I'm amused how many people have attacked my comment only to be flat out wrong, or far more wrong than I could possibly have been.
The problem with what I said is that, hyperbole aside, it was largely correct. You apparently think it's comets that caused Earth to be covered in water.
O.
Kay.
Must've been a lot of comets. A quick glance at our neighbours should make it obvious that hydrogen and oxygen are two of the most abundant elements in this solar system. Indeed, there's a reason why there's so much raw ice floating around.
Truth is this a solar system with a lot of water in it. Most planets have a large amount of some form of water on them or failing that hydrocarbons. If it's not so hot the water will steam off, then it's probably there in some form.
Mars Express may or may not find it on Mars. It's there, no doubt about it. But whether it's on the surface, a few feet under, or in some giant underground lake a mile under, is open to question. It may be just on the poles, fighting the dry ice for space. Mars Express will answer many questions, but the question we don't need answered is whether the stuff actually exists. We know it does. Even the comet enthusiasts surely realise it has to.
Actually the problem with everything from RotJ onwards is he has been focussing on making movies for others - generally those under the age of nine. Sure, he hasn't made films for "us" (by which I assume you mean people who waved plastic lightsabers at their schoolfriends in the 1970s and '80s, and have grown up except for the mod they did to their monitor to make it look like Darth Vader's helmet), but they'd be just as awful if he did. Remember how awful the first Star Trek film was? That's the kind of nerdy ghastliness we'd be suffering if he made Star Wars for "us".
The best films, books, music, etc, have always been made for their creators, not aimed at some identifiable market. If Lucas is serious, and I doubt very much he is but live in hope, then this is good news. Very good news. It marks a possible return from the Dark Side.
They aren't trying to prove there is water on Mars. They are trying to find it. This is a search for the location of water on Mars. Location and quantity. Duh. It's a mapping mission.
That's not what most people think. Most people talk about "Water discovered on Mars!" as some kind of miracle, and the impetus behind these missions is generally framed as "We need to find out if any water, beyond trace elements, exists on Mars"
Finding water on Mars would be great for future exploration, but squiggleslash seems to think we can just go there and find it everywhere because we all know how common water is.
Nonsense. You're engaging in hyperbole. I never said anything of the kind.
I said water on Mars is a virtual certainty and implied it almost certainly exists in reasonable quantities. It's unlikely to be a trace element.
What? Steam isn't water?
Yes, steam is water. However, steam is vapour, and has a tendency to disperse in vacuums. As a result, I'm not going to turn my generalization into an absurd one and suggest that, say, water is abundant on Mercury. It probably isn't. While there most likely were the ingredients for water on Mercury, chances are the stuff has vapourised and is nowhere near the planet today in anything but trace amounts.
Hence the careful phrasing: "Truth be told, we know that there's water just about everywhere where the temperature and pressure doesn't turn it to steam." which does not mean "There's no water where there's steam".
Let's be fair here. Linux hasn't contributed a damn thing. It can't, because of its license. Nobody can actually use Linux code for anything unless they're willing to give up commercial control of their project. Nobody is willing to do that.
Ok, you're an anti-GPL zealot. But, FWIW, it isn't commercial control you give up by using Linux and other GPL'd code in your software, it's proprietary control. You can't keep secrets, you can't prevent others from building on your code.
Kind of like most of us if we use APSL code. Ooops! Did I just say that? I seem to recall you saying somewhere that Apple is contributing things like launchd because they're Open Source, but if we use them we're bound by the same rules as the GPL too, except with one difference: we have to allow Apple to screw us.
Damn you're an inconsistant ass!
Sure it is. All the run-time programs are basically file-by-file copies of Unix programs: init, inetd, the various networking daemons, all the command-line tools. Over the years people have sat down and copied Unix --Unix from the 1970s, remember -- file by file like the monks of old, dutifully reproducing everything even if it's just obviously stupid, like the init/inetd/cron/init.d/rc disaster.
There are multiple ways of implementing GNU/Linux and really very few are exact clones of any of the versions of Unix that existed in the 1970s. Take a look in/etc, for example, and you'll find precisely zero binaries. Yes, many innovations that made it to Unix in the 1980s also made it into GNU, but the same is true of OS X.
OS X is as much a Unix clone as GNU/Linux. Some decisions are clearly better, some are worse (XML for everything including configuration files for fuck's sake? And don't get started with that "Validation BS", that'd be true if you hadn't decided to make the actual property names values so you could easily serialize property lists. You can't validate a plist with a regular XML library any more usefully than you can validate a CSV file with grep. So all we have at the end of the day is an object parsable with an XML library, but not parsable from the shell or in C (not C++) or God-knows what else. Gee, thanks.)
This really is two faced. "You should use OS X, which is open source and just like Unix so we're sharing all our code on a share and share alike license, rather than GNU/Linux with all of its Unixisms and it's horrible forces-you-to-share license." Wow. Great argument there. Next time, try arguing about something like specific improvements and features you think are better done, rather than throwing around mindless allegations that are generally bogus and apply as much to your product as the one you're complaining about.
Given Jupiter's size, 0.1% is actually quite a lot. Indeed, 0.1% on Earth is quite a lot, there's stuff we use all the time that relies on elements and compounds far more scarce than that.
By the same token we should expect life on the moon shouldn't we?
Life exists under a much smaller range of temperatures and requires a certain degree of a support infrastructure to exist. Nor is anyone suggesting life existed on Earth when the moon was formed. Water and ice cannot "die", the worst that can happen is that they're vapourised off. There's no reason to believe that all the water was vapourised off the moon.
Furthermore, the only place where water has been SUGGESTED to possibly occur on the moon is at the poles in permanently shaded bottoms of craters in the form of hydrated minerals and in fine and sparse ice dust among the dirt.
I see your misconception. You're suggesting I was postulating that there's ice on the moon and suggesting there had to be because there was water and ice on Earth. Not so. I was telling you there was ice on the moon and explaining why it got there. For a rather patronising look at the evidence (to go with my Troll Tuesday post. Sheesh!), check here.
I wouldn't take THAT bet! The only place we know of in the solar system which is "flooded with hydrocarbons" is Titan.
There's probably more methane in Jupiter than there's iron on Earth (Not that that's impressive, given Jupiter's size, but I thought I'd mention it.) Most planets have either an abundance of water, or an abundance of methane. There's one or two rocky outcrops of the Mercury variety that do not, but a quick look at Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (appropriately enough), Neptune (that's why it's blue!), and many moons shows how abundant methane is. Often it's not the most abundant substance, but neither is water on Earth.
It's Mars. Of course there's water on Mars. Why wouldn't there be?
We've had this discussion now for several centuries, as if to argue that there'd be something significant about this. Truth be told, we know that there's water just about everywhere where the temperature and pressure doesn't turn it to steam. I mean, take hydrogen, oxygen, two very abundant elements in the solar system, and bam!, you have water.
How could that not happen? Answer: it couldn't not happen. There's simply no chance that it couldn't not unmaterialise.
There's ice on the moon you know. Yes. The Moon. The moon was part of the Earth once, so you can be pretty sure that the moon has ice on it. Maybe not a lot, but it's there. Probably under the surface. Under that dust.
Want to know why there's so much water on Earth? Why Europa's positively drenched in the stuff? It's because the solar system has more hydrogen and oxygen than it knows what to do with. Same goes for carbon which is why if a planet's not drenched in water, ten to one it's flooded with methane or some other hydrocarbon. Do you seriously think Mars is covered in methane? Well, do you? I don't.
Blue moon! You never saw me alone - without a dream in my heart; without a love of my own.
Yes. What's more, I'm even aware you can turn it *on*.
Did you even read what I wrote? Here's the relevent section again:
Trackpoints are always stationary relative to the mouse buttons, which means you don't need that hack installed to make it usable that you do with the 'pad, where you're never sure if you just accidentally selected something because your attempt to move the mouse was interpreted as a click, etc.
Notice the reference to this "feature" as being a hack to make the trackpad usable. Notice that this implies that it's optional. Notice my point is that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't - don't, and you it's not usable because your finger's not stationary relative to the mouse buttons, do, and you have to put up with the fucker second guessing your taps on the pad.
Trackpoints don't have those problems. The worst that can happen is you'll move the mouse a fraction of a pixel (well, not a fraction, but you know what I mean) because you accidentally tap it when typing. And, yep, they don't have the whole annoyances thing. They work with multiple buttons. They just work, which makes it surprising to me that Apple choose the more complicated and less workable-without-hacks solution.
Handheld mice really aren't practical for the reasons you'd use a laptop. Forget using it on a train, consider using it on your lap while you're sitting in bed (or anywhere else you'd have the laptop physically on your lap)
I just hope the Thinkpad survives. It's always been my absolute favorite laptop series. They're beautifully made, elegant, and they use, for me, the right pointing device (yes, I know people who don't like the trackpoint, but the trackpad is, IMO, nothing like as usable. Trackpoints are always stationary relative to the mouse buttons, which means you don't need that hack installed to make it usable that you do with the 'pad, where you're never sure if you just accidentally selected something because your attempt to move the mouse was interpreted as a click, etc. I know a lot of this is "what you're used to", but I also think it's an objectively better system.)
IBM leaving the PC business seems sad, and I hope the fact they still have a big stake in the PowerPC and Workstation markets means they'll re-enter, this time with something a little more interesting. That said, it's important not to overstate this: IBM has never been a commodity player, and the PC business is a commodity market. That's why they're getting out. The chances of a populist computer coming out of IBM soon isn't that likely. It's like Anakin Skywalker being thrown into the lava and left there by Obi Wan Kenobe in the climactic scene of the new Star Wars movie, explaining why he has to wear the protective suit in his guise as Darth Vader and why he's all hairless and damaged in Return of the Jedi. Just like in that movie, it may explain things in the future of IBM (albeit things we're not aware of yet, whereas we've all seen A New Hope) and is a dramatic change. Hopefully though IBM's not "going to the dark side"!
But it is sad. In many ways, I feel that when it came to IBM and its influence over the last few years, she blinded me with science.
Could have fooled me. I was nominated this year for the Nobel Peace Prize because of my strong opposition to the Bush-administration's pro-war stance. To quote the nomination committee "Squiggleslash's tireless support for peaceful methods of regime change, and his determination and his eloquent and persuassive oratory, has moved many to question the need for violence where decency and respect can, themselves, change minds."
All this for a Journal Entry I made in October. This is in stark contrast to the Pulitzer Prize committee that still hasn't even commented upon my Hurricane Frances coverage.
This, I guess, is nothing new. Same as it ever was, indeed. Same as it ever was.
Xenon is the code name. They haven't officially announced the name yet, so even if it is to be called the Xbox 360, it would be inappropriate for Mr Gates to call it that.
For the same reason, you'll hear him refer to Longhorn as Longhorn right up until the day it's officially announced it'll be called "Windows ST" (or "Windows QL" or whatever it is called), even if "everyone knows" it's going to be called that well beforehand.
Ok, ignore this, I didn't realise Apple was still selling the "old" 1.8 PowerMac. I thought they'd just replaced the old line with the new models, all of which are twin processor. Go on, mod me down.
As someone who gets occasionally pedantic about English, can I ask why people refer to speed upgrades as "speed bumps", given the term, in real life, refers to areas of road that have been raised in order to force vehicles travelling across them to slow down?
No, I'm not. This part of the thread started with the comment:
Unfortunately, free markets rarely seem to work well when it comes to the fringes of personal freedom. Businesses will try to attract the largest market, which doesn't entail catering for people doing things outside of that remit. If you doubt this, look at the number of localities where you can't run a server on any of the available broadband solutions. Right now, the only thing that's keeping that choice open is the FCC's insistance that the ILECs sell the ability to sell DSL, which means groups like SpeakEasy and Earthlink can sell access. The ILECs themselves generally ban the running of servers on their own services, and cable operators are just as draconian, often more so.
With it being difficult to provide high speed services without existing wired infrastructure, that bit of intervention by the FCC is pretty important. But, of course, even with it, there are areas that just aren't served. Until a few months ago, my own area wasn't by virtue of there not being DSL available, period.
My over all point is that the free market isn't a panacea that solves everything, and those arguing that it is, and therefore municipal broadband solutions are completely inappropriate, are making major mistakes. In my reply to you, I made the point even clearer:
In the real world, we need a mix of solutions. Raising straw men ("A municipal ISP will ban religious expression and be taken over by the state!") doesn't help us see what that mix is. The FCC did a good thing, in my view, by forcing the ILECs to open up their infrastructures. Municipal ISPs are providing a valuable service to those areas where the free market is simply failing regardless of what the FCC did. Choices do not always exist, and commercial services are frequently worse than government supplied ones. It's either this, or yet more regulation. Not that regulation is automatically a bad thing either.
In which case local ISPs will not have a problem, because local businesses will *need* more than what the municipal ISP provides them with, and the rest of us will *want* more than that.
they will filter content.
And they will be sued if they do.
You want to stage a religious protest in Central Park, you need a permit, and it may not be granted
And if it's not granted because it's a religious protest, it will be challengable in the courts.
Yet again, you demonstrate again and again examples where a private entity is completely unaccountable, and a public entity would be.
It's already required of libraries providing Internet access.
They ban religious websites? Really? Or are you refering to the smut filters that remain contentious?
It destroys choice because where there exists government broadband at below market prices the competition will fail, every time. It's just a matter of time. I have between 10 and 15 ISPs over four delivery systems available to me. If my town went into the ISP business, I'd have 1 choice, and 1 choice only, in little or no time. This isnt' a strawman, thanks. It's the fact. A subsidized solution will put out a free-market solution every single time.
What competition?
If you have 10 to 15 ISPs over four delivery systems where you live, then what is the failing that the local municipality feels is strong enough to warrant getting into the business itself? I mean, presumably - because the other alternative here is you're moving the goalposts having realised your argument is completely bankrupt and are now talking about municipalities starting services in already well served areas, something I haven't advocated or appeared to advocate - you believe these 10-15 ISPs completely suck and are incapable of improving their services. If that's the case, what competition exists for this hypothetical municipal ISP? What does it destroy?
Or is this another strawman to add to your "But Municipal ISPs will ban religion and free speech!" claim?
Right. And my point was that it starts good. There is a need, let's fill it. Great. But once that area has broadband provided by the town, what is going to stop them from abusing it once the competition is long gone? Nothing.
What competition? How can competition go when it has yet to arrive? We can undermine future competition, but that said, the risk of such competition would at least ensure the local government has good incentive to keep their system up to date and as flexible (ie no NAT or port blocking) as practically possible.
There are two reasons this would happen. The first being a government-granted monopoly, which means no one else can compete. The other reason for an underserved market is that there isn't enough business to support it.
There are actually three, the third being where the cost of entry is astronomically high. For example, if the FCC hadn't intervened, we wouldn't have a choice of more than two broadband ISPs in most areas (local cable and telephone respectively) because laying cable costs a fortune, and radio, without the FCC's encouragement, wouldn't be an option.
But, be that as it may, the latter of your reasons is what we've been talking about for the last few hours.
With respect, what you're saying is like saying "Speeding isn't a traffic violation, my car can reach ninety miles an hour! In fact, I did that the other day without repurcusions."
Indeed, your comment about having to "change hte port for the webserver" allows us to modify it to a bigger extreme: "Speeding isn't a traffic violation, my car can reach ninety miles an hour! In fact, I did that the other day without repurcusions, except I had to slow down when my radar detector noticed a cop close by."
I can't speak for Cox, but most cable ISPs and ILEC ISPs I've seen the terms and conditions for have banned users from running servers. Adelphia's, for example, is extremely explicit:
Adelphia High-Speed Internet may not be used with a server of any kind. Our service may not be used for illegal purposes such as the distribution of material that is protected under copyright law. Click here to view Adelphia High-Speed Internet's Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service. These conditions are in effect to protect our customers and insure that all customers have an enjoyable experience with their High-Speed Internet service.
You agree not to use, or allow Users to use, the Adelphia Broadband Service, the Adelphia Network, the Equipment or the Software:
(g) to run a server of any type in connection with the Adelphia Broadband Service, or to provide network or host services to others via the Adelphia Network. Prohibited uses include, without limitation, running servers for PPP, FTP, HTTP, DNS, POP, SMTP, NNTP, Proxy (any variety), DHCP, IRC, TELNET, TFTP, SNMP and multi-user interactive forums, and remapping of ports for the purpose of operating a server on the Adelphia Network;
This is typical, though probably the most explicit I've seen in terms of local ISPs. BellSouth has similar restrictions. Notice how most of these protocols are low traffic and most of those have to do with being able to access your own facilities. Banning PPP so you can't use a VPN based upon PPP over IP? POP? TELNET?
Now you can pretend the terms and conditions don't exist and ignore them and hope the ISP doesn't care, but the fact is most of us would rather not risk losing our internet connection at a moment's notice, especially if they're the only game in town.
As for municipalities running a network? I highly doubt they would allow any ports to be open outside of those they specifically allow. They will probably only allow incoming HTTP/FTP/E-Mail traffic and will probably block AIM at some point too.
Depends on their intentions. If the aim is to provide Internet service to improve the local communications infrastructure, then doing what you describe would undermine everything they're doing.
Also, local ISPs wouldn't care, as to get proper access, you'd need to go to them.
you can't just go down there and put up big posters of Jesus without a permit, right?
Well, that's only because you also can't put up big posters of, well, anything. It would violate basic littering and vandalism statutes. Of course individuals can put up religious materials. It would be against the first amendment for them to be refused, especially on the basis that the material in question is religious.
Now, the government itself will not be able to put up religious materials, but this is merely the same principle that says that a state school that actively promotes religion, via organized school prayer etc, is violating the constitution, but a school that bans private (ie individuals chosing for themselves without encouragement from the school establishment) prayer is violating the constitution too.
I'm tired of this one coming up. There seems to be a lot of people who quite deliberately "misunderstand" and mis-state the whole seperation of church and state thing in order to feed the persecution complex of modern Christians. Give it a rest, please. If the government with access to state or federal funds bans you using public infrastructure available to everyone from using it to promote your religion, then that government is violating the constitution and needs a kicking. And you can bet the ACLU and half a million church groups will be right over it when it does.
The difference between the private ISP and the municipal is that on the ISP, it's reactive. Something happens, a warrant is issued, and something else happens. If the government is in the loop from day one, there is absolutely no check. None. It will be pro-active.
Nonsense. If a private ISP bans you from using your connection to promote or service your religion, there's no come back whatsoever. No warrants, nothing. You can either suck it, or leave it, and too bad if nobody else in the area thinks differently to them.
If a municipal ISP does the same thing, you'll be able to get a warrant within hours to change the situation.
However, the people running things won't always be running things. Schools are run locally, right? Unless the State performs a takeover because it's really a bad school. What happens if the State decides your little network is too slow or bad or whatever, and decides to take it over to manage it properly?
Then I'd disagree with it, same as if the State determined that Earthlink was doing a bad job and tried to take them over. This isn't really a reason to oppose municipal ISPs.
So the final question comes down to this: would you rather take your chances with private/commerical carriers, or the government.
My choice is simple, and clear. I have economic recourse against business. I have legal recourse against business. I have choices. If my town started offering broadband at sub-market prices, well, that'd be the end of my choice.
I'm lucky that today I have options. I have options because BellSouth finally decided it would be in their best interest to introduce DSL to my neighbourhood (we were too far from the exchange, so this involved them building a relay close by), and the FCC has forced BellSouth to let free-as-in-speech ISPs like Earthlink (there's an irony there, I'll get to it in a moment) and others access to their infrastructure. This means I am, today, allowed to operate a server. This situation didn't exist a few months ago, and the further I'd have gotten from Stuart, the less likely a viable broadband via DSL would have appeared.
My "other choice" would have been Adelphia, a company with draconian (from the point of view of what I want to use the service for) terms and conditions that I found unacceptable when I read them. A month or two ago, this was my only choice. And if the big bad government hadn't intervened, the choice would have been between two providers, Adelphia and BellSouth, both of whom have draconian terms and c
While I understand your concern, I think you're better off with a municipal connection in that respect than with, say, a single private provider of Internet service, or a group of "like minded" private providers. Why? Because the former has to obey the first amendment.
Unfortunately, free markets rarely seem to work well when it comes to the fringes of personal freedom. Businesses will try to attract the largest market, which doesn't entail catering for people doing things outside of that remit. If you doubt this, look at the number of localities where you can't run a server on any of the available broadband solutions. Right now, the only thing that's keeping that choice open is the FCC's insistance that the ILECs sell the ability to sell DSL, which means groups like SpeakEasy and Earthlink can sell access. The ILECs themselves generally ban the running of servers on their own services, and cable operators are just as draconian, often more so.
With it being difficult to provide high speed services without existing wired infrastructure, that bit of intervention by the FCC is pretty important. But, of course, even with it, there are areas that just aren't served. Until a few months ago, my own area wasn't by virtue of there not being DSL available, period.
Like I said, I don't believe it should be implemented wider than a municipality. When it goes into State or even County level, the potential for abuse appears. Having it on a municipal level helps not just because there's a degree of accountability instilled by the fact the implementation is clearly a last resort, but also in that, at the very least, those in liberal areas will be able to help out those with more draconian terms and conditions, until the ACLU and EFF are able to intervene.
Finally, the risk of a Little Angelic Angela's Law exists anyway. We saw much of this during the late nineties with projects like Carnivore. ISPs will always have to obey the law.
Must butt out of everything because tax payer subsidized services ultimately will not compete with non-subsidized services, so they undermine the freedom of the individual (or business) to sell services
Against that, I have to say that I don't see a problem with municipal governments doing this kind of thing. Given their priorities, and the closer accountability they have to their tax payers, I don't see this kind of thing as anything but a "last resort" effort for the majority of them, and I think they have a moral right to involve themselves in things that county, state, and Federal governments really don't have. But many people do not share the same opinion.
You will see many people arguing against you in this thread. They're not Verizon employees (well, most of them aren't), they're just more likely to lean on a pro-Business side if they see an area where governments are likely to make it more difficult for a business to operate.
I know the TV series is showing its age, 24 years behind it. But a good movie would have combined its pace and timing with the current movie's production values.
The series included "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", which the movie didn't.
I also think the series did the whole Guide thing better. When it came up, it was relevent and funny. And viewers went left hanging wondering why something had happened, as with the gap between Ford and Arthur turning into couches, and then the explanation of what an infinite improbability drive is coming up 30 minutes later. In the TV series, it's right there.
And defeniatly a lot better than that godawful BBC miniseries.
The latter is showing its age, but it was better paced, the Guide actually sounded relevent and interesting when it came up, and it just seemed to work better.
I rewatched the second episode last night to see how it dealt with the whole explanation of the Infinite Improbability Drive compared to the movie. It was an order of magnitude better.
I don't have many complaints about the movie. It was relatively professional and I think it was true to Adam's vision. I just don't think, ultimately, it worked. The timing was off. Punchlines came well before the rest of the joke, some were given without the rest of the jokes appearing at all. While I don't blame them for making it self contained given the chances were the studio would never have stumped up the money, I do think it would have worked better if they hadn't had to hurry the movie to get in an ending, instead seeing it as a trilogy from the start.
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The problem with what I said is that, hyperbole aside, it was largely correct. You apparently think it's comets that caused Earth to be covered in water.
O.
Kay.
Must've been a lot of comets. A quick glance at our neighbours should make it obvious that hydrogen and oxygen are two of the most abundant elements in this solar system. Indeed, there's a reason why there's so much raw ice floating around.
Truth is this a solar system with a lot of water in it. Most planets have a large amount of some form of water on them or failing that hydrocarbons. If it's not so hot the water will steam off, then it's probably there in some form.
Mars Express may or may not find it on Mars. It's there, no doubt about it. But whether it's on the surface, a few feet under, or in some giant underground lake a mile under, is open to question. It may be just on the poles, fighting the dry ice for space. Mars Express will answer many questions, but the question we don't need answered is whether the stuff actually exists. We know it does. Even the comet enthusiasts surely realise it has to.
The best films, books, music, etc, have always been made for their creators, not aimed at some identifiable market. If Lucas is serious, and I doubt very much he is but live in hope, then this is good news. Very good news. It marks a possible return from the Dark Side.
I said water on Mars is a virtual certainty and implied it almost certainly exists in reasonable quantities. It's unlikely to be a trace element.
Yes, steam is water. However, steam is vapour, and has a tendency to disperse in vacuums. As a result, I'm not going to turn my generalization into an absurd one and suggest that, say, water is abundant on Mercury. It probably isn't. While there most likely were the ingredients for water on Mercury, chances are the stuff has vapourised and is nowhere near the planet today in anything but trace amounts.Hence the careful phrasing: "Truth be told, we know that there's water just about everywhere where the temperature and pressure doesn't turn it to steam." which does not mean "There's no water where there's steam".
Crap. Wrong day.
Kind of like most of us if we use APSL code. Ooops! Did I just say that? I seem to recall you saying somewhere that Apple is contributing things like launchd because they're Open Source, but if we use them we're bound by the same rules as the GPL too, except with one difference: we have to allow Apple to screw us.
Damn you're an inconsistant ass!
There are multiple ways of implementing GNU/Linux and really very few are exact clones of any of the versions of Unix that existed in the 1970s. Take a look inOS X is as much a Unix clone as GNU/Linux. Some decisions are clearly better, some are worse (XML for everything including configuration files for fuck's sake? And don't get started with that "Validation BS", that'd be true if you hadn't decided to make the actual property names values so you could easily serialize property lists. You can't validate a plist with a regular XML library any more usefully than you can validate a CSV file with grep. So all we have at the end of the day is an object parsable with an XML library, but not parsable from the shell or in C (not C++) or God-knows what else. Gee, thanks.)
This really is two faced. "You should use OS X, which is open source and just like Unix so we're sharing all our code on a share and share alike license, rather than GNU/Linux with all of its Unixisms and it's horrible forces-you-to-share license." Wow. Great argument there. Next time, try arguing about something like specific improvements and features you think are better done, rather than throwing around mindless allegations that are generally bogus and apply as much to your product as the one you're complaining about.
Given Jupiter's size, 0.1% is actually quite a lot. Indeed, 0.1% on Earth is quite a lot, there's stuff we use all the time that relies on elements and compounds far more scarce than that.
If you don't believe me, Google is your friend.
We've had this discussion now for several centuries, as if to argue that there'd be something significant about this. Truth be told, we know that there's water just about everywhere where the temperature and pressure doesn't turn it to steam. I mean, take hydrogen, oxygen, two very abundant elements in the solar system, and bam!, you have water.
How could that not happen? Answer: it couldn't not happen. There's simply no chance that it couldn't not unmaterialise.
There's ice on the moon you know. Yes. The Moon. The moon was part of the Earth once, so you can be pretty sure that the moon has ice on it. Maybe not a lot, but it's there. Probably under the surface. Under that dust.
Want to know why there's so much water on Earth? Why Europa's positively drenched in the stuff? It's because the solar system has more hydrogen and oxygen than it knows what to do with. Same goes for carbon which is why if a planet's not drenched in water, ten to one it's flooded with methane or some other hydrocarbon. Do you seriously think Mars is covered in methane? Well, do you? I don't.
Blue moon! You never saw me alone - without a dream in my heart; without a love of my own.
Did you even read what I wrote? Here's the relevent section again:
Notice the reference to this "feature" as being a hack to make the trackpad usable. Notice that this implies that it's optional. Notice my point is that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't - don't, and you it's not usable because your finger's not stationary relative to the mouse buttons, do, and you have to put up with the fucker second guessing your taps on the pad.Handheld mice really aren't practical for the reasons you'd use a laptop. Forget using it on a train, consider using it on your lap while you're sitting in bed (or anywhere else you'd have the laptop physically on your lap)
IBM leaving the PC business seems sad, and I hope the fact they still have a big stake in the PowerPC and Workstation markets means they'll re-enter, this time with something a little more interesting. That said, it's important not to overstate this: IBM has never been a commodity player, and the PC business is a commodity market. That's why they're getting out. The chances of a populist computer coming out of IBM soon isn't that likely. It's like Anakin Skywalker being thrown into the lava and left there by Obi Wan Kenobe in the climactic scene of the new Star Wars movie, explaining why he has to wear the protective suit in his guise as Darth Vader and why he's all hairless and damaged in Return of the Jedi. Just like in that movie, it may explain things in the future of IBM (albeit things we're not aware of yet, whereas we've all seen A New Hope) and is a dramatic change. Hopefully though IBM's not "going to the dark side"!
But it is sad. In many ways, I feel that when it came to IBM and its influence over the last few years, she blinded me with science.
All this for a Journal Entry I made in October. This is in stark contrast to the Pulitzer Prize committee that still hasn't even commented upon my Hurricane Frances coverage.
This, I guess, is nothing new. Same as it ever was, indeed. Same as it ever was.
For the same reason, you'll hear him refer to Longhorn as Longhorn right up until the day it's officially announced it'll be called "Windows ST" (or "Windows QL" or whatever it is called), even if "everyone knows" it's going to be called that well beforehand.
Ok, ignore this, I didn't realise Apple was still selling the "old" 1.8 PowerMac. I thought they'd just replaced the old line with the new models, all of which are twin processor. Go on, mod me down.
Well, the PM is up to twice as fast. Unless I've missed something and this iMac is twin processor, like the PowerMac.
I mean, what's the deal with that?
Yet again, you demonstrate again and again examples where a private entity is completely unaccountable, and a public entity would be.
They ban religious websites? Really? Or are you refering to the smut filters that remain contentious? What competition?If you have 10 to 15 ISPs over four delivery systems where you live, then what is the failing that the local municipality feels is strong enough to warrant getting into the business itself? I mean, presumably - because the other alternative here is you're moving the goalposts having realised your argument is completely bankrupt and are now talking about municipalities starting services in already well served areas, something I haven't advocated or appeared to advocate - you believe these 10-15 ISPs completely suck and are incapable of improving their services. If that's the case, what competition exists for this hypothetical municipal ISP? What does it destroy?
Or is this another strawman to add to your "But Municipal ISPs will ban religion and free speech!" claim?
What competition? How can competition go when it has yet to arrive? We can undermine future competition, but that said, the risk of such competition would at least ensure the local government has good incentive to keep their system up to date and as flexible (ie no NAT or port blocking) as practically possible. There are actually three, the third being where the cost of entry is astronomically high. For example, if the FCC hadn't intervened, we wouldn't have a choice of more than two broadband ISPs in most areas (local cable and telephone respectively) because laying cable costs a fortune, and radio, without the FCC's encouragement, wouldn't be an option.But, be that as it may, the latter of your reasons is what we've been talking about for the last few hours.
Indeed, your comment about having to "change hte port for the webserver" allows us to modify it to a bigger extreme: "Speeding isn't a traffic violation, my car can reach ninety miles an hour! In fact, I did that the other day without repurcusions, except I had to slow down when my radar detector noticed a cop close by."
I can't speak for Cox, but most cable ISPs and ILEC ISPs I've seen the terms and conditions for have banned users from running servers. Adelphia's, for example, is extremely explicit:
And This is typical, though probably the most explicit I've seen in terms of local ISPs. BellSouth has similar restrictions. Notice how most of these protocols are low traffic and most of those have to do with being able to access your own facilities. Banning PPP so you can't use a VPN based upon PPP over IP? POP? TELNET?Now you can pretend the terms and conditions don't exist and ignore them and hope the ISP doesn't care, but the fact is most of us would rather not risk losing our internet connection at a moment's notice, especially if they're the only game in town.
Depends on their intentions. If the aim is to provide Internet service to improve the local communications infrastructure, then doing what you describe would undermine everything they're doing.Also, local ISPs wouldn't care, as to get proper access, you'd need to go to them.
Well, that's only because you also can't put up big posters of, well, anything. It would violate basic littering and vandalism statutes. Of course individuals can put up religious materials. It would be against the first amendment for them to be refused, especially on the basis that the material in question is religious.
Now, the government itself will not be able to put up religious materials, but this is merely the same principle that says that a state school that actively promotes religion, via organized school prayer etc, is violating the constitution, but a school that bans private (ie individuals chosing for themselves without encouragement from the school establishment) prayer is violating the constitution too.
I'm tired of this one coming up. There seems to be a lot of people who quite deliberately "misunderstand" and mis-state the whole seperation of church and state thing in order to feed the persecution complex of modern Christians. Give it a rest, please. If the government with access to state or federal funds bans you using public infrastructure available to everyone from using it to promote your religion, then that government is violating the constitution and needs a kicking. And you can bet the ACLU and half a million church groups will be right over it when it does.
Nonsense. If a private ISP bans you from using your connection to promote or service your religion, there's no come back whatsoever. No warrants, nothing. You can either suck it, or leave it, and too bad if nobody else in the area thinks differently to them.
If a municipal ISP does the same thing, you'll be able to get a warrant within hours to change the situation.
Then I'd disagree with it, same as if the State determined that Earthlink was doing a bad job and tried to take them over. This isn't really a reason to oppose municipal ISPs.
I'm lucky that today I have options. I have options because BellSouth finally decided it would be in their best interest to introduce DSL to my neighbourhood (we were too far from the exchange, so this involved them building a relay close by), and the FCC has forced BellSouth to let free-as-in-speech ISPs like Earthlink (there's an irony there, I'll get to it in a moment) and others access to their infrastructure. This means I am, today, allowed to operate a server. This situation didn't exist a few months ago, and the further I'd have gotten from Stuart, the less likely a viable broadband via DSL would have appeared.
My "other choice" would have been Adelphia, a company with draconian (from the point of view of what I want to use the service for) terms and conditions that I found unacceptable when I read them. A month or two ago, this was my only choice. And if the big bad government hadn't intervened, the choice would have been between two providers, Adelphia and BellSouth, both of whom have draconian terms and c
Unfortunately, free markets rarely seem to work well when it comes to the fringes of personal freedom. Businesses will try to attract the largest market, which doesn't entail catering for people doing things outside of that remit. If you doubt this, look at the number of localities where you can't run a server on any of the available broadband solutions. Right now, the only thing that's keeping that choice open is the FCC's insistance that the ILECs sell the ability to sell DSL, which means groups like SpeakEasy and Earthlink can sell access. The ILECs themselves generally ban the running of servers on their own services, and cable operators are just as draconian, often more so.
With it being difficult to provide high speed services without existing wired infrastructure, that bit of intervention by the FCC is pretty important. But, of course, even with it, there are areas that just aren't served. Until a few months ago, my own area wasn't by virtue of there not being DSL available, period.
Like I said, I don't believe it should be implemented wider than a municipality. When it goes into State or even County level, the potential for abuse appears. Having it on a municipal level helps not just because there's a degree of accountability instilled by the fact the implementation is clearly a last resort, but also in that, at the very least, those in liberal areas will be able to help out those with more draconian terms and conditions, until the ACLU and EFF are able to intervene.
Finally, the risk of a Little Angelic Angela's Law exists anyway. We saw much of this during the late nineties with projects like Carnivore. ISPs will always have to obey the law.
- Are incapable of doing good things
- Are always after power, above all else
- Must butt out of everything because tax payer subsidized services ultimately will not compete with non-subsidized services, so they undermine the freedom of the individual (or business) to sell services
Against that, I have to say that I don't see a problem with municipal governments doing this kind of thing. Given their priorities, and the closer accountability they have to their tax payers, I don't see this kind of thing as anything but a "last resort" effort for the majority of them, and I think they have a moral right to involve themselves in things that county, state, and Federal governments really don't have. But many people do not share the same opinion.You will see many people arguing against you in this thread. They're not Verizon employees (well, most of them aren't), they're just more likely to lean on a pro-Business side if they see an area where governments are likely to make it more difficult for a business to operate.
I know the TV series is showing its age, 24 years behind it. But a good movie would have combined its pace and timing with the current movie's production values.
I also think the series did the whole Guide thing better. When it came up, it was relevent and funny. And viewers went left hanging wondering why something had happened, as with the gap between Ford and Arthur turning into couches, and then the explanation of what an infinite improbability drive is coming up 30 minutes later. In the TV series, it's right there.
I rewatched the second episode last night to see how it dealt with the whole explanation of the Infinite Improbability Drive compared to the movie. It was an order of magnitude better.
I don't have many complaints about the movie. It was relatively professional and I think it was true to Adam's vision. I just don't think, ultimately, it worked. The timing was off. Punchlines came well before the rest of the joke, some were given without the rest of the jokes appearing at all. While I don't blame them for making it self contained given the chances were the studio would never have stumped up the money, I do think it would have worked better if they hadn't had to hurry the movie to get in an ending, instead seeing it as a trilogy from the start.