I used notgnu (http://www.notgnu.org/) for years, at least on home computers, for similar reasons. No LISP, not nearly as many features, but starts fast and the common commands are the same. But now, finally, I have a fast enough machine so that I can run the real thing, bloat and all. I'm too old to switch: I've been using some emacs flavor for almost as long as emacs has existed, and my fingers just type the control key commands like it was my native language.
Actually, a vote against amnesty is implicitly a vote for impeachment, because if you care about upholding the law, and don't want to offer amnesty, the next step is to impeach and remove those lawbreakers who are in office, and refer to prosecution those who are outside the government. And maybe part of the reason for the vote was that the majority of the Senate didn't want to go there. But 1/3 or so them did.
All very good questions. The British (just for example) endured years of terrorism from the IRA and (more recently) Islamic extremists, who bombed London buses. But they didn't re-organize their entire government, launch a couple of wars, spend a trillion dollars, and revoke civil liberties to deal with it. Of course their government did go along for the ride with George Bush, but not nearly as far or completely.
I now understand why some Senators get elected so many times, they really are in sync with their constituents. Well, my senator, Senator Feinstein, has been elected many times, and she doesn't get it. She voted against the amendment (hence, for immunity), while our other senator, Boxer, voted for it. I'd sure like to get someone in Feinstein's seat who had some principles and a spine.
executable code must be embedded in hardware read-only media and must be reloaded after every session What happens when you need to update this executable code? How do you ensure it is only ever updated from a secure/reliable source?
I wonder if Windows Server does this? One of my pet peeves about Windows is that it assumes all your resources (disk, CPU, etc.) are the system's to use for whatever random tasks it thinks need executing, whenever it wants to execute them. But on a server box, you want predictable performance and this is not acceptable. I frequently execute long-running multi-threaded tasks on my Windows desktop machine, and I don't want them interrupted or resource starved either. So I turn off most scheduled actions like Windows Update, but it's hard to quash them all. And I sure don't want some small user action to trigger a massive disk scan.
I really wish they would start giving honest descriptive names to Bills
My personal favorite: "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996" (aka Welfare reform). Sounds better than, say the "Throw Mom & Kids Off the Dole Act of 1996".
The Four Pawns Attack has not exactly killed off the Benoni for Black - in fact a Benoni was played in a recent top-level tournament (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1482102), and White even passed up the chance to play 7. f4, which would not be likely if it was indeed a sure win. But in any case, most Grandmasters can and do evolve their opening repertoire as times change. Fischer was quite capable of finding something different to play if necessary.
But I agree that Karpov was very, very good in 1975 and would have had a good chance against Fischer. Many people would have wanted to see how a Karpov-Fischer match would turn out. We'll never know now.
It would be nice if this were true, but for non-trival use cases there isn't any such thing as a "standard" database - they are not really compatible or feature equivalent - although you can hide the differences quite a bit. Ditto for application server. Stray into advanced areas and you will find differences in the vendors' tech stacks. So there is some inevitable cost to changing stacks. Some developers do target multiple different stacks and keep their software compatible with all of them but that costs, too.
Right. There was just another recent article posted about photo licensing issues, although that was mostly relating to pictures of people not products. But the basic idea was right to use in a newspaper != right to use in other contexts (such as advertising).
Free software is not something that most people are resistant to, where free means you don't pay.
Free software as RMS uses the term is, indeed, something most people don't care about.
There are basically 3 kinds of software users: 1. 99% of software users don't know what source code is, wouldn't be technically able to use it if they had it, or are technically able but don't actually want to spend their time hacking their software. For these people GPL software is indistinguishable from free as in beer software, like Apache licensed software. Insisting that these people care about something that makes no difference in their lives is nuts. 2. Some fraction of software consumers actually write software for sale. Also includes people who write software for their own use but think they might potentially license it or sell it in future. Unlike category 1, where people are indifferent to what the source code license is, many people in this group actively don't want anything to do with GPL software, because making use of it can lock them into an open source business model that restricts their rights and limits their income opportunities. Yes, it is possible to make money with open source. But people have made a lot more money with closed source. Hugely more money. 3. The remaining small fraction of the software population who actually want source code and have the religion. These people care what the source code license is (unlike group 1) and actually prefer GPL or a compatible license (unlike group 2). But they don't need any convincing.
It's actually a fundamental principle of economics that people have preferences, inscrutable or apparently irrational as those may be. Economists assume people know what they want. And it's a fundamental principle of democracy that they get to act on those preferences in choosing their leaders. So you can argue that people would prefer R.P. to other candidates if they knew more, or that electing R.P. would actually maximize their preference set, but I rather think that's assuming other people have your preferences and priorities.
Durdur was saying that many people don't think Ron Paul's ideas would work, for instance (which is an appeal to ignorance or an appeal to majority, depending on how you look at it). I happen to think skepticism about R.P.'s policy proposals is well-founded, not just ignorant, but in any case majority is how we elect Presidents (more or less - with the Electoral College and all).
Ron Paul is a fringe candidate for a reason: because he's got fringe positions on a bunch of issues - the problem isn't that people aren't hearing the message, the problem is that it isn't selling. For example, few people like paying income tax, but few people think abolishing it entirely will actually work. Many people think government is too big and too wasteful. But not a lot of people want to, or think we realistically can, shrink government by the drastic amount Ron Paul is advocating. Many people would like us out of Iraq. Soon. But winding down Iraq will probably take some time. And so on. Bush has caused a gigantic train wreck in terms of deficit spending, botched foreign policy, tolerance of waste and corruption, and so on, and so many of Ron Paul's criticisms are not misplaced. The next President is going to spend most of his/her time cleaning up the mess. But I think the remedies being proposed sound wacko. What we need is a course correction - not turning the Ship of State 180 degrees around.
if it wasn't for the attitude evident in this rant, I would think Zed would be an extremely good asset for any company That's a big "if". Competence can compensate for bad attitude, but only up to a point.
Actually, I understand that many of these borrowers didn't get a subprime loan to get into a house, but re-financed into a subprime deal. So they had a house, but then wanted/needed cash out or were offered a "better" loan with a lower payment, and they went for it. Not a good move, but pretty understandable when you consider that their mailboxes were getting stuffed with these offers every week.
#2: somebody get Judge Judith Eiler's email address. make sure she's on lots of "personal e-mail" lists. if these seems unfair to the judge, hey, she's the one who ruled this crap isn't spam, it's personal A little free advice: Never, ever piss off a judge, if you can help it. It's about as safe and fun as grabbing an electric cattle fence.
Escape, and attempted escape is a crime, at least in California, and can result in additional prison time. (I would be surprised if any state did not have similar laws). But of course if you were already in for life, you can't get additional time.
The book Ghost Wars, by Steve Coll, tells the story of the CIA, which was supporting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban. The Alliance was flying helicopters out of a foreign base (in Tajikistan, IIRC). The CIA rode along from time to time. But the Soviet copter they were flying in made them nervous, so they dispatched a CIA mechanic to have a look inside. He opens it up and finds an Indian-made helicopter engine wired up somehow to drive the Soviet chopper. He carefully closes it up, backs away, and the CIA never goes near that machine again. They bought their own Russian surplus helicopter and hired their own paid staff to maintain it.
You can cut off the end user, but if that end user's machine is part of a botnet, then how much good does that do? That user doesn't have clue who sent spam from his machine. Then what does he do about it? You or I can clean or re-image the box, but your average joe with an email account is not going to find that easy (and the odds he will fix the vulnerability that caused him to get compromised in the first place are really low).
I'd actually be ok with it being someone's opinion, if it was an informed opinion. But the whole model is that a Ph.D. in the field can be edited over by a 14-year-old. It's not just an encyclopedia moved to the Web. It's an attempt to use (I'd say mis-use) a Wiki to write an encyclopedia by an endless series of edits, many of which don't add information, remove or needlessly change information that is there, or (as you say) inject uninformed or misinformed opinion. I've made a few small contributions but the overall poor quality, and the fact that all edits are ephemeral, discourage me from contributing more.
> Contrary to many people's perception, there is no difference in principle between employers and the rest of us
I disagree. Employers have the power to fire and hire, and a lot of control over work conditions while you're hired. So a few checks and balances in favor of the workers is not a bad idea. There was a time when the U.S. didn't have this, or not much: then, we had child labor, 14-hour workdays, and company cops to bust your head if you complained. Not to mention discrimination.
Slashdot Mirror
I used notgnu (http://www.notgnu.org/) for years, at least on home computers, for similar reasons. No LISP, not nearly as many features, but starts fast and the common commands are the same. But now, finally, I have a fast enough machine so that I can run the real thing, bloat and all. I'm too old to switch: I've been using some emacs flavor for almost as long as emacs has existed, and my fingers just type the control key commands like it was my native language.
Actually, a vote against amnesty is implicitly a vote for impeachment, because if you care about upholding the law, and don't want to offer amnesty, the next step is to impeach and remove those lawbreakers who are in office, and refer to prosecution those who are outside the government. And maybe part of the reason for the vote was that the majority of the Senate didn't want to go there. But 1/3 or so them did.
All very good questions. The British (just for example) endured years of terrorism from the IRA and (more recently) Islamic extremists, who bombed London buses. But they didn't re-organize their entire government, launch a couple of wars, spend a trillion dollars, and revoke civil liberties to deal with it. Of course their government did go along for the ride with George Bush, but not nearly as far or completely.
It's not a capital crime, but why isn't conspiracy to break a federal law (FISA) an impeachable offense?
I wonder if Windows Server does this? One of my pet peeves about Windows is that it assumes all your resources (disk, CPU, etc.) are the system's to use for whatever random tasks it thinks need executing, whenever it wants to execute them. But on a server box, you want predictable performance and this is not acceptable. I frequently execute long-running multi-threaded tasks on my Windows desktop machine, and I don't want them interrupted or resource starved either. So I turn off most scheduled actions like Windows Update, but it's hard to quash them all. And I sure don't want some small user action to trigger a massive disk scan.
My personal favorite:
"Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996" (aka Welfare reform). Sounds better than, say the "Throw Mom & Kids Off the Dole Act of 1996".
The Four Pawns Attack has not exactly killed off the Benoni for Black - in fact a Benoni was played in a recent top-level tournament (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1482102), and White even passed up the chance to play 7. f4, which would not be likely if it was indeed a sure win. But in any case, most Grandmasters can and do evolve their opening repertoire as times change. Fischer was quite capable of finding something different to play if necessary.
But I agree that Karpov was very, very good in 1975 and would have had a good chance against Fischer. Many people would have wanted to see how a Karpov-Fischer match would turn out. We'll never know now.
It would be nice if this were true, but for non-trival use cases there isn't any such thing as a "standard" database - they are not really compatible or feature equivalent - although you can hide the differences quite a bit. Ditto for application server. Stray into advanced areas and you will find differences in the vendors' tech stacks. So there is some inevitable cost to changing stacks. Some developers do target multiple different stacks and keep their software compatible with all of them but that costs, too.
Right. There was just another recent article posted about photo licensing issues, although that was mostly relating to pictures of people not products. But the basic idea was right to use in a newspaper != right to use in other contexts (such as advertising).
Free software is not something that most people are resistant to, where free means you don't pay.
Free software as RMS uses the term is, indeed, something most people don't care about.
There are basically 3 kinds of software users:
1. 99% of software users don't know what source code is, wouldn't be technically able to use it if they had it, or are technically able but don't actually want to spend their time hacking their software. For these people GPL software is indistinguishable from free as in beer software, like Apache licensed software. Insisting that these people care about something that makes no difference in their lives is nuts.
2. Some fraction of software consumers actually write software for sale. Also includes people who write software for their own use but think they might potentially license it or sell it in future. Unlike category 1, where people are indifferent to what the source code license is, many people in this group actively don't want anything to do with GPL software, because making use of it can lock them into an open source business model that restricts their rights and limits their income opportunities. Yes, it is possible to make money with open source. But people have made a lot more money with closed source. Hugely more money.
3. The remaining small fraction of the software population who actually want source code and have the religion. These people care what the source code license is (unlike group 1) and actually prefer GPL or a compatible license (unlike group 2). But they don't need any convincing.
It's actually a fundamental principle of economics that people have preferences, inscrutable or apparently irrational as those may be. Economists assume people know what they want. And it's a fundamental principle of democracy that they get to act on those preferences in choosing their leaders. So you can argue that people would prefer R.P. to other candidates if they knew more, or that electing R.P. would actually maximize their preference set, but I rather think that's assuming other people have your preferences and priorities.
Ron Paul is a fringe candidate for a reason: because he's got fringe positions on a bunch of issues - the problem isn't that people aren't hearing the message, the problem is that it isn't selling. For example, few people like paying income tax, but few people think abolishing it entirely will actually work. Many people think government is too big and too wasteful. But not a lot of people want to, or think we realistically can, shrink government by the drastic amount Ron Paul is advocating. Many people would like us out of Iraq. Soon. But winding down Iraq will probably take some time. And so on. Bush has caused a gigantic train wreck in terms of deficit spending, botched foreign policy, tolerance of waste and corruption, and so on, and so many of Ron Paul's criticisms are not misplaced. The next President is going to spend most of his/her time cleaning up the mess. But I think the remedies being proposed sound wacko. What we need is a course correction - not turning the Ship of State 180 degrees around.
Actually, I understand that many of these borrowers didn't get a subprime loan to get into a house, but re-financed into a subprime deal. So they had a house, but then wanted/needed cash out or were offered a "better" loan with a lower payment, and they went for it. Not a good move, but pretty understandable when you consider that their mailboxes were getting stuffed with these offers every week.
Escape, and attempted escape is a crime, at least in California, and can result in additional prison time. (I would be surprised if any state did not have similar laws). But of course if you were already in for life, you can't get additional time.
The book Ghost Wars, by Steve Coll, tells the story of the CIA, which was supporting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban. The Alliance was flying helicopters out of a foreign base (in Tajikistan, IIRC). The CIA rode along from time to time. But the Soviet copter they were flying in made them nervous, so they dispatched a CIA mechanic to have a look inside. He opens it up and finds an Indian-made helicopter engine wired up somehow to drive the Soviet chopper. He carefully closes it up, backs away, and the CIA never goes near that machine again. They bought their own Russian surplus helicopter and hired their own paid staff to maintain it.
You can cut off the end user, but if that end user's machine is part of a botnet, then how much good does that do? That user doesn't have clue who sent spam from his machine. Then what does he do about it? You or I can clean or re-image the box, but your average joe with an email account is not going to find that easy (and the odds he will fix the vulnerability that caused him to get compromised in the first place are really low).
I'd actually be ok with it being someone's opinion, if it was an informed opinion. But the whole model is that a Ph.D. in the field can be edited over by a 14-year-old. It's not just an encyclopedia moved to the Web. It's an attempt to use (I'd say mis-use) a Wiki to write an encyclopedia by an endless series of edits, many of which don't add information, remove or needlessly change information that is there, or (as you say) inject uninformed or misinformed opinion. I've made a few small contributions but the overall poor quality, and the fact that all edits are ephemeral, discourage me from contributing more.
If PCs and printers are such great businesses, why did IBM get out of them?
> Contrary to many people's perception, there is no difference in principle between employers and the rest of us
I disagree. Employers have the power to fire and hire, and a lot of control over work conditions while you're hired. So a few checks and balances in favor of the workers is not a bad idea. There was a time when the U.S. didn't have this, or not much: then, we had child labor, 14-hour workdays, and company cops to bust your head if you complained. Not to mention discrimination.