I'm the same way. I actually got into Thief after I read a review in The Economist, of all places. I used to be somewhat of a gamer, but it's been too much trouble since I dropped Windows. When I think of what I'm missing, Thief comes foremost.
I was somewhat disappointed by Thief 2 though. My favorite mission was the one where you sneak into the Police Station to frame one of the chiefs. The best thing about it was that you couldn't just blackjack everyone and disable the robots; you had to sneak through the whole thing. After I played through that level, it really struck me how much atmosphere was lost once you knocked everyone out. It wasn't so much of an issue in the first Thief because you spent so much time hiding from zombies and other monsters. But in Thief 2 you could make it through a lot of the missions by blackjacking everyone in sight, disabling the robots, then exploring in the open without fear of being seen. It was kind of lame actually.
Looking Glass Studios made a fantastic game with Thief. If Thievery works well under Wine, I'm definitely interested.
It's one thing to make a fake bomb, but this doesn't look anything like a bomb. She didn't even attempt go through security, she just arrived at the airport. What kind of society is afraid of wires?
It's the AC's comments that are an insult to serious debate. The fact that they were posted AC is entirely beside the point; arguments should be taken on their own merit.
The government needs warrants to spy on Americans by law. If the AC had attempted to explain why these laws should be repealed, or attempted to rationally argue why the government shouldn't be bound by laws, that would have been a real debate. But you can't use bullshit terminology like "defeatocrats" and helping allying with terrorists and expect a real debate.
The same checks on government that protect terrorists protect the rest of us American citizens as well. Having to obtain a warrant is a way to make sure that the government is only spying on people it's supposed to. Allowing wiretapping without a warrant is trusting the government not to secretly abuse this power. If you really trust the government not to abuse this power, you have much more faith in government than I do. And if you don't think the government should have to obey laws, then you have more faith in government than anyone I know.
If granting the government the ability to spy on whomever it wants (ie. not requiring a warrant) doesn't bother you, then I take it you either believe that this is a temporary measure until the war on terror is won, or you don't believe much in privacy. Given advances in technology, the nature of privacy in our society really is in flux, so believing that we need to give up privacy isn't an absurd proposition. But you should say so explicitly: "Warrantless wiretapping is okay because we should no longer have an expectation of privacy." I disagree with this position, but it isn't completely unreasonable, and then we move the debate there instead.
If you think the war on terror is temporary, then we should consider how it might end. Is the government really going to do away with terrorism as a method? I don't think it's likely, any more than ending war or poverty. Will the war on terror end when no significant numbers of Muslim fundamentalists believe that terrorism against Americans is morally justified? Maybe waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay and the occupation of Iraq will hasten the arrival of that day, though I find this unlikely. Will the war on terror end when Osama bin Laden is captured or killed and Al Qaida is destroyed? These are more reasonable goalposts, but then again the government should make them explicit. They haven't. The government declared war on "terror" not on Al Qaida. We're left to trust the government to make the decision that the war on terror is over, and the Bill of Rights can be restored. Again if you really think that government should be trusted to make these decisions in secret, then you have much more faith in government than I.
The worst offenders are internal corporate sites built on expensive proprietary technology that offers a lot of heavy framework so business analysts can design byzantine workflows. While the client user interface may be theoretically "web-based" it isn't regular old HTML. It has to be client-side java, or at the very least, lots and lots of javascript, so it feels like client-side java. All this is for filling out forms and navigation, mind you, we're not talking fancy graphics or AJAX or anything. Naturally, these sites are IE-only, and very particular about which version of IE at that.
This kind of site couldn't survive for long outside a corporate firewall. Too slow, bloated, difficult to navigate, unsecure, and downright ugly. But when your paycheck depends on using a mandated interface to fill out a trouble ticket, timesheet, or expense report, you just click and bear it.
Oh yeah, in my job I support a site like this. The back end isn't any better.
The two or three scout parents I know are the kind of old fashioned, independent thinking, screw-the-post-modernists sort of people whom you'd want to have around in case of actual emergency.
Unless, of course, you happen to be a postmodernist.
Don't switch to Gentoo for the speed increase. If you just want to Get Things Done in Linux, stick with Fedora, or try Ubuntu or something. For a speed increase, buy more RAM, tweak your UI, or switch from Gnome or KDE to a lightweight desktop environment like XFCE or Fluxbox.
My laptop runs Gentoo because it's challenging. When something breaks (ie.whenever I do a significant upgrade), I mutter a silent curse to the gods, roll my eyes and treat it as another Learning Opportunity. If I didn't, I'd be pulling my hair out every few weeks. Using Gentoo, I get to tweak the OS more than I ever could with any other system that I know. Gentoo forces me to make choices that wouldn't normally occur to me, like what logging system or cron daemon to install. It also forces me to understand, or at least think about, what all that stuff in/usr/lib is about and what depends on what. This is cool stuff, but only if you really want to get into this sort of thing. Understanding the internals is what allows Gentoo users to tweak the OS to get the speed increase. If you tweak things without really knowing what you're doing you're apt to make things worse.
If you're thinking of giving Gentoo a try, do it because you're interested in learning what almost every component of your OS is and what it's for. If it's just a speed increase you want, Gentoo isn't worth it.
Do we need to survive as recognizable humans with compatible DNA and everything? If our descendants are genetically engineered robotically enhanced cyborgs, would they count? Maybe we won't survive as humans, but maybe that's okay if our descendants are friendly cyborg overlords. Or they have an ethical value system that's at least on par with our own (which is setting the bar pretty low).
Let's say humans in our current form do survive the next 100 years. What about the following 100 years? 1000 years? Million years? Homo sapiens haven't been around for more than 10,000 to 100,000 years or so. We won't last forever.
The demands of the OSS community are much less than what Microsoft makes them out to be. As other have said, all Microsoft needs to do is publish the specifications for their file formats and network protocols. Full disclosure of their APIs would be nice too, but formats and protocols would go a long way. There's no need for them to GPL or open source any of their software. Doesn't sound like much to ask, but we all know why they won't agree.
Creativity, innovation, a couple billion dollars in Google stock and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.
Absolutely true. But that has no bearing whatsoever on the merits of Net Neutrality. Look to the bill itself and what you think it's effects would be, or how you think a tiered internet will work out. Eric Schmidt's Google stock may be the reason he favors Net Neutrality, but that doesn't invalidate any arguments he makes for it.
Microsoft's ability to maintain it's monopoly derives from it's proprietary API and file formats, not the NT kernel. Microsoft could even swap out the NT kernel for Linux and keep the rest of their OS proprietary, and it wouldn't make life any easier for us Gentoo/Ubunto/RedHat/Suse/Debian/etc users trying to deal with.doc and.xls files. So as far as Linux per se goes, then yeah, some future company could have some kind of Microsoft-like monopoly over computing and incidentally run their proprietary system on top of the Linux kernel.
Now, as far as FOSS in general, it's much harder to envision how a single company could have the same kind of status that Microsoft does today if it's entire system were open source. The only scenario I can think of is if they had some kind monopoly on the hardware or physical network. So, a Verizon/SBC or Intel/AMD monopoly could let you run whatever OS you want so long as you pay them for access or for the processors. I'm not sure that anyone would call either one of these monopolies a "Microsoft" since the nature of it would be so different.
The thing is, Wordpad might be good enough for a lot of people. It isn't just about being able to do away with a piece of software on your desktop: what makes this interesting is the potential for several people to collaborate on a single document. As an interface for a word processor it isn't much, but as an interface for a comments forum (like this one) or a wiki, it's pretty slick. I don't know ajaxWrite has much potential as a business model, but as a proof-of-concept for future web interfaces, it's quite promising.
The original Palladium Beyond the Supernatural game had a very good chapter on creating suspense and atmosphere in a game. For example don't say "You hear someone's guts being torn out in the room next door." Instead say "You hear tearing, then a squishy sound followed by a scream. It happened nearby." You can also freak your players out by asking them questions which cause them to think about potential scary consequences (even when there aren't any): "So, are you going to turn that doorknob with your right hand, or your left had?"
Ideas like these are applicable to almost any Role Playing Game, not just horror games. Creating tension and atmosphere makes role playing much more enjoyable. Personally, I find this kind of advice much more valuable than pregenerated NPC tables.
the epidemic of poor spelling/grammar is not confined to the tech world, but is pervasive throughout just about every aspect of American culture
Absolutely. It's not just us technical folks. Lots of people can't spell. However, IT professionals rely on written communication more than just about anyone else other than journalists and authors. Our spelling errors are in proportion to the quantity of writing we do, only they're broadcast all over the internet.
The combination of the two is rapidly emerging as a favorite, partly because they work well together, and partly because they are both available under open-source licenses.
These are valid reasons for their being popular, but the reviewer left out another very important reason: both of them are really easy to learn. Whatever their shortcommings, someone with only moderate technical inclanation or experience can learn enough PHP and MySQL to have a fairly powerful site up and running in a very short amount of time.
One of the reasons Microsoft is making such inroads into the server market is that they've really improved their operating system. Windows servers can be made reliable and secure if they're administered properly. Insofar as it brings choice to the marketplace, then having Windows as a realistic option for a server is a good thing.
But don't lose sight of what's at stake. The Microsoft business model is to leverage it's monopoly in one area to drive out competition in another. If Microsoft will let Windows coexist peacefully with it's neighbors, then great. If they're true to form, though, they'll introduce incompatabilities and do everything they can to make sure businesses don't have any more of a choice in their server OS than their desktop OS.
The struggle isn't just about running the cooler OS, or using the command line vs. a GUI. It's about freedom and choice.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm the same way. I actually got into Thief after I read a review in The Economist, of all places. I used to be somewhat of a gamer, but it's been too much trouble since I dropped Windows. When I think of what I'm missing, Thief comes foremost.
I was somewhat disappointed by Thief 2 though. My favorite mission was the one where you sneak into the Police Station to frame one of the chiefs. The best thing about it was that you couldn't just blackjack everyone and disable the robots; you had to sneak through the whole thing. After I played through that level, it really struck me how much atmosphere was lost once you knocked everyone out. It wasn't so much of an issue in the first Thief because you spent so much time hiding from zombies and other monsters. But in Thief 2 you could make it through a lot of the missions by blackjacking everyone in sight, disabling the robots, then exploring in the open without fear of being seen. It was kind of lame actually.
Looking Glass Studios made a fantastic game with Thief. If Thievery works well under Wine, I'm definitely interested.
How the heck do you mistake this for a bomb?
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html?p1=MEWell_Pos3
It's one thing to make a fake bomb, but this doesn't look anything like a bomb. She didn't even attempt go through security, she just arrived at the airport. What kind of society is afraid of wires?
It's the AC's comments that are an insult to serious debate. The fact that they were posted AC is entirely beside the point; arguments should be taken on their own merit.
The government needs warrants to spy on Americans by law. If the AC had attempted to explain why these laws should be repealed, or attempted to rationally argue why the government shouldn't be bound by laws, that would have been a real debate. But you can't use bullshit terminology like "defeatocrats" and helping allying with terrorists and expect a real debate.
The same checks on government that protect terrorists protect the rest of us American citizens as well. Having to obtain a warrant is a way to make sure that the government is only spying on people it's supposed to. Allowing wiretapping without a warrant is trusting the government not to secretly abuse this power. If you really trust the government not to abuse this power, you have much more faith in government than I do. And if you don't think the government should have to obey laws, then you have more faith in government than anyone I know.
If granting the government the ability to spy on whomever it wants (ie. not requiring a warrant) doesn't bother you, then I take it you either believe that this is a temporary measure until the war on terror is won, or you don't believe much in privacy. Given advances in technology, the nature of privacy in our society really is in flux, so believing that we need to give up privacy isn't an absurd proposition. But you should say so explicitly: "Warrantless wiretapping is okay because we should no longer have an expectation of privacy." I disagree with this position, but it isn't completely unreasonable, and then we move the debate there instead.
If you think the war on terror is temporary, then we should consider how it might end. Is the government really going to do away with terrorism as a method? I don't think it's likely, any more than ending war or poverty. Will the war on terror end when no significant numbers of Muslim fundamentalists believe that terrorism against Americans is morally justified? Maybe waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay and the occupation of Iraq will hasten the arrival of that day, though I find this unlikely. Will the war on terror end when Osama bin Laden is captured or killed and Al Qaida is destroyed? These are more reasonable goalposts, but then again the government should make them explicit. They haven't. The government declared war on "terror" not on Al Qaida. We're left to trust the government to make the decision that the war on terror is over, and the Bill of Rights can be restored. Again if you really think that government should be trusted to make these decisions in secret, then you have much more faith in government than I.
There. Now that's a real debate.
The worst offenders are internal corporate sites built on expensive proprietary technology that offers a lot of heavy framework so business analysts can design byzantine workflows. While the client user interface may be theoretically "web-based" it isn't regular old HTML. It has to be client-side java, or at the very least, lots and lots of javascript, so it feels like client-side java. All this is for filling out forms and navigation, mind you, we're not talking fancy graphics or AJAX or anything. Naturally, these sites are IE-only, and very particular about which version of IE at that.
This kind of site couldn't survive for long outside a corporate firewall. Too slow, bloated, difficult to navigate, unsecure, and downright ugly. But when your paycheck depends on using a mandated interface to fill out a trouble ticket, timesheet, or expense report, you just click and bear it.
Oh yeah, in my job I support a site like this. The back end isn't any better.
The two or three scout parents I know are the kind of old fashioned, independent thinking, screw-the-post-modernists sort of people whom you'd want to have around in case of actual emergency.
Unless, of course, you happen to be a postmodernist.
Don't switch to Gentoo for the speed increase. If you just want to Get Things Done in Linux, stick with Fedora, or try Ubuntu or something. For a speed increase, buy more RAM, tweak your UI, or switch from Gnome or KDE to a lightweight desktop environment like XFCE or Fluxbox.
/usr/lib is about and what depends on what. This is cool stuff, but only if you really want to get into this sort of thing. Understanding the internals is what allows Gentoo users to tweak the OS to get the speed increase. If you tweak things without really knowing what you're doing you're apt to make things worse.
My laptop runs Gentoo because it's challenging. When something breaks (ie.whenever I do a significant upgrade), I mutter a silent curse to the gods, roll my eyes and treat it as another Learning Opportunity. If I didn't, I'd be pulling my hair out every few weeks. Using Gentoo, I get to tweak the OS more than I ever could with any other system that I know. Gentoo forces me to make choices that wouldn't normally occur to me, like what logging system or cron daemon to install. It also forces me to understand, or at least think about, what all that stuff in
If you're thinking of giving Gentoo a try, do it because you're interested in learning what almost every component of your OS is and what it's for. If it's just a speed increase you want, Gentoo isn't worth it.
Do we need to survive as recognizable humans with compatible DNA and everything? If our descendants are genetically engineered robotically enhanced cyborgs, would they count? Maybe we won't survive as humans, but maybe that's okay if our descendants are friendly cyborg overlords. Or they have an ethical value system that's at least on par with our own (which is setting the bar pretty low).
Let's say humans in our current form do survive the next 100 years. What about the following 100 years? 1000 years? Million years? Homo sapiens haven't been around for more than 10,000 to 100,000 years or so. We won't last forever.
The demands of the OSS community are much less than what Microsoft makes them out to be. As other have said, all Microsoft needs to do is publish the specifications for their file formats and network protocols. Full disclosure of their APIs would be nice too, but formats and protocols would go a long way. There's no need for them to GPL or open source any of their software. Doesn't sound like much to ask, but we all know why they won't agree.
Creativity, innovation, a couple billion dollars in Google stock and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.
Absolutely true. But that has no bearing whatsoever on the merits of Net Neutrality. Look to the bill itself and what you think it's effects would be, or how you think a tiered internet will work out. Eric Schmidt's Google stock may be the reason he favors Net Neutrality, but that doesn't invalidate any arguments he makes for it.
Microsoft's ability to maintain it's monopoly derives from it's proprietary API and file formats, not the NT kernel. Microsoft could even swap out the NT kernel for Linux and keep the rest of their OS proprietary, and it wouldn't make life any easier for us Gentoo/Ubunto/RedHat/Suse/Debian/etc users trying to deal with .doc and .xls files. So as far as Linux per se goes, then yeah, some future company could have some kind of Microsoft-like monopoly over computing and incidentally run their proprietary system on top of the Linux kernel.
Now, as far as FOSS in general, it's much harder to envision how a single company could have the same kind of status that Microsoft does today if it's entire system were open source. The only scenario I can think of is if they had some kind monopoly on the hardware or physical network. So, a Verizon/SBC or Intel/AMD monopoly could let you run whatever OS you want so long as you pay them for access or for the processors. I'm not sure that anyone would call either one of these monopolies a "Microsoft" since the nature of it would be so different.
The thing is, Wordpad might be good enough for a lot of people. It isn't just about being able to do away with a piece of software on your desktop: what makes this interesting is the potential for several people to collaborate on a single document. As an interface for a word processor it isn't much, but as an interface for a comments forum (like this one) or a wiki, it's pretty slick. I don't know ajaxWrite has much potential as a business model, but as a proof-of-concept for future web interfaces, it's quite promising.
The original Palladium Beyond the Supernatural game had a very good chapter on creating suspense and atmosphere in a game. For example don't say "You hear someone's guts being torn out in the room next door." Instead say "You hear tearing, then a squishy sound followed by a scream. It happened nearby." You can also freak your players out by asking them questions which cause them to think about potential scary consequences (even when there aren't any): "So, are you going to turn that doorknob with your right hand, or your left had?"
Ideas like these are applicable to almost any Role Playing Game, not just horror games. Creating tension and atmosphere makes role playing much more enjoyable. Personally, I find this kind of advice much more valuable than pregenerated NPC tables.
the epidemic of poor spelling/grammar is not confined to the tech world, but is pervasive throughout just about every aspect of American culture
Absolutely. It's not just us technical folks. Lots of people can't spell. However, IT professionals rely on written communication more than just about anyone else other than journalists and authors. Our spelling errors are in proportion to the quantity of writing we do, only they're broadcast all over the internet.
The combination of the two is rapidly emerging as a favorite, partly because they work well together, and partly because they are both available under open-source licenses.
These are valid reasons for their being popular, but the reviewer left out another very important reason: both of them are really easy to learn. Whatever their shortcommings, someone with only moderate technical inclanation or experience can learn enough PHP and MySQL to have a fairly powerful site up and running in a very short amount of time.
One of the reasons Microsoft is making such inroads into the server market is that they've really improved their operating system. Windows servers can be made reliable and secure if they're administered properly. Insofar as it brings choice to the marketplace, then having Windows as a realistic option for a server is a good thing.
But don't lose sight of what's at stake. The Microsoft business model is to leverage it's monopoly in one area to drive out competition in another. If Microsoft will let Windows coexist peacefully with it's neighbors, then great. If they're true to form, though, they'll introduce incompatabilities and do everything they can to make sure businesses don't have any more of a choice in their server OS than their desktop OS.
The struggle isn't just about running the cooler OS, or using the command line vs. a GUI. It's about freedom and choice.
That would be extortion, not blackmail.