Liberty is never dated.
Liberty may have it's risks, but it is no less relevant in the age of the Internet and Machine Gun then it was in the days of the Printing Press and Musket.
Or, to quote the movie "Braveheart":
"They may take our land... but they will never take... OUR FREEDOM!!!"
It's a really nice suggestion to read the article without any "preconcieved notions", however, those preconceived notions are sometimes well thoughtout.
Personally, as a Libertarian, I find the idea of government regulation as being repugnant. GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH.
YOU may want the government regulating YOUR life to protect YOUR sense of security, but I would gladly forefit my security and fight to my dying breath to preserve my liberty.
Kansas never decided that Darwin was a "figment of our imaginations." Kansas decided that teachers could opt out of teaching the theory of evolution. And trust me, if a teacher does not believe in evolution, then it is BEST FOR THE STUDENT not to have THAT TEACHER try and teach THAT SUBJECT any more then you would want an athiest teaching about Applied Christianity.
In high school, I was taught about the theory of evolution by a teacher who was a fundamentalist Christian. That teacher taught us more about the failings of the the theory then the theory itself. I had to do independent research on the Theory of Evolution in order to get up-to-speed on the subject.
The Kansas law did NOTHING to state that Darwinian theory was either correct or incorrect. It simply gave the teacher the power to teach it, or not teach it. Would you prefer for the government to force teachers to teach this subject? And what if the government decides that teachers must teach that "undesirable individuals" should be surgically sterilized to prevent them from breeding (as was U.S. policy before we became aware of the horrors of the Nazi consentration camps in WWII) ?
Personally, I would rather keep ALL propoganda, whether it comes from the athiestic or religious sectors, OUT of public schools.
You have an interesting way of getting "palm" and "pr0n" introduced in the same paragraph... are you saying that the judges will have a palm in one palm, and... something else in the other palm?
...Who knows what goes on 'neath those judicial robes...
Transmeta HAS shipped... well, since they pay Linus to basically take up a desk and work on the Linux Kernel, Transmeta is somewhat responsible for the shipping of Linux 2.4.0, albiet rather late...
I still don't see why you would consider my post over-rated. There are ways around clock settings, and some folks might generally be interested in seeing the app and how it compares to Everybuddy.
Am I old?
When I see some 17-year-old kid whizzing through BSD at the commandline faster then I can loose at a game of Quake, I sure do feel it.
I had that experience when I was working on someone's webserver at $50-an-hour. This young kid sat down at the machine and started to make it sing. I told the server's owner to drop me on the spot and hire the kid.
CHILL. It was a joke. J - O - K - E. There, I spelled it out for you. Anyone who has been to a convenience store and seen the sign that says "no more then 3 students allowed inside at a time" knows that teens are discriminated against.
And yes, there is such a thing as age discrimination against the old, although I am still young enough that I have not felt it yet.
One last thing: I would NEVER claim to be a "l337 h4x0r".
This should be stopped. Just because I'm 30 doesn't mean that I can't "Hack a Government Web Site". This is yet another example of how us "oldsters" get pre-judged as being technically inferior to the younger set.
It seems to me that this project will probably be funded by U.S. dollars and not Russian rubles. Although russia may be the face behind the operation, I'll bet that there are either plenty of U.S. investors involved, or the U.S. Federal Gov. will be willing to back the project with good-old taxpayers dollars (we weren't gonna use it anyhow...)
Either way, I hope the project manages to inject decent cashflow into the Commonwealth of Independent State's economy, God knows they need it.
Although the company has removed the 'messengerA2Z' client from thier web site, you can still get a copy here at ZDNet India, if anyone wants to check it out and see how it works (or download it now in case it goes away forever.)
No monolith?
You must be mistaken. I am 100% sure that if the moon was scanned with magnetometers, THEY WOULD HAVE found a monolith. IT HAS TO BE THERE. I SAW IT ON THE MOVIE, SO IT HAS TO BE THERE.
There is a monolith... there is a monolith... there is a...
"My God, it's full of cars" - Dave Bowman's reaction when he received a Hot Wheels collector's set at the age of 6.
1. The USB support in 2.4 is not an amaturish hack.
2. SMP speeds up the system just fine on Linux if you are using a kernel compiled for SMP. Maybe you are refering to some other free Unix clone?
Microsoft software is used to run these "future" spacecraft? I can see it now:
2001: A Space OS
"Houston... we have a problem..."
"UNSS Gagarin, this is Houston. What is the nature of the problem?"
"Well... I know we are supposed to be on a mission to Proxima Centauri, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, our HalNT 9000 computer bluescreened just between the orbits of Neptune and Pluto."
"So... just reboot the damn thing and get back on the mission!"
"It's not that simple Houston. Our friend Astronaut Sam decided to fix it by loading Linux on the computer."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah. Everything is working fine now, but we're going to need someone down their to get us a device driver for the ship's dueterium fuel tanks... and the drive motors... and if you could get us drivers for the life support systems we would really appreciate it. The sooner the better on those life support systems."
"Oh... My... God..."
"Exactly. Dave forgot to check the Hardware Compatibility List before loading it up... I guess the ship's hardware is all proprietary. Needless to say, we have trapped Dave in the airlock. Want us to let him breathe vacuum?"
"Only if someone else has the root password."
"Oooo! Good point. Ummm, by the way, is the new 2.4 kernel out? We could sure use some help with these USB peripherals also."
"Okay Major Tom... you and your boys sit tight. We'll get our team down here working on a solution..."
The level of cluelessness that you refer to has everything to do with one thing: KARMA.
A lot of people post nonsense comments to go along with stories like this in an attempt to raise their precious Karma.
Most of the people that posted comments to this article probably didn't read the links... it's all about getting your post out early so that you have a better change of being moderated up. And I know what I am talking about here... after I KarmaWhored my first Slashdot account up to the maximum of 50, I opened up another account... and did the same in only two months of posting comments.
The facts are: Slashdot is broken. It's moderation system invites users to post assinine comments in a blatant attempt to post something "clever" enough to get moderated up. The only people who really get what Slashdot has become are the bonifide trolls and goats.cx posters.
The content of the stories have become less important to the average Slashdot reader then getting moderated up.
For example: The person who originated this thread, TheAncientHacker, and I recently engaged in a series of posts to another Slashdot article. While it was an interesting series of discussions, the truth is, my original comment that started the thread was posted for one reason and one reason only: to get moderated up. I reached that goal. The truth is, I had NO IDEA what I was talking about. Any quick, half-witted comment that makes a jab at Microsoft is destined to be moderated up on Slashdot -- especially if you happen to be one of the first 50 people to get your comment appended to a story.
Why, you may ask, would I do such a thing? Simple. I have a goal of getting as many Slashdot user accounts created as I can, getting them maxed out at 50 karma points and then auctioning them off on ebay. Just to prove a point that the current moderation system in use by Slashdot JUST DOESN'T WORK.
ADA is a valid programing language. Simply because it is outdated and of little use in modern society does not mean that it does not make sense in the context that I used it. ADA was really the first 'modern' programing language and it is in that context that I used it in my argument.
Now. What I am saying is very simple: Having a document that declares a product, protocol, or whatever to be a 'standard' is not the same as being a 'real world standard.'
Here at my company, we have a document that outlines our 'standard' installation of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on our computer systems. Although that standard is in place, there is not a single machine with an installation that mirrors that standard. A difference that makes no difference is no difference and a standard that is not a standard is no standard (obscure Star Trek reference.)
Look, I personally don't have a problem with Microsoft. I am an MCSE and I make my living supporting their products. But I wouldn't want MS to be the ones declaring the 'standard' for information systems components any more then I would want SUN or IBM to do so.
As far as the press release about Visual Basic... that makes me even more incredulous. I used to write press releases when I was a Journalist in the U.S. Navy. Press Releases are nothing more than propoganda which allows an organization to make a statement without having to have it's facts closely scrutinized. I remember writing a wonderful press release I wrote about one of our helicopters rescuing a Marine who had fallen overboard. It was full of heroism, yada yada yada. As a matter of course, however, I left out the fact that the young Marine had jumped overboard in a suicide attempt after receiving a "Dear John" letter. That's why I never read press releases. I wait for non-biased reviews.
So you are arguing that de facto standards based on what programmers are really using are good and standards held by international standards bodies are bad. So you are saying that the Visual Basic language is good since it is the most popular de facto standard for a programming language in history and C is bad since there's an actual standards organization specifying it?
1 - I would like to see your figures on Visual Basic being the most popular programing language in history. It might be the most popular in the last three years for Virus writers, but we have a long history of programing languages going back to ADA. I am sure that there have been PLENTY of programing languages which have beat out Visual Basic in popularity.
2 - You are trying to oversimplify my statement. What I am, in fact, saying is this: Standards are only good when they are IN FACT standards. A standard that only works on one platform is HARDLY a true standard. Standards, by reason, should be able to be implement on ANY platform - Windows, UNIX, OS/2, MacOS, BEOS, etc. To claim something to be "The Standard" when it only operates on a single platform is JUST WRONG.
Microsoft JScript - While it is compliant with ECMAscript, it extends that functionality to prevent competing scripting languages to provide the same level of functionality. This essentially breaks any real compliance with the ECMA standard.
PERL - Open Source scripting language that is THE standard for scripting on the Web - regardless of what any "standards" organization may say about. More web site administrators use PERL then any other scripting language.
C Derived OOP Languages
C and C++ - Created in 1967, C was implemented to provide a programing language that could be implemented across a wide variety of architectures. C, and it's decendent, C++ have become the defacto standard in programming applications that may need to be recompiled on various platforms.
Microsoft "C hash" - Hey, any Hacker worth half his weight knows that # is a "hash", and not a "sharp". Here is a language that can only available on one platform: Windows. Due to this limitation, it will never be adopted as a true standard.
Language Runtimes
PERL and Python - Both are open source technologies that work well cross platform.
Microsoft.NET runtime - Still in Vapor
Remember, there is a big difference between having some organization stamp it's approval on a piece of software and claiming that it is a "standard" and having the programing community actually use your software (which is where real standards show themselves.)
Microsoft has consistenty fought against true standards with it's "embrace and extend" strategy. Microsoft simply has the muscle to get it products declared a standard before it's competition can see it coming - hence Netscape's JavaScript is considered proprietary (even though it is open souce) and Microsoft's JScript is considered a Standard (even though it is closed source).
What's more, having your programing languages declared a standard by the ECMA is totally meaningless to me. I don't live in Europe.
I would like to compare notes on your laptop's configuration. I have issues with the soundcard, for instance. Sounds great, but I can't record a drop of audio through the microphone.
I am using Mandrake 7.2, which should be pretty close to your RH7.0, although when I tried installing XFree86 4.0 manually in Mandrake 7.1, I was unable to get the video card to work with the right driver. I haven't tried it with 7.2, but I will the next time I reload my system (I am constantly playing around with beta software and messing with the location of libraries, yada yada, so I have a tendency to reload my system ever two or three months, if not sooner.)
Sorry. When I was 15, a 300bps modem was something to get teary-eyed about (I didn't get my first 2400Bps modem until I was 23). And Macs had just gotten on the Market in 1985, so most of us thought that they were cool, or at least cooler then the IBM PCjr.
Slashdot Mirror
Liberty is never dated.
Liberty may have it's risks, but it is no less relevant in the age of the Internet and Machine Gun then it was in the days of the Printing Press and Musket.
Or, to quote the movie "Braveheart":
"They may take our land... but they will never take... OUR FREEDOM!!!"
It's a really nice suggestion to read the article without any "preconcieved notions", however, those preconceived notions are sometimes well thoughtout. Personally, as a Libertarian, I find the idea of government regulation as being repugnant. GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH. YOU may want the government regulating YOUR life to protect YOUR sense of security, but I would gladly forefit my security and fight to my dying breath to preserve my liberty.
Kansas never decided that Darwin was a "figment of our imaginations." Kansas decided that teachers could opt out of teaching the theory of evolution. And trust me, if a teacher does not believe in evolution, then it is BEST FOR THE STUDENT not to have THAT TEACHER try and teach THAT SUBJECT any more then you would want an athiest teaching about Applied Christianity.
In high school, I was taught about the theory of evolution by a teacher who was a fundamentalist Christian. That teacher taught us more about the failings of the the theory then the theory itself. I had to do independent research on the Theory of Evolution in order to get up-to-speed on the subject.
The Kansas law did NOTHING to state that Darwinian theory was either correct or incorrect. It simply gave the teacher the power to teach it, or not teach it. Would you prefer for the government to force teachers to teach this subject? And what if the government decides that teachers must teach that "undesirable individuals" should be surgically sterilized to prevent them from breeding (as was U.S. policy before we became aware of the horrors of the Nazi consentration camps in WWII) ?
Personally, I would rather keep ALL propoganda, whether it comes from the athiestic or religious sectors, OUT of public schools.
You have an interesting way of getting "palm" and "pr0n" introduced in the same paragraph... are you saying that the judges will have a palm in one palm, and... something else in the other palm?
...Who knows what goes on 'neath those judicial robes...
if this would prevent people from reading Slashdot on a VA State computer... with all the goats.cx links, Slashdot might get banned...
:-)
Transmeta HAS shipped... well, since they pay Linus to basically take up a desk and work on the Linux Kernel, Transmeta is somewhat responsible for the shipping of Linux 2.4.0, albiet rather late...
I still don't see why you would consider my post over-rated. There are ways around clock settings, and some folks might generally be interested in seeing the app and how it compares to Everybuddy.
Whatever.
Am I old?
When I see some 17-year-old kid whizzing through BSD at the commandline faster then I can loose at a game of Quake, I sure do feel it.
I had that experience when I was working on someone's webserver at $50-an-hour. This young kid sat down at the machine and started to make it sing. I told the server's owner to drop me on the spot and hire the kid.
CHILL. It was a joke. J - O - K - E. There, I spelled it out for you. Anyone who has been to a convenience store and seen the sign that says "no more then 3 students allowed inside at a time" knows that teens are discriminated against.
And yes, there is such a thing as age discrimination against the old, although I am still young enough that I have not felt it yet.
One last thing: I would NEVER claim to be a "l337 h4x0r".
This should be stopped. Just because I'm 30 doesn't mean that I can't "Hack a Government Web Site". This is yet another example of how us "oldsters" get pre-judged as being technically inferior to the younger set.
:-)
And it isn't the salmon in the north pacific.
It seems to me that this project will probably be funded by U.S. dollars and not Russian rubles. Although russia may be the face behind the operation, I'll bet that there are either plenty of U.S. investors involved, or the U.S. Federal Gov. will be willing to back the project with good-old taxpayers dollars (we weren't gonna use it anyhow...)
Either way, I hope the project manages to inject decent cashflow into the Commonwealth of Independent State's economy, God knows they need it.
Although the company has removed the 'messengerA2Z' client from thier web site, you can still get a copy here at ZDNet India, if anyone wants to check it out and see how it works (or download it now in case it goes away forever.)
No monolith?
You must be mistaken. I am 100% sure that if the moon was scanned with magnetometers, THEY WOULD HAVE found a monolith. IT HAS TO BE THERE. I SAW IT ON THE MOVIE, SO IT HAS TO BE THERE.
There is a monolith... there is a monolith... there is a...
"My God, it's full of cars" - Dave Bowman's reaction when he received a Hot Wheels collector's set at the age of 6.
Wait a minute! Cassini is not supposed to be making a Jupiter flyby this year... I thought it was supposed to be the Discovery.
And Hal 9000 claims to be infalible. HA!
1. The USB support in 2.4 is not an amaturish hack.
2. SMP speeds up the system just fine on Linux if you are using a kernel compiled for SMP. Maybe you are refering to some other free Unix clone?
or has anyone else noticed an extreme resemblance between Tetsuo in Akira and the bloat that has become the Windows 2000 kernel?
2001: A Space OS
"Houston... we have a problem..."
"UNSS Gagarin, this is Houston. What is the nature of the problem?"
"Well... I know we are supposed to be on a mission to Proxima Centauri, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, our HalNT 9000 computer bluescreened just between the orbits of Neptune and Pluto."
"So... just reboot the damn thing and get back on the mission!"
"It's not that simple Houston. Our friend Astronaut Sam decided to fix it by loading Linux on the computer."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah. Everything is working fine now, but we're going to need someone down their to get us a device driver for the ship's dueterium fuel tanks... and the drive motors... and if you could get us drivers for the life support systems we would really appreciate it. The sooner the better on those life support systems."
"Oh... My... God..."
"Exactly. Dave forgot to check the Hardware Compatibility List before loading it up... I guess the ship's hardware is all proprietary. Needless to say, we have trapped Dave in the airlock. Want us to let him breathe vacuum?"
"Only if someone else has the root password."
"Oooo! Good point. Ummm, by the way, is the new 2.4 kernel out? We could sure use some help with these USB peripherals also."
"Okay Major Tom... you and your boys sit tight. We'll get our team down here working on a solution..."
The level of cluelessness that you refer to has everything to do with one thing: KARMA.
A lot of people post nonsense comments to go along with stories like this in an attempt to raise their precious Karma.
Most of the people that posted comments to this article probably didn't read the links... it's all about getting your post out early so that you have a better change of being moderated up. And I know what I am talking about here... after I KarmaWhored my first Slashdot account up to the maximum of 50, I opened up another account... and did the same in only two months of posting comments.
The facts are: Slashdot is broken. It's moderation system invites users to post assinine comments in a blatant attempt to post something "clever" enough to get moderated up. The only people who really get what Slashdot has become are the bonifide trolls and goats.cx posters.
The content of the stories have become less important to the average Slashdot reader then getting moderated up.
For example: The person who originated this thread, TheAncientHacker, and I recently engaged in a series of posts to another Slashdot article. While it was an interesting series of discussions, the truth is, my original comment that started the thread was posted for one reason and one reason only: to get moderated up. I reached that goal. The truth is, I had NO IDEA what I was talking about. Any quick, half-witted comment that makes a jab at Microsoft is destined to be moderated up on Slashdot -- especially if you happen to be one of the first 50 people to get your comment appended to a story.
Why, you may ask, would I do such a thing? Simple. I have a goal of getting as many Slashdot user accounts created as I can, getting them maxed out at 50 karma points and then auctioning them off on ebay. Just to prove a point that the current moderation system in use by Slashdot JUST DOESN'T WORK.
So then you are saying that since ADA is not a programing language, then obviously Visual Basic is not either? It must be Visual BASIC?
Give me a break.
Who cares how you capitilize it as long as the meaning gets transferred.
You... make... no... sense...
ADA is a valid programing language. Simply because it is outdated and of little use in modern society does not mean that it does not make sense in the context that I used it. ADA was really the first 'modern' programing language and it is in that context that I used it in my argument.
Now. What I am saying is very simple: Having a document that declares a product, protocol, or whatever to be a 'standard' is not the same as being a 'real world standard.'
Here at my company, we have a document that outlines our 'standard' installation of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on our computer systems. Although that standard is in place, there is not a single machine with an installation that mirrors that standard. A difference that makes no difference is no difference and a standard that is not a standard is no standard (obscure Star Trek reference.)
Look, I personally don't have a problem with Microsoft. I am an MCSE and I make my living supporting their products. But I wouldn't want MS to be the ones declaring the 'standard' for information systems components any more then I would want SUN or IBM to do so.
As far as the press release about Visual Basic... that makes me even more incredulous. I used to write press releases when I was a Journalist in the U.S. Navy. Press Releases are nothing more than propoganda which allows an organization to make a statement without having to have it's facts closely scrutinized. I remember writing a wonderful press release I wrote about one of our helicopters rescuing a Marine who had fallen overboard. It was full of heroism, yada yada yada. As a matter of course, however, I left out the fact that the young Marine had jumped overboard in a suicide attempt after receiving a "Dear John" letter. That's why I never read press releases. I wait for non-biased reviews.
So you are arguing that de facto standards based on what programmers are really using are good and standards held by international standards bodies are bad. So you are saying that the Visual Basic language is good since it is the most popular de facto standard for a programming language in history and C is bad since there's an actual standards organization specifying it?
1 - I would like to see your figures on Visual Basic being the most popular programing language in history. It might be the most popular in the last three years for Virus writers, but we have a long history of programing languages going back to ADA. I am sure that there have been PLENTY of programing languages which have beat out Visual Basic in popularity.
2 - You are trying to oversimplify my statement. What I am, in fact, saying is this: Standards are only good when they are IN FACT standards. A standard that only works on one platform is HARDLY a true standard. Standards, by reason, should be able to be implement on ANY platform - Windows, UNIX, OS/2, MacOS, BEOS, etc. To claim something to be "The Standard" when it only operates on a single platform is JUST WRONG.
Remember, there is a big difference between having some organization stamp it's approval on a piece of software and claiming that it is a "standard" and having the programing community actually use your software (which is where real standards show themselves.)
Microsoft has consistenty fought against true standards with it's "embrace and extend" strategy. Microsoft simply has the muscle to get it products declared a standard before it's competition can see it coming - hence Netscape's JavaScript is considered proprietary (even though it is open souce) and Microsoft's JScript is considered a Standard (even though it is closed source).
What's more, having your programing languages declared a standard by the ECMA is totally meaningless to me. I don't live in Europe.
Microsoft? Adhere to standards?
FAT CHANCE.
You'd be better off just leaving Microsoft alone... they will kill themselves off eventually.
Cool. Drop me a note at jpsmith@technologist.com
I would like to compare notes on your laptop's configuration. I have issues with the soundcard, for instance. Sounds great, but I can't record a drop of audio through the microphone.
I am using Mandrake 7.2, which should be pretty close to your RH7.0, although when I tried installing XFree86 4.0 manually in Mandrake 7.1, I was unable to get the video card to work with the right driver. I haven't tried it with 7.2, but I will the next time I reload my system (I am constantly playing around with beta software and messing with the location of libraries, yada yada, so I have a tendency to reload my system ever two or three months, if not sooner.)
Sorry. When I was 15, a 300bps modem was something to get teary-eyed about (I didn't get my first 2400Bps modem until I was 23). And Macs had just gotten on the Market in 1985, so most of us thought that they were cool, or at least cooler then the IBM PCjr.