It really depends on what you want to do with it. The people from the fink people have done an excellent job of getting *nix apps working but if you think a *nix person will sit down and be instantly at home, think again.
When I first bought my NeXTStation I thought it would be like sitting down in front of a Solaris box... boy, was I wrong... it took me a while just to get used to NeXT way of configuring stuff, THEN I had to actually make it work for me. You were supposed to use the config app to configure stuff, but it couldn't do everything so you had to drop back to text files. Some of the standard/etc text files were gone, some were still there but didn't actually do anything and some behaved normally. You didn't know which ones which without trial and error. The Unix file hierarchy was also destroyed with/Apps directories scattered about and binaries in/usr/etc (I still don't understand that). The schizophrenia has gotten better, but that was done by making OSX even less Unix like.
If you want a usable system that works the way it's supposed to, OSX is great. It's a beautiful system, but it's not "pretty Unix", it's a Mac workstation and selling it to people as anything but isn't telling them the whole story.
I had about 2GB of documentation dumped onto me for a project. The documentation had no visible structure nor any place to really start tackling it so I decided to just index it all. The documentation was on my Windows2000 machine and I put ASPSeek (a GPL'd search engine that no one seems to know about) on one of my Linux workstations. I used pdftotext and word2txt as filters and let it chew through the documentation. The results were good enough that, when I left the project and shut down the ASPSeek interface, it took about 15 minutes before someone (who already had it all indexed on his Windows2000 workstation) was at my desk trying to get me to turn it back on.
...Herbert von Karajan wanted longer time to store
Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in one disk, then
Sony's proposal, today's standard 12cm CD, was
fixed.
Hmm.. it's an interesting theory, but it's got a bit of urban legend feel to it. Not only because of it's simplicity (ie, "Yeah, didn't you know, a CD is 76 minutes because that's how long Nr. 9 is.") but also because I've got a Deutsche Grammophone CD of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic's performance of Beethoven's 9th. And guess what? There's more on there than just the symphony.. there's also a 9 minute performance of the Coriolan Overture. It's unlikely that Karajan (a big fan of subtlety) decided to go 10% faster that day.
If gnome's anti-aliasing makes it harder to read then their implementation sucks...
No, font smoothing is a subjectively useful feature at best, for many it's a source of eye fatigue.
Also it's l33t d00d attitudes like yourself that help make sure that linux doesn't get anywhere.
How so? All I was arguing was that having to make an effort to enable a feature that you want but is not enabled by default is not endemic to only Open Source. You completely missed my examples of two features that I find indispensible (unlike font blurring) but is not available to Windows users without third party software or require a registry hack. Is Windows "Not Ready for the Desktop (tm)?"
In ten years when the linux desktop revolution never happened hey you can always post some lame anti-microsoft crap and talk about how everyone's mom should be thrilled to go fucking around in the x config files just to turn on anti-aliased fonts...
This is worse than mucking with the registry, how? Not that I think you'll actually read this time, but FYI there's a big-ass "Enable Font Antialiasing" checkbox in KDE. It'll be there in Gnome soon too. And every whiner like yourself can find something else to harp on about...
Your attitude is silly, yes indeed, it is.
Reading comprehension.. learn it, love it, use it.
This is the kind of shit that makes people say linux is hard.
Can't they just put a button somewhere that you click and it automagically works?
I mean ximian's whole point is trying to sell a usable open source desktop that anybody can use...
Sorry but if that's the best they can do, or they think that is "usable by the masses" then ximian has some issues...
Font blurring has nothing to do with usability. Actually it makes stuff even harder to see. So, how does this make "using" Gnome hard? If you want to play with stuff prepare for some challenges.
"I don't see how anyone can claim that windows is easy to use.. I mean, I can't even get it to do virtual desktops and I have to edit the friggin' registry to turn on focus-follows-mouse mode! Windows won't be "ready for the desktop" until there's a simple check box somewhere to turn these on.. how hard could it be? Gnome has had them for YEARS."
My disappointment isn't because of the electoral college, or whether the popular vote chose one man over another.. No, it was watching both candidates claiming that they "won" without caring about the people *or* the system they were in. Inaguration was months away, and they had plenty of time to resolve the situation. It's not as if the rules are difficult. Instead, they started legal action against each other. That's when I lost faith not in the system, but in the people running it. I knew they were all wankers before, but the last election fiasco was over the top.
As for the Electoral College thing, that could have been eliminated by precedence if only GWB had said "I understand that the Electoral College has chosen me, but I choose to honor the will of the people. I can not accept this honor in good conscience and will be stepping down from the race." After that, the EC would still be there, but any succeeding president would have to consider following suit (in the event popular vote/EC mismatch) or lose face. (It also probably would have gotten GWB elected in a landslide 4 years later)
Can you tell us why your system admins didn't keep better records? I understand that the audit seems draconian, and I in no way agree with what MS is doing. However it should only be a matter of handing over a set of licenses to the MS monkeys, unless the systems in question really are not in compliance with the licenses.
Actually, according to the BSA you need more than those shiny license thingies from MS to defend a license. You also need to original receipt or PO. You could have a boxed copy of Windows with media, in shrinkwrap, but if you can cough up the receipt you're "non-compliant". Not only is this a burden to normal companies who don't normally correlate the paperwork between IT and purchasing but for a school who gets a donated machine, all they have to show for it is (at best) that stupid piece of paper saying "Genuine Microsoft License" and a couple of CD's.
Please avoid MySQL if you are just learning SQL. You'll just have to unlearn all of the workarounds for the features (such as real transactions, and referential integrity to name two) which it is missing when you move to a real database.
Actually, for those reasons I'd say MySQL is a great starting point. With MySQL you can start with SELECT * FROM my_table without having to worry about the extra stuff PostgreSQL offers (and the added administration burden). Simple and clean. From that point you can move to PostgreSQL and learn constaints, transactions, PL/pgSQL, etc. When you're ready to play with the big dogs, you can then move on to Oracle 9i or DB2 where 90% of your time is spent on configuration, optimization and maintenance.
PostgreSQL isn't a terrible starting point. Getting used to it's more unique features like table inheritance and virtually infinite extensibility, however, will bite you in the ass when moving on more than knowing how to survive without transactions will.
No one has yet to be able to hack into my ethernet enabled brick either.. It was difficult to make (what with drilling the hole and trying to mash the UTP end into it) but it was well worth it for the security!
I've personally pirated many books. I think it's actually some sort of compulsive disorder... every time I read a good book, I can't fight the urge to just give it to someone else so they can read it. I mean, they didn't even pay for it, yet I'm letting them read my copy!
I know, I know.. I'm going to Hell, but what can I do?
What a depressing statement. As generosity isn't exactly about money, I'd say everyone can afford to be generous.
What you're talking about is something else. It's when you keep something to yourself which has no monetary value and gives you no benefit. Perhaps that should have been "Everyone can afford to be miserly."
That's not meant as a flame. I'm just curious why they chose Linux instead of a BSD. I don't exactly care to follow the licensing terms behind all the different open/free software so I'm unaware if that's an issue, but using a BSD would seem to be a wiser choice being that they're "trying" to get an OS X on x86.
Well, it's probably something along the lines of this reasoning..
Developer A: Hey, before we start working on GNUStep, shouldn't we decide on a license?
Developer B: What? It's already GNU you idiot. That's what the GNU is for. Get the hell out of here.. And leave my Cocoa Crispies...
When Open Source advocates realize this, they'll start developing software the community needs, not just themselves. Its ok that it started off selfish, but it needs to end with cooperation and community.
Then, the linux community can say "We support Linux better than any MS Support service! And our support is $0.00 per hour."
Beautiful vision... except for the developers. It's no longer good enough to freely give your works away for the benefit of everone. No... now we're all arrogant asses because we're not doing what you want. It's considered rude to even remind people that they're getting stuff for free and that if they want a new feature, maybe they should do some of the work.
A community is about mutual benefit... people who do nothing don't benefit anyone. *We* are our community. Not grandma, auntie Mae, or Joe Sixpack.
I'm not ready to become a Morlock just yet, thank you.
There are still differences between servers, but it's getting better. If you start working on WebSphere the are a few differences in the way the EJBs are written as well as how they are deployed vs. something like WebLogic but if you're using Visual Age for Java (which makes EJB creation a breeze) that's not your biggest problem. WAS 3.0-3.5 is a colossal PITA to work with without blowing it up.. if a job offer is involves any app server support, run away. WAS 4.0 has improved the compatibility and it's got a better EJB builder so you can whip up a new one quickly even if the old one doesn't work but the maintainability, although a lot better, still leaves a bit to be desired.
People who use linux have their reasons. People who use BSD have their reasons. After so much hot air, any one who would be converted in either direction by a/. post was converted long ago.
Actually, I disagree.. Many people using Linux or BSD are doing so out of habit or prejudice.. The more coverage both OS's get (both in contrast and standing alone) the more likely it is that someone like me who has never used BSD will be able to make an *informed* decision to switch a few servers.
Never comparing them leads to tunnel vision. Even fighting about the pro's and con's is better than nothing.
This will allow higher bandwidth and better services
Not true. Whenever a scarce resource becomes available there is a sort of land grab. Because of the nature and cost of this particular resource, the players grabbing the "land" are the people who are already the key players in the market.
Now, when a new company comes along with their pimp 10Mb protocol they don't have the ability to go through the usual FCC channels to buy bandwidth. One of three things will happen:
1. The squatting companies demands an insane amount of money for the band creating at best an additional cost to be passed on to consumers, or at worse a barrier to entry.
2. The squatting companies will tell the startup to get bent.
3. The squatting companies will allow the startup to use the band, but requires that they use a "standard" protocol such as CDMA (yay for 9600bps!!).
"Bad company!" "No we aren't" "Yes you are" "No we aren't"... etc, while it's business as usual for microsoft.
Actually it's more like:
DOJ: Bad company!
MS: No we aren't.
DOJ: Yes you are.
MS: No we aren't.
Judge: Yes you are.
MS: Well, maybe, but not that bad.
Appeals Court: Actually, you were, but so was the Judge.
MS: Ah ha!! So the trail was unfair.
Appeals: Well, not quite. You're still bad.
DOJ: We can't tell who's bad anymore.
MS: Definitely not us.
DOJ: Hmm.. You're not? Ok, then. Maybe it's us that's bad?
State AG's: Excuse me?
How many of those spin off projects have produced usable applications? How many of the mozilla ports actually work?
I myself have used Galeon, Komodo, Bugzilla and Rhino (JavaScript in Java) without problems. Rhino has actually influenced the creation of other projects itself.
The only time an Open Source project fails is when people can no longer find the source.
Mozilla itself could be abandoned tomorrow and it'd still be a success.. one merely needs to look at the Mozilla projects page to see the vast quantity of spin-off projects that Mozilla started. Not only are there the well known ones such as Gecko and Bugzilla but there are many, many others like two JavaScript interpreters (one in C++, one in Java), the Netscape Portable Runtime and XPCOM. There's even a commercial product (Komodo)!
Or maybe the code for the site is something like the following (except, presumably in VB):
if (!(user-agent ~=/$Mozilla\/4/) && !(user-agent ~= Netscape6)) { show_error(); };
There's no reason to assume that they intended on blocking all third party browsers, rather, they probably wanted to block all 3rd generation browsers and used a less than complete detection routine. If malice were the goal, and I were the one doing it, I would have blocked Netscape 4 as well.. NS6 people have made their choice, but NS4 users are ripe for an "upgrade".
You may want to wait until we're talking about key escrow again.. Or, conversely you could actually read the bill which has nothing to do with enabling law enforcement deal with crypto.
This bill is about crippling an entire group of industries to help another industry combat imagined losses..
the bill would bar U.S. banks from doing business with offshore "shell banks" that have no physical office or affiliation with a legitimate bank.
How does one determine what a "legitimate bank" is? Even in the Carribean, a bank has to start somewhere... and that probably doesn't include a $75 million bank office.
This could seriously impare my plans to start my own bank.
I find it a little bit disconcerting that I, as an MIT student, am paying tuition to help devalue the very education that I am paying for. The cost will ultimately fall on me to make these materials available to everyone else.
Hey, it could be worse, you're paying a premium to attend a quality university *and* to share knowledge with the rest of the world helping inch us closer to Utopia.
I'm at Michigan State where tax money and students tuition are paying a premium to provide a Big Ten athletics program.
Actually, as Nader said, Gore cost him the election.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say "I'd vote for [blank] but then I'd be throwing my vote away so I'll just vote for (Bush|Gore)" -- better yet, if I had a freakin' vote every time -- maybe the major parties would pull their heads out of their asses and realize a lot of us don't like them any more.
But, that's a pipe dream. People like to play it safe.
The status quo wouln't be the status quo if it changed.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't. http://www.apple.com/macosx
/etc text files were gone, some were still there but didn't actually do anything and some behaved normally. You didn't know which ones which without trial and error. The Unix file hierarchy was also destroyed with /Apps directories scattered about and binaries in /usr/etc (I still don't understand that). The schizophrenia has gotten better, but that was done by making OSX even less Unix like.
It really depends on what you want to do with it. The people from the fink people have done an excellent job of getting *nix apps working but if you think a *nix person will sit down and be instantly at home, think again.
When I first bought my NeXTStation I thought it would be like sitting down in front of a Solaris box... boy, was I wrong... it took me a while just to get used to NeXT way of configuring stuff, THEN I had to actually make it work for me. You were supposed to use the config app to configure stuff, but it couldn't do everything so you had to drop back to text files. Some of the standard
If you want a usable system that works the way it's supposed to, OSX is great. It's a beautiful system, but it's not "pretty Unix", it's a Mac workstation and selling it to people as anything but isn't telling them the whole story.
I had about 2GB of documentation dumped onto me for a project. The documentation had no visible structure nor any place to really start tackling it so I decided to just index it all. The documentation was on my Windows2000 machine and I put ASPSeek (a GPL'd search engine that no one seems to know about) on one of my Linux workstations. I used pdftotext and word2txt as filters and let it chew through the documentation. The results were good enough that, when I left the project and shut down the ASPSeek interface, it took about 15 minutes before someone (who already had it all indexed on his Windows2000 workstation) was at my desk trying to get me to turn it back on.
...Herbert von Karajan wanted longer time to store Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in one disk, then Sony's proposal, today's standard 12cm CD, was fixed.
Hmm.. it's an interesting theory, but it's got a bit of urban legend feel to it. Not only because of it's simplicity (ie, "Yeah, didn't you know, a CD is 76 minutes because that's how long Nr. 9 is.") but also because I've got a Deutsche Grammophone CD of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic's performance of Beethoven's 9th. And guess what? There's more on there than just the symphony.. there's also a 9 minute performance of the Coriolan Overture. It's unlikely that Karajan (a big fan of subtlety) decided to go 10% faster that day.
If gnome's anti-aliasing makes it harder to read then their implementation sucks...
No, font smoothing is a subjectively useful feature at best, for many it's a source of eye fatigue.
Also it's l33t d00d attitudes like yourself that help make sure that linux doesn't get anywhere.
How so? All I was arguing was that having to make an effort to enable a feature that you want but is not enabled by default is not endemic to only Open Source. You completely missed my examples of two features that I find indispensible (unlike font blurring) but is not available to Windows users without third party software or require a registry hack. Is Windows "Not Ready for the Desktop (tm)?"
In ten years when the linux desktop revolution never happened hey you can always post some lame anti-microsoft crap and talk about how everyone's mom should be thrilled to go fucking around in the x config files just to turn on anti-aliased fonts...
This is worse than mucking with the registry, how? Not that I think you'll actually read this time, but FYI there's a big-ass "Enable Font Antialiasing" checkbox in KDE. It'll be there in Gnome soon too. And every whiner like yourself can find something else to harp on about...
Your attitude is silly, yes indeed, it is.
Reading comprehension.. learn it, love it, use it.
This is the kind of shit that makes people say linux is hard.
Can't they just put a button somewhere that you click and it automagically works?
I mean ximian's whole point is trying to sell a usable open source desktop that anybody can use...
Sorry but if that's the best they can do, or they think that is "usable by the masses" then ximian has some issues...
Font blurring has nothing to do with usability. Actually it makes stuff even harder to see. So, how does this make "using" Gnome hard? If you want to play with stuff prepare for some challenges.
"I don't see how anyone can claim that windows is easy to use.. I mean, I can't even get it to do virtual desktops and I have to edit the friggin' registry to turn on focus-follows-mouse mode! Windows won't be "ready for the desktop" until there's a simple check box somewhere to turn these on.. how hard could it be? Gnome has had them for YEARS."
Silly, isn't it.
-1 Offtopic
My disappointment isn't because of the electoral college, or whether the popular vote chose one man over another.. No, it was watching both candidates claiming that they "won" without caring about the people *or* the system they were in. Inaguration was months away, and they had plenty of time to resolve the situation. It's not as if the rules are difficult. Instead, they started legal action against each other. That's when I lost faith not in the system, but in the people running it. I knew they were all wankers before, but the last election fiasco was over the top.
As for the Electoral College thing, that could have been eliminated by precedence if only GWB had said "I understand that the Electoral College has chosen me, but I choose to honor the will of the people. I can not accept this honor in good conscience and will be stepping down from the race." After that, the EC would still be there, but any succeeding president would have to consider following suit (in the event popular vote/EC mismatch) or lose face. (It also probably would have gotten GWB elected in a landslide 4 years later)
Can you tell us why your system admins didn't keep better records? I understand that the audit seems draconian, and I in no way agree with what MS is doing. However it should only be a matter of handing over a set of licenses to the MS monkeys, unless the systems in question really are not in compliance with the licenses.
Actually, according to the BSA you need more than those shiny license thingies from MS to defend a license. You also need to original receipt or PO. You could have a boxed copy of Windows with media, in shrinkwrap, but if you can cough up the receipt you're "non-compliant". Not only is this a burden to normal companies who don't normally correlate the paperwork between IT and purchasing but for a school who gets a donated machine, all they have to show for it is (at best) that stupid piece of paper saying "Genuine Microsoft License" and a couple of CD's.
Please avoid MySQL if you are just learning SQL. You'll just have to unlearn all of the workarounds for the features (such as real transactions, and referential integrity to name two) which it is missing when you move to a real database.
Actually, for those reasons I'd say MySQL is a great starting point. With MySQL you can start with SELECT * FROM my_table without having to worry about the extra stuff PostgreSQL offers (and the added administration burden). Simple and clean. From that point you can move to PostgreSQL and learn constaints, transactions, PL/pgSQL, etc. When you're ready to play with the big dogs, you can then move on to Oracle 9i or DB2 where 90% of your time is spent on configuration, optimization and maintenance.
PostgreSQL isn't a terrible starting point. Getting used to it's more unique features like table inheritance and virtually infinite extensibility, however, will bite you in the ass when moving on more than knowing how to survive without transactions will.
dan
No one has yet to be able to hack into my ethernet enabled brick either.. It was difficult to make (what with drilling the hole and trying to mash the UTP end into it) but it was well worth it for the security!
OpenSSH in NOT enabled in the default install.
Yes it is.. I just installed it two weeks ago and when I was done I ssh'd into the newly created machine. It never asked me if I wanted it.
It even allows remote root login (it strongly advises otherwise, but it allows it).
dan
I've personally pirated many books. I think it's actually some sort of compulsive disorder... every time I read a good book, I can't fight the urge to just give it to someone else so they can read it. I mean, they didn't even pay for it, yet I'm letting them read my copy!
I know, I know.. I'm going to Hell, but what can I do?
Few can afford to be generous.
What a depressing statement. As generosity isn't exactly about money, I'd say everyone can afford to be generous.
What you're talking about is something else. It's when you keep something to yourself which has no monetary value and gives you no benefit. Perhaps that should have been "Everyone can afford to be miserly."
That's not meant as a flame. I'm just curious why they chose Linux instead of a BSD. I don't exactly care to follow the licensing terms behind all the different open/free software so I'm unaware if that's an issue, but using a BSD would seem to be a wiser choice being that they're "trying" to get an OS X on x86.
Well, it's probably something along the lines of this reasoning..
Developer A: Hey, before we start working on GNUStep, shouldn't we decide on a license?
Developer B: What? It's already GNU you idiot. That's what the GNU is for. Get the hell out of here.. And leave my Cocoa Crispies...
At least, that's what I would do.
When Open Source advocates realize this, they'll start developing software the community needs, not just themselves. Its ok that it started off selfish, but it needs to end with cooperation and community.
Then, the linux community can say "We support Linux better than any MS Support service! And our support is $0.00 per hour."
Beautiful vision... except for the developers. It's no longer good enough to freely give your works away for the benefit of everone. No... now we're all arrogant asses because we're not doing what you want. It's considered rude to even remind people that they're getting stuff for free and that if they want a new feature, maybe they should do some of the work.
A community is about mutual benefit... people who do nothing don't benefit anyone. *We* are our community. Not grandma, auntie Mae, or Joe Sixpack.
I'm not ready to become a Morlock just yet, thank you.
There are still differences between servers, but it's getting better. If you start working on WebSphere the are a few differences in the way the EJBs are written as well as how they are deployed vs. something like WebLogic but if you're using Visual Age for Java (which makes EJB creation a breeze) that's not your biggest problem. WAS 3.0-3.5 is a colossal PITA to work with without blowing it up.. if a job offer is involves any app server support, run away. WAS 4.0 has improved the compatibility and it's got a better EJB builder so you can whip up a new one quickly even if the old one doesn't work but the maintainability, although a lot better, still leaves a bit to be desired.
People who use linux have their reasons. People who use BSD have their reasons. After so much hot air, any one who would be converted in either direction by a /. post was converted long ago.
Actually, I disagree.. Many people using Linux or BSD are doing so out of habit or prejudice.. The more coverage both OS's get (both in contrast and standing alone) the more likely it is that someone like me who has never used BSD will be able to make an *informed* decision to switch a few servers.
Never comparing them leads to tunnel vision. Even fighting about the pro's and con's is better than nothing.
This will allow higher bandwidth and better services
Not true. Whenever a scarce resource becomes available there is a sort of land grab. Because of the nature and cost of this particular resource, the players grabbing the "land" are the people who are already the key players in the market.
Now, when a new company comes along with their pimp 10Mb protocol they don't have the ability to go through the usual FCC channels to buy bandwidth. One of three things will happen:
1. The squatting companies demands an insane amount of money for the band creating at best an additional cost to be passed on to consumers, or at worse a barrier to entry.
2. The squatting companies will tell the startup to get bent.
3. The squatting companies will allow the startup to use the band, but requires that they use a "standard" protocol such as CDMA (yay for 9600bps!!).
That's why it's not good.
"Bad company!" "No we aren't" "Yes you are" "No we aren't"... etc, while it's business as usual for microsoft.
Actually it's more like:
DOJ: Bad company!
MS: No we aren't.
DOJ: Yes you are.
MS: No we aren't.
Judge: Yes you are.
MS: Well, maybe, but not that bad.
Appeals Court: Actually, you were, but so was the Judge.
MS: Ah ha!! So the trail was unfair.
Appeals: Well, not quite. You're still bad.
DOJ: We can't tell who's bad anymore.
MS: Definitely not us.
DOJ: Hmm.. You're not? Ok, then. Maybe it's us that's bad?
State AG's: Excuse me?
And here we are...
How many of those spin off projects have produced usable applications? How many of the mozilla ports actually work?
I myself have used Galeon, Komodo, Bugzilla and Rhino (JavaScript in Java) without problems. Rhino has actually influenced the creation of other projects itself.
Mozilla is an embarrasment to open source...
The only time an Open Source project fails is when people can no longer find the source.
Mozilla itself could be abandoned tomorrow and it'd still be a success.. one merely needs to look at the Mozilla projects page to see the vast quantity of spin-off projects that Mozilla started. Not only are there the well known ones such as Gecko and Bugzilla but there are many, many others like two JavaScript interpreters (one in C++, one in Java), the Netscape Portable Runtime and XPCOM. There's even a commercial product (Komodo)!
Or maybe the code for the site is something like the following (except, presumably in VB):
/$Mozilla\/4/) && !(user-agent ~= Netscape6)) { show_error(); };
if (!(user-agent ~=
There's no reason to assume that they intended on blocking all third party browsers, rather, they probably wanted to block all 3rd generation browsers and used a less than complete detection routine. If malice were the goal, and I were the one doing it, I would have blocked Netscape 4 as well.. NS6 people have made their choice, but NS4 users are ripe for an "upgrade".
You may want to wait until we're talking about key escrow again.. Or, conversely you could actually read the bill which has nothing to do with enabling law enforcement deal with crypto.
This bill is about crippling an entire group of industries to help another industry combat imagined losses..
Is there a -1 idiot moderation?
the bill would bar U.S. banks from doing business with offshore "shell banks" that have no physical office or affiliation with a legitimate bank.
How does one determine what a "legitimate bank" is? Even in the Carribean, a bank has to start somewhere... and that probably doesn't include a $75 million bank office.
This could seriously impare my plans to start my own bank.
I find it a little bit disconcerting that I, as an MIT student, am paying tuition to help devalue the very education that I am paying for. The cost will ultimately fall on me to make these materials available to everyone else.
Hey, it could be worse, you're paying a premium to attend a quality university *and* to share knowledge with the rest of the world helping inch us closer to Utopia.
I'm at Michigan State where tax money and students tuition are paying a premium to provide a Big Ten athletics program.
I think I'd rather be improving the world.
Nader cost the Democrats the Whitehouse.
Actually, as Nader said, Gore cost him the election.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say "I'd vote for [blank] but then I'd be throwing my vote away so I'll just vote for (Bush|Gore)" -- better yet, if I had a freakin' vote every time -- maybe the major parties would pull their heads out of their asses and realize a lot of us don't like them any more.
But, that's a pipe dream. People like to play it safe.
The status quo wouln't be the status quo if it changed.