Or the universe could actually be only a few years old, and our acclerating expansion is actually what is making time seem like billions of years.
Actually, the universe is a little over 6 days old. You know that part in the Bible where the Lord rested on the 7th day? Yeah. On the first 6, the good Lord created everything we see around us, meaning that He intervened with the events of this universe. Now, it's day 7, the Lord is resting, meaning He is not intervening with anything we do (until the 8th day, I guess), but because of the accelerating expansion, it feels, to us, like roughly 6,000 years have gone by since "creation."
Why 6,000 years and not billions? Because the universe was created billions of years after the big bang, the same way that you can turn on your computer and load all of its memory from the hard drive (suspend mode). The computer thinks it has been running for hours, but you only turned it on two minutes ago. Which is to say that the universe has existed for a little over 6 days, which feels, due to expansion, like about 6,000 years, but when you find dinosaur bones from a million years ago, they were "put" there during creation to look like they're a million years old (maybe in Lord-land (equivalent to kernel-land) you can buy artifacts that are manufactured to look like they're a million years old), and when you find evidence that the universe started in a big bang, it means the universe was made to look like that's how it actually started, that is, the bodies already had inertia and were in motion the first instant the switch was flipped on our universe.
How long does it take a computer program to make 100,000 guesses? Not too long, I'd wager. I think the reason text passwords are so effective is that you can have different length passwords with uppercase, lowercase, numerical, and symbol characters, giving you some 100 characters to play with, in any combination, and in any length (within range), meaning that there are probably a lot more than 100,000 combinations.
If Hebrew University figures out a way to dramatically increase the number of possible combinations, while retaining one's ability to remember, but not describe, the password, that would be very useful in situations, for example, where your filesystem is encrypted with one of these passwords, and there is no way you can tell the CIA/FBI/NYPD/MPAA/RIAA/DEA/Microsoft/SEC what it is, in case one of these organizations seizes your equipment.
Gone but not forgotten...
on
Ten Years of BeOS
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
(As the about box used to say.)
Ah, this article brought back a lot of old memories... My favorite part:
The BeOS legacy might live on via the Zeta product and/or OpenBeOS, however it will never feel the same as it used to feel in the 4.5.2 days (according to many engineers, the best version of BeOS ever released -- for its time). The OS just felt like it had a soul, like it would know what you were thinking when using it (even if BeOS does have its own technical problems). It felt pure. I am not using BeOS anymore (I boot to it once every 1-2 months or so) but I will always keep with me this feeling, a feeling that no other software ever given me.
Yes, 4.5.2 really was the best BeOS ever, as well as the best OS period. I had it running on 2 boxes, day and night, for months upon months. One of the computers had all my music stored in its database-like filesystem. It used to play these hundreds of songs just about 24 hours a day, to be paused whenever I left and resumed when I came back. This was next to several Linux and FreeBSD boxes, very "heavy" in terms of all the software that ran on them... I'll never forget how the computer I had configured as a NAT firewall ran X with XEarth in the background, and a ton of unnecessary processes at the same time... or how there was some weird bug in KDE back then, I think I had version 1, that caused the GUI to go completely crazy while the VM would go on these disk grinding frenzies, which would last about 30 minutes before the computer regained its sanity, and it routed packets perfectly through all of this crap. I have always liked these OSes, but
I have to admit that I always enjoyed working with BeOS a lot more than these other operating systems, all of which I swear by. BeOS just had this feeling, as the author of the article said... I don't think that any other OS will reproduce the spirit, culture, and fluidity of this fine piece of software.
In other news, the MPAA today announced that when moviegoers leave the theater, they are escorted down a hallway to an execution chamber, where each is shot. By implementing this innovative new patent pending procedure, the MPAA will ensure that its valuable intellectual property will be protected from piracy because people won't be able to tell their friends what the movie was about, or that it sucked, or anything else that might prevent higher ticket sales.
Days after the initial implementation of this procedure, movie ticket sales have fallen to nearly $0, proof that piracy is responsible for reduced MPAA profits. The MPAA is going to begin suing individuals while lobbying the government to pass more stringent laws regarding movies, because the Constitution states that the MPAA has a God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and the government has a duty to guarantee that those profits increase by a satisfactory amount each year.
Just kidding dude. All you gotta do is teach the wife and kids to code. Then you can contribute to free software projects, or make up your own!!!!! A great family pasttime.
I think it's odd that they think it's your God-given right to reverse-engineer your car, but not your XBox.
Perhaps this is because a car is something tangible. Every Congressman understands the need to work on your own car. Perhaps many Congressmen have worked on their own cars in their 20's. It is simply very widely accepted that people fix their own cars, and for that reason, Congress has no problem protecting your rights to do so.
On the other hand, your XBox, or your computer, or whatever, is relatively new and the need to mess with these things is not very well understood. Why would you want to open that box and mess with the chips inside? Only because you're some pimply faced geek with no life, most likely, and that's just plain stupid. That is probably how Congress sees it.
Maybe in 20 years, we'll have people in Congress who are sick of not being able to boot whatever operating system they want on their computer, and then they'll understand the need to protect your rights in that regard. But the big software and media companies are pushing as strongly as they can to make information rare and expensive, and to make sure that anybody who copies it for whatever reason (legitimate or not) is a pirate and should suffer punishments worse than 1000 murderers, rapists, and kidnappers.
This is what we must fight against. We must make it known that it is retarded to fight against the nature of information. Ooooooooooh well.
Your comment basically sums up my thoughts on this issue. I am disgusted whenever I read of a company that tries to make money through sleazy litigation.
I can understand that, from time to time, there are legitimate issues in which companies need to involve the court system. But all too often, it seems like companies are being created based on the premise that corporations have a God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and that the government has a duty to protect those profits. And it is quite the opposite. Nothing says that any business deserves to exist, let alone make any profit. The only reason that a business should exist is because it is doing something constructive, from which all involved parties will benefit, and perhaps even because it's doing it a little better than the competition. I call this an innovative company. It is a company that didn't begin from the conscious decision to screw anybody over. It began because there was a problem to solve, and it solved it.
The trouble with sleazebags like SCO is that they do not add anything constructive to the world. They exist because they made a conscious decision to profit by screwing people over. That is not an innovative company.
I'd like to emphasize that I think there is nothing wrong with companies making profits. On the contrary, I am pleased when I see companies succeeding, because ultimately, that means the people working for those companies are making successful choices.
But when some garbage company like SCO comes along and decides its sole purpose is to destroy an industry and profit from that destruction, the same way we obtain energy from matter by smashing it up in a nuclear reactor, that makes me mad, because I see how much of the work, blood, sweat, and tears of an entire community is going into the garbage, and how much energy, money, and effort must be wasted in defending against that garbage that could instead be used to advance the world and make it a better place.
SCO is a garbage company. I hope this mess teaches all other investors not to touch that mass of stinking garbage with a nine foot pole. Because it's not worth it.
What kind of a retard thinks this kind of business model will work? Software is easy to copy. Punch in one command and it's done. But hardware is somewhat more difficult to copy. There ain't no command you can punch into DOS that will make a copy of your monitor.
I think there is an agenda behind this to wipe free software off the face of the Earth. They'll argue to Congress that free software allows people to pirate free hardware to the detriment of these companies, as if they have some God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and as if the government has some duty to protect that.
No. I have a very strong feeling that software will be free, NOT hardware, because software is information, which by its nature will spread, while hardware is made of physical tangible materials, which by their nature do not multiply. (I think there is some law of physics that prevents that from happening.) Gill Bates has it all back-ass-wards. (And his billions of dollars are a testament to that, by the way.)
Yes, because we all know that people that look different from you should have no rights.
Heh. I suppose you're not a leftist-thinking liberal. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this, as I would be very surprised if you are.
I am often shocked at how hypocritical a lot of leftists are. They often tout acceptance and toleration of different people, cultures, ideas, and whatever else. However, I have found that many leftists are quite the opposite of what they preach: If your ideas do not agree with theirs, they are the first to criticize you and put you down. This goes for guns, as it does for many other political and social topics.
Some people just don't understand that ideas stemming from feelings (such as "let's ban guns because they're bad") are not always correct, but there are facts out there that speak for themselves. Trouble is, a lot of leftists are evidently allergic to facts.
I like how you threw that comment back at the other poster. Funny how leftists argue that people should have the right to look like dirty slobs when walking down the street, but when the argument turns to guns, it becomes: Sure! Let the police beat them down Rodney King style and throw them in the slammer! They were probably going to commit a crime anyway! As I was saying: Toleration, as long as you agree with them.
Where do you think thieves get their guns? By banning guns, you're cutting off their biggest supply.
Hmmm... This is so profound, it must be true. If so, we should apply this rule to other aspects of life. If we assert that what you say above is true, then by inductive reasoning, we can assert the following: By banning marijuana, we will eliminate the smoking of pot.
Whoops. I guess your theory failed the first test of illegality. Do you think that's air you're breathing?
This is a known fact. Look again at the cold hard facts. Washington D.C., where guns are ILLEGAL (unless you are the government or the police), has the highest murder rate in the country. These are cold hard facts.
The problem with a lot of people is that they let their feelings guide them in their decisions and in their political and social opinions. The trouble with feelings is that much of the time, what feels right isn't right. Maybe this would be true in a perfect world, but there is no Utopia. Except, perhaps, the reverse-Utopia of 1984 as described by George Orwell. Do we want to live in that kind of world? I certainly don't. Therefore, I make decisions based on fact, not feelings.
Thank you for posting this refreshing tidbit of sanity, reason, and fact, in this sea of mindless emotional responses.
Did you think that one through? If we follow through your reasonning, what you are basically suggesting is to banish all laws because criminals don't obey them anyway.
Nay. You misunderstood me. I am suggesting that by banning guns, we will not get rid of violent crime; I am further suggesting the converse of that: By banning guns, we will affect only the law abiding citizens who will obey that law. The criminals will not, and therefore, for YOU, the person getting mugged in the street, the law will have no practical and/or favorable effect.
True, you might get mugged one way or the other. But don't think for a moment that by banning guns, you will take them away from crooks. The crooks will always find a way around the laws.
As has been pointed out before: look at the correlation between gun ownership and crime. Does it bear out your argument?
As I have pointed out before: YOU look at the correlation between gun ownership and crime. Because quite frankly, I do NOT believe that you have ever done such a thing, but I DO believe that you will not, because you're afraid that the facts don't back up your shoddy argument.
In other words, you are saying that individuals should not be responsible because the government (the police is the government) will be responsible for them.
So at two o'clock in the morning, when some murderer breaks into my house, instead of being able to pull a gun and blast the mother fucker, I am supposed to call the police and wait until they show up. Yeah, great. I feel really safe now.
Your ideas about guns are purely theoretical and rely on a perfect world in order to work properly. Well, in a perfect world, we wouldn't have criminals, so this entire discussion wouldn't exist. But we don't live in a perfect world, and the police don't show up instantaneously, so I'm sorry to tell you this, but guns are here to stay, and THEY ARE NOT THE PROBLEM!!!
Hmmm... Let's suppose, for just a moment, that you will take everyone's guns away. Make it a crime to carry a gun. Ok, now take a deep breath and think about this next one before answering it: Will the thieves also give up their guns? Or will they be empowered because suddenly they are the only ones with guns? Think this one through very carefully.
Criminals are called that because they do not obey the law. Therefore, if all law abiding citizens give up their weapons, those citizens will be without the tools of self-defense, whereas the criminals, who don't obey the law anyway, will keep their weapons for use in their crimes. Not only that, but it will embolden them, knowing that when they pull a gun on someone, that victim will not likewise pull a gun on them. However, if a criminal is fully aware that many people carry concealed weapons, that criminal might think twice before pulling a gun. And if that criminal doesn't think twice, that criminal will get shot, and Darwin's role will have played out.
Finally, I wanted to mention one interesting thing. You said that regardless of statistics, this is how people from various countries feel when they walk around in an area where half the people carry guns. Since you said this is regardless of statistics, it shows that you either do not have the data to prove what you say, or you have that data but choose to ignore it. Furthermore, you say you'd like the ratio between how often people defend themselves with a gun and how often gun accidents occur. Once again, you do not have the numbers.
Effectively, you are drawing conclusions from feelings and from ideas that are not backed up by facts, because, as I said, you either do not know the facts, or you choose to ignore them. This is not the scientific way to draw conclusions, nor is it the reliable way.
Oh, and by the way, regarding all those people who might feel unsafe walking in the streets of America, where half of the people carry guns according to you, I would like to say that this is a feature, not a problem: If they feel unsafe in our dangerous streets, they might pay closer attention to their surroundings, and by doing so, avoid getting shot by that half of the population that carries guns. (And did I forget to mention that while half of the people carry guns, nearly all of those people are law abiding citizens who do not shoot those who are afraid of guns? No, I didn't mention that yet.)
Guns are not the problem. The people who abuse them are.
An analogy you might understand: Computers are not the problem. Those who write viruses in them are.
Note: possibly not for the single geek pickin' up hot dates.
Heh heh... This is why most geeks have problems getting hot dates! What you fail to understand is that if girls think you're already taken, that makes you more valuable, and therefore, more wanted.
In other words, if you're hanging with a bunch of guys at the local bar, you'll find it much more difficult to pick up a date than if you're there with a girl. So just go with some girl who's "just friends" with you, wait until she goes to the bathroom or something, and then go talk to that hot potential date who's there. I don't know why this works. After all, girls get pissed when you cheat on 'em, but if they think you'll dump some other girl for them, that turns 'em on. But then, girls don't make any sense anyway.
Back in the day, if you had a tattoo, it meant you were gonna beat the crap out of anyone who messed with you. Unfortunately, it's not like this anymore. An enormous number of people have tattoos, especially girls nowadays, and when you look at these people, most of them look like wimps.
Seriously. Most people who look truly tough don't have any tattoos or piercings. So instead of getting your body vandalized in a sorry attempt to look tough, try eating correctly and exercising regularly, which includes running, lifting weights, and other methods of getting into really good shape. When you're buff and you look like you can kick someone's ass, people will think twice about trying to rob you.
If it's legal in your area, you might also wear a holster and a gun. Thieves know that some PDA is worth a lot less than their lives.
I read this review yesterday and found the discussion of GNOME to be refreshing. The flames that are generated against this software are pretty hot! Let me tell you my own experience, or rather the unfortunate lack thereof, with GNOME...
The funny thing is that about four or five years ago, I remember reading everything I could about GNOME and getting very excited. The technologies they were discussing at the time seemed very promising, and I could see a very powerful desktop emerging for UNIX. While I hadn't tried it, I was simultaneously excited about the possibilities and worried about the "dependancy hell" that a lot of people seemed to mention, so I didn't touch GNOME for a long time. Instead, I continued to use simple window managers like FVWM-2 and IceWM, among a few others. It seemed it would be overkill to install an entire desktop like GNOME, though I did use KDE (back in version 1-point-something) on my ol' SuSE box, and it was a nice system.
One day, I was playing with the ports system on FreeBSD and I decided to install GNOME, just to see once and for all what it was about. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using FreeBSD and its ports system, it automatically downloads, makes, and installs all dependencies for any port you select. For GNOME, it had to pull practically the entire Internet into my box, and after hours of downloading and verifying signatures, and more hours of building the programs, it essentially took my quick FreeBSD box, which didn't have much cruft installed on it, and turned it into the most bloated mess I had ever seen. Files were strewn about all over the place. It's as if GNOME takes over your entire system. Not to mention that it couldn't even finish building GNOME properly. All kinds of weird errors popped up throughout the make process.
I blew all that GNOME stuff off, and decided that perhaps it was the port maintainer's fault, so I downloaded some tarballs to build it myself. That turned out to be a nightmare. I spent probably an entire weekend trying to figure out the hierarchy of all these files, and ended up throwing my hands up in disgust. I had never had this much trouble in compiling something, and that's coming from someone who prefers to compile everything himself and then making a custom package out of it for easy installation in the future. (In other words, this is in no way the port maintainer's fault... it's the GNOME organization's fault for building such a convoluted mess.)
After this experience, I came to the conclusion that GNOME might seem like a nice desktop when it's running, but that with such a shoddy technical design underneath, it couldn't possibly be good for my computer or for my health. KDE was much better built than this mess! For the longest time after that, my.sig here on/. read something to the effect that, "IceWM. Because friends don't let friends install GNOME." I received a lot of flames for this, but after that experience, I haven't touched GNOME with a nine mile pole.
Oh yeah, and with each new version of GNOME, I did read a little about it, hoping that things would change for the better, only to see that its design keeps getting worse. That's too bad. It seemed really promising back in the day.
Informal discussion regarding the Cassini-Huygens mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net.
I more than half expected the channel to be Slashdotted, as happens to all websites when their address is mentioned here. But strangely, there are only about ten people over there right now.
On another note, I am very excited about the upcoming part of this mission. I was finishing high school when they launched this thing, and when they talked about it, it seemed like it would be forever before that thing reached Saturn. Needless to say, it has been a lot less than forever.
I wish the fine engineers at Nasa the best of luck in accomplishing this portion of the mission.
In other news, SCO today began to initiate lawsuits against Slashdot and timothy for posting their root passwords on Slashdot. "Our valuable intellectual property was copied off our servers by a group of evil black hat hackers after they received the root password!!!!!!!!!11111!" yelled Darl McBride, waiving his hands violently as he screamed. "We are going to.....
If you're going to be hopping through ditches and onto freight trucks and getting your gear submerged in mud and water every five minutes, there might be a distinct advantage to storage with no moving parts...
On a side note, just think that Fox News bought a Hummer (a 1st generation one) to take into Iraq when they drove in there with the U.S. military. When the time came to ditch the equipment, they left that vehicle right there in the desert, and didn't give it a second thought. When you're in business, you have to make decisions, and those decisions can get quite expensive sometimes, but if the return on those decisions is several times that price, then it's a no-brainer.
Sure, someone would easily pay the nearly $15,000 because this equipment solves some problem.
Heh. You can laugh all you want about the price, but wait until some 19 megapixel camera appears that requires about a gig or so per photo, and there will be photographers waiting outsite the camera store an hour before opening so they can get their hands on one, and I mean quick.
And even if that doesn't happen, I'm sure the price will come down a LOT in the coming months, so even if the thing costs about a grand or two, a lot of pros will buy this if it saves them time while on a shoot.
And seriously, if you think this is expensive, I know a photographer who drives his junky van around to photo shoots with over $100,000 of professional equipment in the van, and that's only what he'll need on this shoot. In his shop, he probably has over a million dollars worth of photography equipment. This money doesn't grow on trees. It's what he's acquired throughout his professional career, by doing what he loves to do.
Funniest thing: I asked him where he got the money for all this. He said: If you want to have this much worth of equipment, not just in photography but in anything, all you have to do is focus only on that area and find every way possible to become as good at it as you can, and then to improve the field in every creative way you can imagine.
I love how the headline says it was "Accepted" as Top-level Project, but the story says its team voted in favor of APPLYING to be a Top-level project. Why can't/. get its headlines straight?!1?!???1?/1?!1??!?!?!1!!!!1??/1/1!!
And here I thought that password would be something like, "password" or "login"... Instead, they chose the kind of code an idiot would put on his luggage.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the universe is a little over 6 days old. You know that part in the Bible where the Lord rested on the 7th day? Yeah. On the first 6, the good Lord created everything we see around us, meaning that He intervened with the events of this universe. Now, it's day 7, the Lord is resting, meaning He is not intervening with anything we do (until the 8th day, I guess), but because of the accelerating expansion, it feels, to us, like roughly 6,000 years have gone by since "creation."
Why 6,000 years and not billions? Because the universe was created billions of years after the big bang, the same way that you can turn on your computer and load all of its memory from the hard drive (suspend mode). The computer thinks it has been running for hours, but you only turned it on two minutes ago. Which is to say that the universe has existed for a little over 6 days, which feels, due to expansion, like about 6,000 years, but when you find dinosaur bones from a million years ago, they were "put" there during creation to look like they're a million years old (maybe in Lord-land (equivalent to kernel-land) you can buy artifacts that are manufactured to look like they're a million years old), and when you find evidence that the universe started in a big bang, it means the universe was made to look like that's how it actually started, that is, the bodies already had inertia and were in motion the first instant the switch was flipped on our universe.
I know the password, and I'd tell you what it is, but I can't describe it. Ooooooooh well.
How long does it take a computer program to make 100,000 guesses? Not too long, I'd wager. I think the reason text passwords are so effective is that you can have different length passwords with uppercase, lowercase, numerical, and symbol characters, giving you some 100 characters to play with, in any combination, and in any length (within range), meaning that there are probably a lot more than 100,000 combinations.
If Hebrew University figures out a way to dramatically increase the number of possible combinations, while retaining one's ability to remember, but not describe, the password, that would be very useful in situations, for example, where your filesystem is encrypted with one of these passwords, and there is no way you can tell the CIA/FBI/NYPD/MPAA/RIAA/DEA/Microsoft/SEC what it is, in case one of these organizations seizes your equipment.
Ah, this article brought back a lot of old memories... My favorite part:
Yes, 4.5.2 really was the best BeOS ever, as well as the best OS period. I had it running on 2 boxes, day and night, for months upon months. One of the computers had all my music stored in its database-like filesystem. It used to play these hundreds of songs just about 24 hours a day, to be paused whenever I left and resumed when I came back. This was next to several Linux and FreeBSD boxes, very "heavy" in terms of all the software that ran on them... I'll never forget how the computer I had configured as a NAT firewall ran X with XEarth in the background, and a ton of unnecessary processes at the same time... or how there was some weird bug in KDE back then, I think I had version 1, that caused the GUI to go completely crazy while the VM would go on these disk grinding frenzies, which would last about 30 minutes before the computer regained its sanity, and it routed packets perfectly through all of this crap. I have always liked these OSes, but I have to admit that I always enjoyed working with BeOS a lot more than these other operating systems, all of which I swear by. BeOS just had this feeling, as the author of the article said... I don't think that any other OS will reproduce the spirit, culture, and fluidity of this fine piece of software.Ooooooooh well.
Days after the initial implementation of this procedure, movie ticket sales have fallen to nearly $0, proof that piracy is responsible for reduced MPAA profits. The MPAA is going to begin suing individuals while lobbying the government to pass more stringent laws regarding movies, because the Constitution states that the MPAA has a God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and the government has a duty to guarantee that those profits increase by a satisfactory amount each year.
Th15 iz /. n0b0dy g3tz m4rr1ed h3rE!!!!!!1!1111111111
Just kidding dude. All you gotta do is teach the wife and kids to code. Then you can contribute to free software projects, or make up your own!!!!! A great family pasttime.
Perhaps this is because a car is something tangible. Every Congressman understands the need to work on your own car. Perhaps many Congressmen have worked on their own cars in their 20's. It is simply very widely accepted that people fix their own cars, and for that reason, Congress has no problem protecting your rights to do so.
On the other hand, your XBox, or your computer, or whatever, is relatively new and the need to mess with these things is not very well understood. Why would you want to open that box and mess with the chips inside? Only because you're some pimply faced geek with no life, most likely, and that's just plain stupid. That is probably how Congress sees it.
Maybe in 20 years, we'll have people in Congress who are sick of not being able to boot whatever operating system they want on their computer, and then they'll understand the need to protect your rights in that regard. But the big software and media companies are pushing as strongly as they can to make information rare and expensive, and to make sure that anybody who copies it for whatever reason (legitimate or not) is a pirate and should suffer punishments worse than 1000 murderers, rapists, and kidnappers.
This is what we must fight against. We must make it known that it is retarded to fight against the nature of information. Ooooooooooh well.
I can understand that, from time to time, there are legitimate issues in which companies need to involve the court system. But all too often, it seems like companies are being created based on the premise that corporations have a God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and that the government has a duty to protect those profits. And it is quite the opposite. Nothing says that any business deserves to exist, let alone make any profit. The only reason that a business should exist is because it is doing something constructive, from which all involved parties will benefit, and perhaps even because it's doing it a little better than the competition. I call this an innovative company. It is a company that didn't begin from the conscious decision to screw anybody over. It began because there was a problem to solve, and it solved it.
The trouble with sleazebags like SCO is that they do not add anything constructive to the world. They exist because they made a conscious decision to profit by screwing people over. That is not an innovative company.
I'd like to emphasize that I think there is nothing wrong with companies making profits. On the contrary, I am pleased when I see companies succeeding, because ultimately, that means the people working for those companies are making successful choices.
But when some garbage company like SCO comes along and decides its sole purpose is to destroy an industry and profit from that destruction, the same way we obtain energy from matter by smashing it up in a nuclear reactor, that makes me mad, because I see how much of the work, blood, sweat, and tears of an entire community is going into the garbage, and how much energy, money, and effort must be wasted in defending against that garbage that could instead be used to advance the world and make it a better place.
SCO is a garbage company. I hope this mess teaches all other investors not to touch that mass of stinking garbage with a nine foot pole. Because it's not worth it.
SCO. We're garbage.
I think there is an agenda behind this to wipe free software off the face of the Earth. They'll argue to Congress that free software allows people to pirate free hardware to the detriment of these companies, as if they have some God-given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits, and as if the government has some duty to protect that.
No. I have a very strong feeling that software will be free, NOT hardware, because software is information, which by its nature will spread, while hardware is made of physical tangible materials, which by their nature do not multiply. (I think there is some law of physics that prevents that from happening.) Gill Bates has it all back-ass-wards. (And his billions of dollars are a testament to that, by the way.)
Heh. I suppose you're not a leftist-thinking liberal. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this, as I would be very surprised if you are.
I am often shocked at how hypocritical a lot of leftists are. They often tout acceptance and toleration of different people, cultures, ideas, and whatever else. However, I have found that many leftists are quite the opposite of what they preach: If your ideas do not agree with theirs, they are the first to criticize you and put you down. This goes for guns, as it does for many other political and social topics.
Some people just don't understand that ideas stemming from feelings (such as "let's ban guns because they're bad") are not always correct, but there are facts out there that speak for themselves. Trouble is, a lot of leftists are evidently allergic to facts.
I like how you threw that comment back at the other poster. Funny how leftists argue that people should have the right to look like dirty slobs when walking down the street, but when the argument turns to guns, it becomes: Sure! Let the police beat them down Rodney King style and throw them in the slammer! They were probably going to commit a crime anyway! As I was saying: Toleration, as long as you agree with them.
Hmmm... This is so profound, it must be true. If so, we should apply this rule to other aspects of life. If we assert that what you say above is true, then by inductive reasoning, we can assert the following: By banning marijuana, we will eliminate the smoking of pot.
Whoops. I guess your theory failed the first test of illegality. Do you think that's air you're breathing?
This is a known fact. Look again at the cold hard facts. Washington D.C., where guns are ILLEGAL (unless you are the government or the police), has the highest murder rate in the country. These are cold hard facts.
The problem with a lot of people is that they let their feelings guide them in their decisions and in their political and social opinions. The trouble with feelings is that much of the time, what feels right isn't right. Maybe this would be true in a perfect world, but there is no Utopia. Except, perhaps, the reverse-Utopia of 1984 as described by George Orwell. Do we want to live in that kind of world? I certainly don't. Therefore, I make decisions based on fact, not feelings.
Thank you for posting this refreshing tidbit of sanity, reason, and fact, in this sea of mindless emotional responses.
Nay. You misunderstood me. I am suggesting that by banning guns, we will not get rid of violent crime; I am further suggesting the converse of that: By banning guns, we will affect only the law abiding citizens who will obey that law. The criminals will not, and therefore, for YOU, the person getting mugged in the street, the law will have no practical and/or favorable effect.
True, you might get mugged one way or the other. But don't think for a moment that by banning guns, you will take them away from crooks. The crooks will always find a way around the laws.
As I have pointed out before: YOU look at the correlation between gun ownership and crime. Because quite frankly, I do NOT believe that you have ever done such a thing, but I DO believe that you will not, because you're afraid that the facts don't back up your shoddy argument.
So at two o'clock in the morning, when some murderer breaks into my house, instead of being able to pull a gun and blast the mother fucker, I am supposed to call the police and wait until they show up. Yeah, great. I feel really safe now.
Your ideas about guns are purely theoretical and rely on a perfect world in order to work properly. Well, in a perfect world, we wouldn't have criminals, so this entire discussion wouldn't exist. But we don't live in a perfect world, and the police don't show up instantaneously, so I'm sorry to tell you this, but guns are here to stay, and THEY ARE NOT THE PROBLEM!!!
Criminals are called that because they do not obey the law. Therefore, if all law abiding citizens give up their weapons, those citizens will be without the tools of self-defense, whereas the criminals, who don't obey the law anyway, will keep their weapons for use in their crimes. Not only that, but it will embolden them, knowing that when they pull a gun on someone, that victim will not likewise pull a gun on them. However, if a criminal is fully aware that many people carry concealed weapons, that criminal might think twice before pulling a gun. And if that criminal doesn't think twice, that criminal will get shot, and Darwin's role will have played out.
Finally, I wanted to mention one interesting thing. You said that regardless of statistics, this is how people from various countries feel when they walk around in an area where half the people carry guns. Since you said this is regardless of statistics, it shows that you either do not have the data to prove what you say, or you have that data but choose to ignore it. Furthermore, you say you'd like the ratio between how often people defend themselves with a gun and how often gun accidents occur. Once again, you do not have the numbers.
Effectively, you are drawing conclusions from feelings and from ideas that are not backed up by facts, because, as I said, you either do not know the facts, or you choose to ignore them. This is not the scientific way to draw conclusions, nor is it the reliable way.
Oh, and by the way, regarding all those people who might feel unsafe walking in the streets of America, where half of the people carry guns according to you, I would like to say that this is a feature, not a problem: If they feel unsafe in our dangerous streets, they might pay closer attention to their surroundings, and by doing so, avoid getting shot by that half of the population that carries guns. (And did I forget to mention that while half of the people carry guns, nearly all of those people are law abiding citizens who do not shoot those who are afraid of guns? No, I didn't mention that yet.)
Guns are not the problem. The people who abuse them are.
An analogy you might understand: Computers are not the problem. Those who write viruses in them are.
Heh heh... This is why most geeks have problems getting hot dates! What you fail to understand is that if girls think you're already taken, that makes you more valuable, and therefore, more wanted.
In other words, if you're hanging with a bunch of guys at the local bar, you'll find it much more difficult to pick up a date than if you're there with a girl. So just go with some girl who's "just friends" with you, wait until she goes to the bathroom or something, and then go talk to that hot potential date who's there. I don't know why this works. After all, girls get pissed when you cheat on 'em, but if they think you'll dump some other girl for them, that turns 'em on. But then, girls don't make any sense anyway.
Seriously. Most people who look truly tough don't have any tattoos or piercings. So instead of getting your body vandalized in a sorry attempt to look tough, try eating correctly and exercising regularly, which includes running, lifting weights, and other methods of getting into really good shape. When you're buff and you look like you can kick someone's ass, people will think twice about trying to rob you.
If it's legal in your area, you might also wear a holster and a gun. Thieves know that some PDA is worth a lot less than their lives.
The funny thing is that about four or five years ago, I remember reading everything I could about GNOME and getting very excited. The technologies they were discussing at the time seemed very promising, and I could see a very powerful desktop emerging for UNIX. While I hadn't tried it, I was simultaneously excited about the possibilities and worried about the "dependancy hell" that a lot of people seemed to mention, so I didn't touch GNOME for a long time. Instead, I continued to use simple window managers like FVWM-2 and IceWM, among a few others. It seemed it would be overkill to install an entire desktop like GNOME, though I did use KDE (back in version 1-point-something) on my ol' SuSE box, and it was a nice system.
One day, I was playing with the ports system on FreeBSD and I decided to install GNOME, just to see once and for all what it was about. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using FreeBSD and its ports system, it automatically downloads, makes, and installs all dependencies for any port you select. For GNOME, it had to pull practically the entire Internet into my box, and after hours of downloading and verifying signatures, and more hours of building the programs, it essentially took my quick FreeBSD box, which didn't have much cruft installed on it, and turned it into the most bloated mess I had ever seen. Files were strewn about all over the place. It's as if GNOME takes over your entire system. Not to mention that it couldn't even finish building GNOME properly. All kinds of weird errors popped up throughout the make process.
I blew all that GNOME stuff off, and decided that perhaps it was the port maintainer's fault, so I downloaded some tarballs to build it myself. That turned out to be a nightmare. I spent probably an entire weekend trying to figure out the hierarchy of all these files, and ended up throwing my hands up in disgust. I had never had this much trouble in compiling something, and that's coming from someone who prefers to compile everything himself and then making a custom package out of it for easy installation in the future. (In other words, this is in no way the port maintainer's fault... it's the GNOME organization's fault for building such a convoluted mess.)
After this experience, I came to the conclusion that GNOME might seem like a nice desktop when it's running, but that with such a shoddy technical design underneath, it couldn't possibly be good for my computer or for my health. KDE was much better built than this mess! For the longest time after that, my .sig here on /. read something to the effect that, "IceWM. Because friends don't let friends install GNOME." I received a lot of flames for this, but after that experience, I haven't touched GNOME with a nine mile pole.
Oh yeah, and with each new version of GNOME, I did read a little about it, hoping that things would change for the better, only to see that its design keeps getting worse. That's too bad. It seemed really promising back in the day.
I more than half expected the channel to be Slashdotted, as happens to all websites when their address is mentioned here. But strangely, there are only about ten people over there right now.
On another note, I am very excited about the upcoming part of this mission. I was finishing high school when they launched this thing, and when they talked about it, it seemed like it would be forever before that thing reached Saturn. Needless to say, it has been a lot less than forever.
I wish the fine engineers at Nasa the best of luck in accomplishing this portion of the mission.
In other news, SCO today began to initiate lawsuits against Slashdot and timothy for posting their root passwords on Slashdot. "Our valuable intellectual property was copied off our servers by a group of evil black hat hackers after they received the root password!!!!!!!!!11111!" yelled Darl McBride, waiving his hands violently as he screamed. "We are going to.....
On a side note, just think that Fox News bought a Hummer (a 1st generation one) to take into Iraq when they drove in there with the U.S. military. When the time came to ditch the equipment, they left that vehicle right there in the desert, and didn't give it a second thought. When you're in business, you have to make decisions, and those decisions can get quite expensive sometimes, but if the return on those decisions is several times that price, then it's a no-brainer.
Sure, someone would easily pay the nearly $15,000 because this equipment solves some problem.
And even if that doesn't happen, I'm sure the price will come down a LOT in the coming months, so even if the thing costs about a grand or two, a lot of pros will buy this if it saves them time while on a shoot.
And seriously, if you think this is expensive, I know a photographer who drives his junky van around to photo shoots with over $100,000 of professional equipment in the van, and that's only what he'll need on this shoot. In his shop, he probably has over a million dollars worth of photography equipment. This money doesn't grow on trees. It's what he's acquired throughout his professional career, by doing what he loves to do.
Funniest thing: I asked him where he got the money for all this. He said: If you want to have this much worth of equipment, not just in photography but in anything, all you have to do is focus only on that area and find every way possible to become as good at it as you can, and then to improve the field in every creative way you can imagine.
I love how the headline says it was "Accepted" as Top-level Project, but the story says its team voted in favor of APPLYING to be a Top-level project. Why can't /. get its headlines straight?!1?!???1?/1?!1??!?!?!1!!!!1??/1/1!!
And here I thought that password would be something like, "password" or "login"... Instead, they chose the kind of code an idiot would put on his luggage.