The internet is supposed to be free, and is based on the idea of the sharing of information, freely. Charging would be absurd, and I for one would never pay for it. I already pay enough for broadband access, I don't need to lose more money every month. Plus, what are the sites going to do to attract customers, have an information 'preview' of the type of content they carry, like pr0n sites do? Ummm.... no.
Some seem to be losing sight of the bigger picture here. This kid created what is being billed as a parody site ( can anyone confirm this totally? has anyone seen the site? ), exercising his first amendment rights. Now, if his unjust discipline by the school had been 'let slide', then it only informs this school and others that it is okay to surpress a students ideas/expressions if they did not agree with it. This is plain wrong, immoral, and illegal. People are free to exercise the first amendment whenever they damn well choose, no exceptions ( though, in some settings, there are repurcussions, though this is not one of those settings ). Unfortunatly this fact is becoming more and more lost on people in a position of power, and it is nice to see this guy put back in his place. Now, my second point is, if this was a parody, and was billed as one, then it is even MORE protected by the laws of the USA than normal speech. Unfortuantly, more and more organizations & corporations are overlooking this fact also, resulting in anything from threats of judicial action to actual arrest and persecution ( See the story on www.salemnhpolice.com from last month ). Fortunatly, we have organizations such as the ACLU & EFF to help in these cases, otherwise we may have lost many more rights than we already have by now. It's a sad state of affairs when a people must fight to keep rights _already_ given to them by their government.
20. We invented ski-doos, jet-skis, velcro, zippers, zambonis,the long distance and short wave radios that save countless live each year.
That's quite interesting, considering ski-doos were invented in Wisconsin, USA by a man named Eliason(sp?) and Jet-skis were invented by a man from Arizona named Clayton Jacobson II. Damn Canuks, always taking us American's inventions. Blah...
I have to disagree with several of your points here. First off, you state 'buying a reliable whitebox will cost as much as a name brand'. Sometimes, yes, this holds true. But there is the fact that alot of 'name brand' systems use cheap hardware to keep costs down, as they are targeted at people who wouldn't know the difference anyway. So who says how reliable a name brand system is? Also, whitebox systems are usually considerably cheaper if you know how to shop for them, or better yet, build your own. Plus you are more or less guaranteed a higher level of PC compatability compared to such companies as Compaq. Plus, if your intenetion is to put a free OS onto this system, that compatability WILL help, and it will keep costs down. There is no way an off the shelf system is goin to compete pricewise with a properly purchased system witha freeOS. Aside from that, a *nix based evironment is far more open about what it is doing under the hood than a windows environment, along with being less obtuse about it. It is a known fact that M$ does not like disclosing how it all works, sure they have the published information but there is far more detail to the inner workings of Windows than those books disclose. Also, if you are trying to teach kids the inner workings of computers, an OS that is up front about it will be a better learning tool. Windows is not up front about it in any way. Oh, someone already stated this, but running a year 2000 version OS on a 1997 system will obviously support all the hardware, thought a 1997 version of linux will not, nor a 2000 version on a 2000 box. Actually, I take that last back, if you had built or ordered a box with the intention of running a *nix OS on it, you would have made sure you bought one that is totally standards compliant and ran on supported hardware. Just randomly buying a box, much less a Compaq, does not cut it for alternative OSs. As for your qualms with the TEST kernel, no matter what anyone says, it is still a TEST kernel. If something doesn't work, well, don't be surprised. You want stability? Run a stable kernel. Simple logic here. Now, I wonder, how did you try to install all of those OSs on your new system. Did you merely pop the CD in and go? I ask because, at least with OpenBSD, they inform you in the documentation that the generic install kernel won't work on all systems. You may need to tweek to get to the install, especially with not quite PC compliant hardware. I would imagine the same holds true for FreeBSD. As far as your Hercules card is concerned, if you want to utilize it, install X4.1, it's not a difficult process, and they even have a binary installation if compiling the whole thing is too much for you.
So, the point? Stop whining that the free OSs aren't up to par when the problem is not the OS, it's poor prior planning.
Yes, ignorance wins again. Well, actually, ignorance winning was inevitable. Hopefully Nadar will pull the 5% needed for matched federal funds, but that doesn't look like it'll happen either. Well, at least we have our guns.
Well, I attend UMass, so I have a bit of info for you. The school is heterogenous(?) in regard to their computing setup. They have a large Tru64 UNIX installed base, some VAXen, a few Sun boxes, a bunch of NT and Win9x boxes, and Mac boxes also. The point is, i doubt there would be any OS requirment whatsoever, and ( for CS students at least ) *nix would be encouraged even. But, I also do not see this laptop deal goin through at all, most students have a desktop at home/dorm, and would not need a laptop. Plus, UMass caters to _many_ degrees, with a whole campus dedicated mostly to Liberal Arts. Many of the degrees available would not make use of the students all having laptops. So, overall, it's a bad idea, though if they're givin out 85% off student discounts for a shiny new laptop I'll be there in a second!
Well, that hospitalization would be because the person couldn't handle what s/he took mentally, not that it was physically life threatening or something.
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The internet is supposed to be free, and is based on the idea of the sharing of information, freely. Charging would be absurd, and I for one would never pay for it. I already pay enough for broadband access, I don't need to lose more money every month. Plus, what are the sites going to do to attract customers, have an information 'preview' of the type of content they carry, like pr0n sites do? Ummm.... no.
Some seem to be losing sight of the bigger picture here. This kid created what is being billed as a parody site ( can anyone confirm this totally? has anyone seen the site? ), exercising his first amendment rights. Now, if his unjust discipline by the school had been 'let slide', then it only informs this school and others that it is okay to surpress a students ideas/expressions if they did not agree with it. This is plain wrong, immoral, and illegal. People are free to exercise the first amendment whenever they damn well choose, no exceptions ( though, in some settings, there are repurcussions, though this is not one of those settings ). Unfortunatly this fact is becoming more and more lost on people in a position of power, and it is nice to see this guy put back in his place. Now, my second point is, if this was a parody, and was billed as one, then it is even MORE protected by the laws of the USA than normal speech. Unfortuantly, more and more organizations & corporations are overlooking this fact also, resulting in anything from threats of judicial action to actual arrest and persecution ( See the story on www.salemnhpolice.com from last month ). Fortunatly, we have organizations such as the ACLU & EFF to help in these cases, otherwise we may have lost many more rights than we already have by now. It's a sad state of affairs when a people must fight to keep rights _already_ given to them by their government.
I have to disagree with several of your points here. First off, you state 'buying a reliable whitebox will cost as much as a name brand'. Sometimes, yes, this holds true. But there is the fact that alot of 'name brand' systems use cheap hardware to keep costs down, as they are targeted at people who wouldn't know the difference anyway. So who says how reliable a name brand system is? Also, whitebox systems are usually considerably cheaper if you know how to shop for them, or better yet, build your own. Plus you are more or less guaranteed a higher level of PC compatability compared to such companies as Compaq. Plus, if your intenetion is to put a free OS onto this system, that compatability WILL help, and it will keep costs down. There is no way an off the shelf system is goin to compete pricewise with a properly purchased system witha freeOS. Aside from that, a *nix based evironment is far more open about what it is doing under the hood than a windows environment, along with being less obtuse about it. It is a known fact that M$ does not like disclosing how it all works, sure they have the published information but there is far more detail to the inner workings of Windows than those books disclose. Also, if you are trying to teach kids the inner workings of computers, an OS that is up front about it will be a better learning tool. Windows is not up front about it in any way. Oh, someone already stated this, but running a year 2000 version OS on a 1997 system will obviously support all the hardware, thought a 1997 version of linux will not, nor a 2000 version on a 2000 box. Actually, I take that last back, if you had built or ordered a box with the intention of running a *nix OS on it, you would have made sure you bought one that is totally standards compliant and ran on supported hardware. Just randomly buying a box, much less a Compaq, does not cut it for alternative OSs. As for your qualms with the TEST kernel, no matter what anyone says, it is still a TEST kernel. If something doesn't work, well, don't be surprised. You want stability? Run a stable kernel. Simple logic here. Now, I wonder, how did you try to install all of those OSs on your new system. Did you merely pop the CD in and go? I ask because, at least with OpenBSD, they inform you in the documentation that the generic install kernel won't work on all systems. You may need to tweek to get to the install, especially with not quite PC compliant hardware. I would imagine the same holds true for FreeBSD. As far as your Hercules card is concerned, if you want to utilize it, install X4.1, it's not a difficult process, and they even have a binary installation if compiling the whole thing is too much for you. So, the point? Stop whining that the free OSs aren't up to par when the problem is not the OS, it's poor prior planning.
Yes, ignorance wins again. Well, actually, ignorance winning was inevitable. Hopefully Nadar will pull the 5% needed for matched federal funds, but that doesn't look like it'll happen either. Well, at least we have our guns.
Does anyone else find it mildly humorous that _America_ Online is evidently one of the best options for dialup users in _France_
Well, I attend UMass, so I have a bit of info for you. The school is heterogenous(?) in regard to their computing setup. They have a large Tru64 UNIX installed base, some VAXen, a few Sun boxes, a bunch of NT and Win9x boxes, and Mac boxes also. The point is, i doubt there would be any OS requirment whatsoever, and ( for CS students at least ) *nix would be encouraged even. But, I also do not see this laptop deal goin through at all, most students have a desktop at home/dorm, and would not need a laptop. Plus, UMass caters to _many_ degrees, with a whole campus dedicated mostly to Liberal Arts. Many of the degrees available would not make use of the students all having laptops. So, overall, it's a bad idea, though if they're givin out 85% off student discounts for a shiny new laptop I'll be there in a second!
Well, that hospitalization would be because the person couldn't handle what s/he took mentally, not that it was physically life threatening or something.