse...), having RPM reject it, and having to go out and find dependencies... 4. I can enforce compile options system-wide or even rebuild the entire system with new options using a single command. 5. Compile time and setup issues decrease as the system matures. Once you've built up a sizable collection of libraries, etc. compile times tend to be greatly reduced since the dependencies are not updated as frequently as main apps. Also, if you know what you're doing, it's very easy to get Gentoo setup exactly how you want it. I never figured out how to achieve this level of customization in Redhat and now that I have it I can work VERY efficiently.
So, contrary to belief of those who haven't tried it, Gentoo really does save you maintenance time if you know what you're doing enough to get it set up correctly. No more fighting conflicting sets of RPMs from Ximian, Redhat, and the Mozilla site everytime I upgrade Mozilla. That alone was enough to convince me of its superiority.
I think it does make sense because it's more evidence that there are planets in other star systems in great abundance. It shows that there are possibly other solar systems similar to our own, which also contains large gas giants. The Earth wouldn't be detectable either with current technology at that range, but Jupiter might be. Basically this discovery provides evidence that our own solar system is not completely unique in its very existence; you have to have planets to have life (as far as we know). So while this isn't direct evidence of life, it is another piece of evidence to support the hypothesis that there are other solar systems like our own that may contain life.
For one thing, gasoline is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, not just octane. Many of those other constituents produce CO when burned. For another, gasoline doesn't burn with 100% efficiency, so a number of side reactions will occur; some will produce CO as a product.
I think people are mistaken that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas: I believe that it is. It's just that the carbon in the CO2 from biomass fuels like this alcohol is not derived from fossil reserves like gasoline is. So it's not contributing directly to increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
(Note that I said directly: I think that this method of generating fuel will still contribute to a net increase in atmospheric carbon if for instance large swaths of forest are destroyed to grow the sugarcane.)
I don't doubt that the website repairs could be done very cheaply, but anything where lawyers get involved quickly gets expensive. Especially when you're potentially defending yourself against a whole group of people. I'm not saying they shouldn't have just fixed the site, but I am saying that people need to have some common sense about what is and is not worth sueing over.
Why do these people feel the need to reach for their lawyers before even using common sense? What on earth is the point of voice-accessible websites for an airline when virtually ALL airlines provide 24-hour a day toll-free phone numbers where you can talk to a real person and/or use an automated system to do everything you can do on the Web?
I know that some airlines charge more for reservations not made online, but that could easily be waived for the disabled if they didn't have another option. It just seems nuts to me to try to force a company to spend millions of dollars that will be passed on to all the other customers for something that is a non-problem. The airlines already have voice information - on the original voice communicator - the PHONE!;)
Yeah, it's the whole bait and switch aspect of this that's worrisome to me. As much as I disagree with the idea that any company should be able to tell me what I can do with something not related _directly_ to their product, I could accept that if they had said "this is the deal" right at the start, and let people make an informed decision about whether they were willing to be bound by that. But they've clearly just done this to lock people in and then try to squash competition. A very Redmondian tactic if you ask me.
Whatever happened to the idea that software should compete on its merits rather than by trying to hobble its competitors? I say, the sooner we have a functional replacement for this, the sooner we will be free of onerous and unfair practices like what's going on here.
Reading the LKML thread, the recurring theme was "we just don't want to help our competition for free". But the misleading, deliberately or not, thing about saying that is that the actual clause goes far beyond just prohibiting the use of BK for direct use in developing Subversion, for instance. It actually stops you from using it when you are simply working on an *unrelated* competing project that does *not* use BK. Frankly, that's not their business to decide and is designed as a way to siphon off developer support for these other projects by forcing a choice between say the kernel and Subversion.
I think the best legal attack on this clause would be to say that they are being discriminatory in who they license to since first-sale probably doesn't apply when they give it away.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that this donation doesn't cost Microsoft a penny more than the trivial cost of media. Schools in Namibia could never afford to buy Microsoft software anyway so it's not like Microsoft is losing anything by giving them this "gift". Even if Microsoft gave them a complete suite of Windows-equipped software including the OS for every one of those computers Microsoft would still come out ahead because of the gains in PR and goodwill for the company, and the exposure of all those kids to Microsoft's brand and products. So everyone would win because MS is getting good publicity and exposure by doing something that doesn't cost them anything but greatly benefits the public of Namibia. That's what corporate philantropy should be like.
But, Microsoft wanted more. They wanted to turn this into a sales opportunity as well and grab a chance to lock even some of the world's poorest into their exploitative upgrade cycles. Make no mistake, if these people had taken this deal, all that money would be pure profit for MS.
So, really, MS has no interest in making actual donations - they really just want to milk everyone while making it look like they are making a meaningful contribution. This "gift" was nothing more than a sleazy sales tactic and I'm glad that Nambia isn't "buying" into it.
Remember when it used to be free to register domains?
All these companies seem to think that the Web is like a magazine: their neat little layout is all anyone should be allowed to use. But they forget that the Web was intentially designed to facilitate deep linking and URL-typing for the purpose of transparent information exchange. They don't get to decide the layout and presentation of the data once they publish it so that it is accessible through an URL.
There is nothing about implicit permission to view here. I assert that they are EXPLICITLY granting permission to any and all to view the document when they publish it via a non-password protected URL.
That is the very foundation of the Web...without it we have interactive television.
I always just lie. I've used Windows enough that I can imagine what they are trying to do in my head, so I just fake that I'm doing it while actually doing the equivalent in Linux. e.g. "Go to Start, click Run, type w-i-n-i-p-c-f-g, hit OK, select the Ethernet adaptor from the pulldown list, and read me the MAC address" == "type ifconfig in bash". Works pretty well and so far none of them have ever figured out that I wasn't using Windows.
I don't think that you deserved the abusive flamebait moderation that you received, but I still disagree with you strongly.
I disagree that Paypal has not promoted itself as a secure option. Note this interview, linked on the front page of Paypal. Then surf on over to this page in which Paypal states that "The security of your information, transactions, and money is the core of our business and our top priority at PayPal." Looks to me like they are in fact promoting their business as something other than what it is. In my mind, that's unethical at best and fraud at worst.
So, I don't think everyone knows that Paypal has such poor security. You and I know that, because we make an effort to stay informed about such issues. But you sure wouldn't know that reading their site. And when I've mentioned PayPal's record to many of my less sophisticated Ebay using friends, they have in general been totally suprised and shocked to hear the evidence against Paypal.
I have NEVER suggested that Paypal should eat the costs of all consumer fraud, though you seem to think that's what I'm suggesting. I AM NOT. I agree that there is always some degree of risk in an online transaction, and that's not Paypal's fault. But just as people should take responsibility for the security of their own money, Paypal needs to take responsibility for what they have been doing. Instead, they try to hide behind a cloak of facelessness and claiming that they are exempt from the rules that apply to all other similar businesses.
This is by no means an issue of the government beating up on poor little Paypal and taking their right to run their business as they see fit. This is an issue of Paypal stealing from customers and aiding and abetting in fraud by others by refusing to even turn over evidence against those who perpetrate it.
I don't think PayPal should "eat" any costs for these fradulent transactions. They do not provide insurance on transfers. But I think they have an absolute obligation to investigate complaints of fraud, including publication of detailed contact information and tracking of illicit purchases such as this. Paypal could easily work with the merchant involved in that transaction and get the order stopped and the individual found through shipping information, etc. The could go to the FBI or some other authority with this data. But they refuse to do so because they do not want to employ even enough staff to do minimal protection of their customers.
It *is* a problem with their security because they don't have any security other than a password. A password will not magically protect you from all evildoers and is even a rather weak form of authentication when they could be using e.g. some sort of downloadable client with a private key signature scheme. This is necessary IMHO for these sorts of high risk environments like the one Paypal serves. And authentication alone is not enough - they must take steps to investigate claims of fraud and punish those who perpetrate it.
It is well known and has been for a long time among criminal elements online that Paypal is an easy target for fraud and that little investigation is done. This attracts more of this tyoe of person to Paypal.
I know I made the right decision when I closed my account with them a long time ago, when their abuses first began to surface. If they are handling people's money, security should be their foremost concern, and I didn't trust them with the security of my money. Not to mention that they are probably stealing people's money directly themselves.
I'd like to know why you seem to support this behavior as strongly as seem to based on your comment history. Do you have some interest in promoting Paypal?
Actually, I'm running Freetype 2.1.2 under XFree86 4.2.1, and I have the subpixel hinting because I compiled everything myself (it does help). I'm using the exact same fonts as I do under Windows XP because I simply mounted my NTFS partition and copied all the fonts that came with Windows. I'm using the correct fonts (I checked), and I have tweaked all my applications like Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc. to use them. And my fonts DO look loads better than they've ever looked in Linux before. Believe me, I've put a lot of effort into beautifying my Linux font rendering.
But: they still don't look quite as nice as ClearType does under XP with the same fonts and the same laptop. They look pretty good, but they still aren't as sharp and readable.
Main things I think still need improvement:
1. Ironing out the occasional font rendering glitches I've seen under Freetype2. Sometimes my fonts are just plain misrendered under X (glitches like parts of letters missing, etc).
2. Integration/standardization of font interfaces across different applications: I shouldn't have to individually tweak every application under Linux with special settings to make the fonts look good (for example, having to set the point size ranges, hinting, etc in Mozilla or OpenOffice). All applications should just ask the central font renderer for these things without me having to go in and tell them to do that.
I'm not saying that Linux has no hope, because it's gotten much much better in the last little bit. And I'm going to continue using Linux as my main OS regardless. I'm just saying that this area still needs some work before it can match Microsoft, much as I loathe them. If I had any desire to boot into XP I would take screenshots to show you the difference and prove that I actually have my Linux fonts set up correctly (I do). Someday I'll get around to doing that and I'll put them on my site, but not today.
Let me start by saying that I *despise* Windows XP, and not because I'm biased against Microsoft. I dual boot my desktop machine between Windows 2k and Linux and I have to say that the two are comparable in stability and performance (ie, neither ever crashes). I got XP Pro when it came preinstalled on my new laptop, and it is total crap. Applications crash far more often under XP with the *same* version as under 2k and I've seen the entire OS go down more than once in what little I've used it. And XP runs much slower than 2k does on my slower desktop machine! With UI bugs galore!
So, I basically use my laptop for Gentoo Linux now and only boot to XP when I need to use one of the few programs I have no replacement for under Linux (like Photoshop and Freehand). But, much as I dislike XP, I have to say that ClearType looks incredible on my laptop screen. It's the sharpest I've ever seen fonts (with the possible exception of Macs that friends had).
Now, why can't Linux have this kind of functionality? After much work, my fonts look pretty good in Fluxbox and various applications. But they still don't even come close to ClearType and I still often see misrendered fonts, etc. I personally think that X would benefit greatly from having some higher level functionality rolled into it (like fonts) so that fonts would look great in all apps with minimal effort. I know that isn't what X is meant for, but font rendering is pretty basic and necessary for most any GUI.
I agree, and you should have the right to wave either one (or any other flag you want) in public. I can't understand how flag waving could possibly be considered as anything other than free speech - it's CLEARLY political speech, which should have the highest protection of all. I don't think the flying of those flags should be enshrined in state law (unless a lot of people agree that it should be), but I should be able to show my support for any flag I want. Any attempt to suppress such flags is nothing less than sacrificing the _principle_ of free speech for something as trivial as people's feelings.
I doubt it. XML is specifically designed around interoperability, and I don't think MS can charge for use of a standard they don't own. That's why I think that they will break standards compatibility somehow.
Maybe I wasn't clear before, but an economic system does not carry values, good or bad. A system is good when it minimizes general human suffering, and no system exists that could do that better than capitalism at the moment. The problem with replacing the system as it exists is that there would be nothing to regulate wealth anymore. Environmental destruction is in some ways a failure by the government to regulate industry and a sign that power has swung too far from government, and in other ways it is the INEVITABLE consequence of massive overpopulation.
Companies are simply a tool for giving the economy (ie the "People") what they want, and the People are demanding more conveniences etc at the cost of the environment. The problem is not capitalism, it is the fact that we have 6 billion people and growing on a planet that should not be able to sustain even a fraction of that.
I disagree that it is possible to move towards a classless society. There is no way that everyone in the world could live at US standards of wealth without draining the Earth's resources, so those who have wealth now would have to give it up. And because wealth is power, that will never happen. It doesn't matter who has the power, the government or the rich, but someone WILL always have power because people are inherently selfish as individuals and some people will always be in a position to take advantage of others. That's not a flaw in the system, that's life.
How on earth could that possibly work? You're saying that the government should stay out of the economy, but that the economy should still take on goals of the common good. You can't make people do that unless you have government of other structural coercion, because an economy of the "people" will almost certainly lead to concentration of power around money, and the individuals who have money will likely not be interested in the goals of the average individual. It is inevitable that someone will have power over others in any functioning economy, be it the government in a socialist system or the greedy capitalists in ours. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it allows society to function without chaos and tyranny of the majority. The problem is just trying to make sure that there is a balance between different groups with power, rather than allowing it shift completely to one group.
There's nothing inherently wrong with capitalism, and much that is very good, since it tends to regulate itself pretty well. But it does need government checks from time to time, so it's important to have a strong government as well.
IPX/SPX?
Though that doesn't do exactly the same thing...
You can get PDF readers on virtually any platform, so I don't see a problem with it. Would you rather they post it in Microsoft Word format like quite a few braindead government sites I've seen do?
PDF is actually a decent portable format as long as it isn't overused for things that aren't suited to it.
It'd be nice if the drivers for my laptop's Radeon would allow me to set XFree86 at even AGP 4X without massive instability - I still get hard lockups if I run it for more than 30 seconds at higher than 2X mode.
I also think this is the most likely explanation for the Founder's intent. I believe that the 2nd Amendment exists as a type of "right to revolution", so that the means would always exist to remove an abusive government. This makes the 2nd Amendment one of the most important parts of the Bill of Rights, since it protects all the other rights.
This "database" idea will have no effect on crime prevention or enforcement and will end up just being a means for the government to track who the honest gun owners are (since the dishonest ones will certainly not have their weapons in this database).
That's a problem with the police and the law, not with Mozilla. Technology should not be held back because of some irrational and uninformed fear of "bad information" and a mentality that they should try to nail everyone they can. It really seems to me that any decent lawyer would be able to get you off on a charge like that, especially given that they likely could prove that the page was doing it.
I agree, the dependency hell was definitely the main reason I switched from Redhat to Gentoo. The *fact* that it runs much faster on my laptop as well is a nice bonus, but that's not what keeps me there. What keeps me using Gentoo is this:
1. Package versions are updated very promptly. If you're running a server, Gentoo has a nice mailing list with GLSA's (Gentoo Linux Security Announcements) that easily keep you up to date with what needs to be upgraded. When you do upgrade, it's basically a one-line command and I can let it build in the background (and I don't agree that the "compile time" makes the security upgrades less timely: for one, most server apps are pretty small and can be built in 5 minutes, and for another, Gentoo will come out with a new ebuild script much much sooner, in my experience, than Redhat, et al. So I can build the new one before Redhat even rolls a new RPM.)
2. I know exactly what I'm getting when I install something in Gentoo. Gentoo uses the official versions of everything rather than their own hacked up editions (reference the GCC 2.96 issue, etc). An exception is their custom kernel sources, but it is well documented what that contains.
3. Even though compile time exists, user hassle is reduced. Most installs require very little interaction from the user to complete. I got sick of going out and finding the RPM I needed, making sure it was the right kind of RPM (Mandrake, Redhat, Suse...), having RPM reject it, and having to go out and find dependencies...
4. I can enforce compile options system-wide or even rebuild the entire system with new options using a single command.
5. Compile time and setup issues decrease as the system matures. Once you've built up a sizable collection of libraries, etc. compile times tend to be greatly reduced since the dependencies are not updated as frequently as main apps. Also, if you know what you're doing, it's very easy to get Gentoo setup exactly how you want it. I never figured out how to achieve this level of customization in Redhat and now that I have it I can work VERY efficiently.
So, contrary to belief of those who haven't tried it, Gentoo really does save you maintenance time if you know what you're doing enough to get it set up correctly. No more fighting conflicting sets of RPMs from Ximian, Redhat, and the Mozilla site everytime I upgrade Mozilla. That alone was enough to convince me of its superiority.
I think it does make sense because it's more evidence that there are planets in other star systems in great abundance. It shows that there are possibly other solar systems similar to our own, which also contains large gas giants. The Earth wouldn't be detectable either with current technology at that range, but Jupiter might be. Basically this discovery provides evidence that our own solar system is not completely unique in its very existence; you have to have planets to have life (as far as we know). So while this isn't direct evidence of life, it is another piece of evidence to support the hypothesis that there are other solar systems like our own that may contain life.
For one thing, gasoline is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, not just octane. Many of those other constituents produce CO when burned. For another, gasoline doesn't burn with 100% efficiency, so a number of side reactions will occur; some will produce CO as a product.
I think people are mistaken that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas: I believe that it is. It's just that the carbon in the CO2 from biomass fuels like this alcohol is not derived from fossil reserves like gasoline is. So it's not contributing directly to increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
(Note that I said directly: I think that this method of generating fuel will still contribute to a net increase in atmospheric carbon if for instance large swaths of forest are destroyed to grow the sugarcane.)
I don't doubt that the website repairs could be done very cheaply, but anything where lawyers get involved quickly gets expensive. Especially when you're potentially defending yourself against a whole group of people. I'm not saying they shouldn't have just fixed the site, but I am saying that people need to have some common sense about what is and is not worth sueing over.
Why do these people feel the need to reach for their lawyers before even using common sense? What on earth is the point of voice-accessible websites for an airline when virtually ALL airlines provide 24-hour a day toll-free phone numbers where you can talk to a real person and/or use an automated system to do everything you can do on the Web?
I know that some airlines charge more for reservations not made online, but that could easily be waived for the disabled if they didn't have another option. It just seems nuts to me to try to force a company to spend millions of dollars that will be passed on to all the other customers for something that is a non-problem. The airlines already have voice information - on the original voice communicator - the PHONE! ;)
Yeah, it's the whole bait and switch aspect of this that's worrisome to me. As much as I disagree with the idea that any company should be able to tell me what I can do with something not related _directly_ to their product, I could accept that if they had said "this is the deal" right at the start, and let people make an informed decision about whether they were willing to be bound by that. But they've clearly just done this to lock people in and then try to squash competition. A very Redmondian tactic if you ask me.
Whatever happened to the idea that software should compete on its merits rather than by trying to hobble its competitors? I say, the sooner we have a functional replacement for this, the sooner we will be free of onerous and unfair practices like what's going on here.
Reading the LKML thread, the recurring theme was "we just don't want to help our competition for free". But the misleading, deliberately or not, thing about saying that is that the actual clause goes far beyond just prohibiting the use of BK for direct use in developing Subversion, for instance. It actually stops you from using it when you are simply working on an *unrelated* competing project that does *not* use BK. Frankly, that's not their business to decide and is designed as a way to siphon off developer support for these other projects by forcing a choice between say the kernel and Subversion.
I think the best legal attack on this clause would be to say that they are being discriminatory in who they license to since first-sale probably doesn't apply when they give it away.
Check again...click on the little link that says "International Pricing" and they give much higher figures in USD....