At the risk of slashdotting a really good book, I humbly offer an absolutely excellent read on the Soviet development of pathgenic weapons: Biohazard, by Ken Alibek (the former first deputy chief of Biopreparat, the Soviet state pharmaceutical agency that developed and manufactured biological weaponry).
I've been thinking about these very things for months now, and a question keeps popping up: When you don't like a company, their methods, or their products, a free-market way of dealing with this would be to simply buy the products of their competitors. Is something like this not possible with employment as well?
Mind you, I'm not just suggesting "well, don't work there," but something more. From my perspective (underemployed tech worker) there are thousands of people that are talented and either working for peanuts or not working at all. Meanwhile, large corporations lavish on their CEO's and Executive VP's and the like while the people who actually do most of the work sit around and complain that they're not getting paid enough.
Isn't there some free-market potential for mutiny? That is, if you and a thousand techie's get together and believe you can do the same thing as WhateverSoft, what is stopping you from doing it? There are certainly startup costs, but I imagine the hardest part is just gaining the initial momentum to do it. And if word spread that a new company was taking aim at another's market share, only this company didn't hemmorage funding to overpaid execs and actually rewarded its staff by their performance, they'd probably be able to recruit some very talented people.
Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
This is not necessarily true. In fact, some of the best personal websites I've bookmarked don't use tables, PHP, CGI or any of that. But I've bookmarked them because they've got really good content on them.
I've been trying to come up with a format to create my own personal site for a while now, and have found that the single best site-style that I enjoy reading is just text with some pictures in the middle of it. That's it. No styles, no fonts, nada. I like that when I resize my browser window the text gets reformatted. I like that I'm not constrained by some asinine user interface that's impossibly artistic at the cost of usability.
There's a reason that newspapers (for example) have the consistant layout that they do. The evolution of columns and font sizes have resulted in a generalized format that is not only easy to read, but over time has become accepted. Once people accept a certain way of doing something, it becomes the best way by merit of its ubiquitousness alone. Ir's the same reason why KDE and Gnome mimic the "START" button. You don't have to reinvent the wheel for your personal website just because some assclown says you have to use every technology available for your site to be good. The key is to just get started. Write some stuff down, upload some pictures... the site will grow over time and the "best" layout and tools will make themselves known.
Those interested in a nicely-hacked, small-footprint version of WMP should take a look at Media Player Classic.
The nice thing about WMP is that it's a self-contained executable, it allows you to add any DirectShow filters you may have installed, supports Quicktime and RealMedia (that's right! get rid of those ugly, bloated pieces of dogshit), as well as DVD support and built-in support for TV cards.
Basically, it does everything, weighs in at under a meg, and looks and feels just like Media Player 6.4. Get it. Now.
There are cons to digital, but more pros, I think. First, while it's true that the fees for reproductions for friends and family is reduced, this is offset by the sheer volume of shots you can get with digital. Also, being able to instantly review pictures helps with blown poses and bad exposures, while at the same time can be used to stimulate a boring client by showing previews of shots just taken.
And while there are now thousands of lackeys with digital cameras taking business away from seasoned professionals, I think you'll find the industry has long benefited from "word-of-mouth", and bad photographers will still remain bad photographers no matter if they shoot digital or film. With a good enough portfolio, you should be able to lure cheapskate couples from unwisely choosing inexperienced photographers just because their rates are lower.
(In response to the article): Wedding photographers get just one chance to capture the shot. If you miss it, you'd better be counting on a divorce if you ever want another shot at a client. With weddings being so emotionally important to people, there is an extreme amount of pressure to get it right, and not everyone can handle the stress while retaining their "composure for exposure". In regard to wedding pics, you usually get what you pay for.
And what is so wrong that? Telecommunications has become just as important to our economy as water or electricity. I think it's time the government start to accept this. Having deregulated competition among private utility companies inevitably leads to reduced service and increased rates (there are dozens of examples to choose from, but energy in California comes immediately to mind). If you want to see DSL or Cable prices drop to rock-bottom, have the government treat it like any other essential commodity.
I can't imagine the red splotches could be any worse than the occasional bad CAM version of some 0-day films available on the 'net. When will the industry learn that I'm not going to pay to see this crap. Never. I would rather watch a crappy CAM with people coughing and standing up and a lousy audio feed than shell out $12 before I know the movie is worth it. All the industry is doing is screwing the people who shelled out the cash to watch their "blockbusters" and eat over-priced popcorn.
Regardless, the DVD will be error-free, which means the worst-case scenario is that I have to wait 5 months before getting a crispy XVID DVD rip. Ooh, that's tough love.
Oh, and Mr. MPAA Man, we geeks have this wonderful little open-source program called VirtualDub that makes removing bad frames from videos dead-easy. Just so you know.
There are lots of good reasons to dislike the BBC's TV series (mangling of the storyline would be tops on my list) but I honestly doubt the movie will have a better Ford, Arthur, or Narrator (the Guide). Douglas Adams felt that the casting for them was perfect (and clearly nobody will ever be a better "guide" than Peter Jones). If I were to cast it, I'd put Jack Davenport (of BBC's Coupling) as Arthur, and hope Peter Jones is still alive to do the Guide.
Also, the "Computer Graphics" of the guide will never, ever be topped. To quote from Don't Panic - The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy Companion written by none other than the great Neil Gaiman:
"The graphics...were incredibly detailed, apparently computer-created animated graphics, full of sight gags and in-jokes, and presumably designed for people with freeze-frame and slow-motion videos, since there was no way one could pick up on the complexities of the graphics sequences in a single watching at normal speed. Would one have noticed, for example, the cartoons of Douglas Adams himself, posing as a Sirius Cybernatics Corporation Advertising Executive, writing hard in the dolphin sequence, and in drag as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings? Could one have picked up on all the names and phone numbers of some of the best places in the universe to purchase, or dry out from, a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster? One of the phone numbers in the graphics of Episode Six was that of a leading computer magazine who phoned Pearce Studios, responsible for the graphics, to ask which computer it was done on, and whether a flat-screen television was built into the book prop used on the show. The comment beside the phone number was not flattering."
The reason the TV series was, in many ways, very good, is because Adams realized with the medium of television, he had a whole new outlet for his humor that was simply impossible to do on Radio. Also, there's simply no way you can condense the book into an 1.5 hour movie. THGTTG isn't an anecdote to be shortly told with expensive special effects... it's a Decameron, a Canterbury Tales collection of stories that gives the reader (or listener, or viewer) a rolicking feeling of traveling from place to place.
Normally I wouldn't bother responding to bottom-feeders like yourself, but when the topic is fitness or diet, misinformation can lead to people hurting themselves, so I'll bite.
First off, your link was very informative. Unfortunately, I fail to see how scientific articles on malaria, breast cancer, chemotherapy or viruses has any relation to the topic at hand. Perhaps you had something more particular in mind, so please, do share when you get a chance.
As for muscle growth -- there is a great deal of literature available that all says basically the same thing. Muscle cells get their energy from ATP. When ATP is exhausted (for instance, by working out), your muscles fatigue. When you continue to stress them, you tear the aactin/myosin filaments at their weakest link. During rest, your body repairs the damage in a manner analogous to scar tissue forming over a wound, so that the next time you perform the same action, your body will be less susceptible to injury.
So listen, 7-Vodka (195504), do yourself a favor: stop trolling discussion boards, stop convincing yourself there's some get-strong-quick method to building muscles that doesn't require exercise, and pick up some weights. Your body will thank you.
One side effect that I remember was increased agitation. Of course, the inferior boobs surrounding me at work could have caused that.
You know, you start working out, and all of a sudden your standards go through the roof. The chicks around you aren't pretty enough... they're not fit enough... their boobs are "inferior". Jeez.
I believe Creatine also increases the amount of cellular water retention, but that once you stop taking it everything goes back to "normal". I also used Cell-Tech's Creatine mix, and concur with your statement that you should drink extra water.
People should understand that taking supplements doesn't gives you muscles. The only thing that increases muscle mass is your body repairing damaged muscle tissue. That's why you lift weights. If you've ever done bar-dips, you probably know the tingling feeling of micro-muscle tears. Supplements, steroids, it's all for the same purpose: to enable you to better wear out your muscles. Of course, people are always looking for shortcuts, often to their detriment (in the case of steroids), yet overlook some of the most basic and essential needs the body requires.
This is why sleep and diet are so crucial to muscle development. A proper diet, particularly one rich in protein, not only gives you the right building blocks for new muscle material, but also gives you energy when you're working out. Sleep is just as important, because it is during sleep (not during exercise) that your body repairs itself and rebuilds muscle. I've seen too many people work out every day, and then stay up late into the evening, complaining that they aren't seeing any results. They simply never give their body a chance to heal before they're breaking it down again in the gym.
Sorry for the fitness diatrabe, I just thought I'd add my two cents for anyone interested.
i already have an ibm mouse that does this. have had it for 3 years
Yeah, the first thing I thought when I used my bi-directional scrolling mouse to click on this page was, "So. Fucking. What!" El-cheapo Taiwanese manufacturer A4 has been making these mice since the 90's. Why in the hell is this on the front page as "news".
Hey, in other news, you can combine 3 color screens in a cathode ray tubes and create a "color monitor" that makes web viewing so much more vibrant.
Re:seriously screwed up action
on
Linking Dangerously
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
All that being said, the whole debate [...] is a moot point - the 'gentleman' in question VOLUNTARILY gave up his right to a trial and plead guilty...
Well, voluntary is a funny word. If I hold a gun to your head and ask for your wallet, and you give it to me, I haven't actually hurt you. You voluntarily gave your wallet to me. Of course, that 'voluntary' action was made under serious duress, hence it's not actually voluntary.
Now, if the FBI decided to charge me with a completely bogus crime, then said, "Plea now, or we'll make sure you get ass-raped by a rotating array of big, angry men every day for the next twenty years" -- well, suffice to say, I'd plea bargain.
When the government's got your nuts in a vice, you don't have very far to run.
Thank you for the good laugh this afternoon. Our network administrator actually wet his pants, while the rest of us were in such hysterics and tears that work became all but unmanageable. I don't get all the bad press about you guys... I think you've got a great sense of humor.
phpMyAdmin is a wonderful little administration tool, don't get me wrong. I use it all the time, and have it installed on my WinBoxen along with mySQL, PHP and the rest. The problem is that it is NOT a front-end. I'm talking about a very, very simple graphical front end where I can change the widths of the columns by dragging the sides, where I can scroll down the entire list in a table without limiting my view to 30 items, where I can set up relationships between fields and SEE them... phpMyAdmin is nice because at least you can do some work on a database, but I almost always create my DB's in Access and export them to mySQL before installing on Linux web boxes. It's just so much easier.
I completely agree with you. But Linux is even worse than that, because so many things are simply not part of the "normal" installation -- I suppose that's because there is no normal installation with Linux. The apps you need for a firewall or a web server are different than those you'd need for doing graphics or video editing. And Linux users still don't think a GUI is necessary. What decade is this? GUI's aren't just a feature for the clueless -- they came about as an evolution from the command line. To dismiss the benefits of a GUI with offhand remarks like "RTFM and you'll be fine... Read the sundry forums and you'll be fine... Buy a tree's worth of manuals and you'll be fine... Learn to use and love the command line and you'll be fine" fly in the face of reason.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, Linux applications are still just not there to justify huge companies replacing their entire architecture. If the OSS community keeps at it, as I'm sure they will, then perhaps in five or ten years enough alternatives will exist for companies to switch. But right now, there's no alternative to Photoshop, 3DSMax, Pagemaker/InDesign, and the hundreds of thousands of games that already exist in mature forms for Windows systems. If you want to convince a school or architecture firm or management consultancy to replace their proprietary software for Linux alternatives, you'll have to convince them that they won't also have to find replacements for all the other software they use on a daily basis (Outlook/Exchange, TrueType fonts by default, A cross-application clipboard, even Access - I mean, come on, can't the OSS community come up with a SINGLE good-looking graphical frontend for mySQL!?)
I don't understand the purpose of this law. Anyone with a snazzy enough backend can just configure a computer to log your info and save it to assigned IP addresses.
To keep "session" info, just add the ?user&bigrandomnumber after the URL, then bookmark it. All it has to do is check if the data is correct in the db, then it calls up your info. No session info required. It's still early, and I haven't had enough coffee, but I believe this would work.
No. Sugar cane used to be grown in Bermuda and other areas of the Carribean, aided in large part to the use of slavery. Very similar situation here, except now the slavery is legitamized under the big umbrella of "market forces".
Programming is simply a commodity. I oughta know, I am a programmer.
No, programming is a service. But the important point is that those jobs you listed in the beginning were blue collar jobs, requiring little additional education. The problem isn't that programmers are being moved overseas. The problem is that the level of job being moved overseas is steadily increasing at an almost logarithmic scale.
General manufacturing (textiles, metal works, food production) moved west at the turn of century, then overseas where it was viable. Too bad for the uneducated worker. In the 50's and 60's, you've got skilled construction (auto assembly, electronics manufacturing, etc.) moving overseas. Too bad for the high school graduate. Now even our service jobs are being shipped overseas (call centers, programmers, etc.). So those of us saddled with thousands of dollars of college debt are now screwed.
So the jobs were taken from the lower class, then lower-middle, and now middle class. The upper-middle's filled with lawyers and doctors, so look for them to be "transplanted" in the next couple of decades. Then you've got the upper class, which is basically just property owners living off their investments. That won't change much. But the society underneath them will be markedly shifted from three-tiers to two, and our country will resemble feudal times, where jobs are so scarce and the workforce so enormous that people will struggle just to pay their rents.
This isn't paranoid delusion -- it's already happenning. Used to be, a general education would provide you with the tools you needed to get a decent job, and perhaps 30% of your income would go to housing. According to a recent report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, more than 14 million households spend more than half their income on housing, and another 17.3 million spend between 30-50 percent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines on housing afforability suggest spending no more than 30%, but this is getting increasingly difficult.
There's numerous people that misuse HTML/javascript/css/... but there we rarely blame the formats...? What's so different about Flash?
Because it's a really well-implemented, close-sourced, not-free (as in cash) program/scripting language that's the best in the industry. That's a very bitter pill for a lot of people around here to swallow. Unfortunately, it's true. There's just so much functionality, speed, and extensability in Flash that unless Macromedia seriously drops the ball, no one is going to catch up. I wish everyone who used Flash had the skills of Praystation and the like; unfortunately like any tool, it takes practice and skill to master, and in the wrong hands can be seriously misused.
If you're just a OSS zealot, I can understand disliking Flash. But bashing its feature-set is just childish, particularly since there's nothing else out there that can do half of what it does.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of slashdotting a really good book, I humbly offer an absolutely excellent read on the Soviet development of pathgenic weapons: Biohazard, by Ken Alibek (the former first deputy chief of Biopreparat, the Soviet state pharmaceutical agency that developed and manufactured biological weaponry).
And I thought he was being ironic. :)
Anyway, it was the link to the (by all appearances) scam site that prompted my amusement, given the subject for this thread.
A vacuum filled with gas is no longer a vacuum!
Isn't space a vacuum? Isn't the earth residing in space?
I've been thinking about these very things for months now, and a question keeps popping up: When you don't like a company, their methods, or their products, a free-market way of dealing with this would be to simply buy the products of their competitors. Is something like this not possible with employment as well?
Mind you, I'm not just suggesting "well, don't work there," but something more. From my perspective (underemployed tech worker) there are thousands of people that are talented and either working for peanuts or not working at all. Meanwhile, large corporations lavish on their CEO's and Executive VP's and the like while the people who actually do most of the work sit around and complain that they're not getting paid enough.
Isn't there some free-market potential for mutiny? That is, if you and a thousand techie's get together and believe you can do the same thing as WhateverSoft, what is stopping you from doing it? There are certainly startup costs, but I imagine the hardest part is just gaining the initial momentum to do it. And if word spread that a new company was taking aim at another's market share, only this company didn't hemmorage funding to overpaid execs and actually rewarded its staff by their performance, they'd probably be able to recruit some very talented people.
Just some thoughts.
Now run along and play with that scam site of your own and the Windoze crap that runs it.
You just made my friends list.
Best. Putdown. Ever.
Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
This is not necessarily true. In fact, some of the best personal websites I've bookmarked don't use tables, PHP, CGI or any of that. But I've bookmarked them because they've got really good content on them.
I've been trying to come up with a format to create my own personal site for a while now, and have found that the single best site-style that I enjoy reading is just text with some pictures in the middle of it. That's it. No styles, no fonts, nada. I like that when I resize my browser window the text gets reformatted. I like that I'm not constrained by some asinine user interface that's impossibly artistic at the cost of usability.
There's a reason that newspapers (for example) have the consistant layout that they do. The evolution of columns and font sizes have resulted in a generalized format that is not only easy to read, but over time has become accepted. Once people accept a certain way of doing something, it becomes the best way by merit of its ubiquitousness alone. Ir's the same reason why KDE and Gnome mimic the "START" button. You don't have to reinvent the wheel for your personal website just because some assclown says you have to use every technology available for your site to be good. The key is to just get started. Write some stuff down, upload some pictures... the site will grow over time and the "best" layout and tools will make themselves known.
Those interested in a nicely-hacked, small-footprint version of WMP should take a look at Media Player Classic.
The nice thing about WMP is that it's a self-contained executable, it allows you to add any DirectShow filters you may have installed, supports Quicktime and RealMedia (that's right! get rid of those ugly, bloated pieces of dogshit), as well as DVD support and built-in support for TV cards.
Basically, it does everything, weighs in at under a meg, and looks and feels just like Media Player 6.4. Get it. Now.
There are cons to digital, but more pros, I think. First, while it's true that the fees for reproductions for friends and family is reduced, this is offset by the sheer volume of shots you can get with digital. Also, being able to instantly review pictures helps with blown poses and bad exposures, while at the same time can be used to stimulate a boring client by showing previews of shots just taken.
And while there are now thousands of lackeys with digital cameras taking business away from seasoned professionals, I think you'll find the industry has long benefited from "word-of-mouth", and bad photographers will still remain bad photographers no matter if they shoot digital or film. With a good enough portfolio, you should be able to lure cheapskate couples from unwisely choosing inexperienced photographers just because their rates are lower.
(In response to the article): Wedding photographers get just one chance to capture the shot. If you miss it, you'd better be counting on a divorce if you ever want another shot at a client. With weddings being so emotionally important to people, there is an extreme amount of pressure to get it right, and not everyone can handle the stress while retaining their "composure for exposure". In regard to wedding pics, you usually get what you pay for.
I haven't seen anyone mention the Archos AV320 Mediabox.
It has a 3.8" screen, plays MPEG4, MP3's, and records from any video source (encodes into MPEG4), including NTSC and PAL video.
And what is so wrong that? Telecommunications has become just as important to our economy as water or electricity. I think it's time the government start to accept this. Having deregulated competition among private utility companies inevitably leads to reduced service and increased rates (there are dozens of examples to choose from, but energy in California comes immediately to mind). If you want to see DSL or Cable prices drop to rock-bottom, have the government treat it like any other essential commodity.
I can't imagine the red splotches could be any worse than the occasional bad CAM version of some 0-day films available on the 'net. When will the industry learn that I'm not going to pay to see this crap. Never. I would rather watch a crappy CAM with people coughing and standing up and a lousy audio feed than shell out $12 before I know the movie is worth it. All the industry is doing is screwing the people who shelled out the cash to watch their "blockbusters" and eat over-priced popcorn.
Regardless, the DVD will be error-free, which means the worst-case scenario is that I have to wait 5 months before getting a crispy XVID DVD rip. Ooh, that's tough love.
Oh, and Mr. MPAA Man, we geeks have this wonderful little open-source program called VirtualDub that makes removing bad frames from videos dead-easy. Just so you know.
There are lots of good reasons to dislike the BBC's TV series (mangling of the storyline would be tops on my list) but I honestly doubt the movie will have a better Ford, Arthur, or Narrator (the Guide). Douglas Adams felt that the casting for them was perfect (and clearly nobody will ever be a better "guide" than Peter Jones). If I were to cast it, I'd put Jack Davenport (of BBC's Coupling) as Arthur, and hope Peter Jones is still alive to do the Guide.
Also, the "Computer Graphics" of the guide will never, ever be topped. To quote from Don't Panic - The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy Companion written by none other than the great Neil Gaiman:
"The graphics...were incredibly detailed, apparently computer-created animated graphics, full of sight gags and in-jokes, and presumably designed for people with freeze-frame and slow-motion videos, since there was no way one could pick up on the complexities of the graphics sequences in a single watching at normal speed. Would one have noticed, for example, the cartoons of Douglas Adams himself, posing as a Sirius Cybernatics Corporation Advertising Executive, writing hard in the dolphin sequence, and in drag as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings? Could one have picked up on all the names and phone numbers of some of the best places in the universe to purchase, or dry out from, a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster? One of the phone numbers in the graphics of Episode Six was that of a leading computer magazine who phoned Pearce Studios, responsible for the graphics, to ask which computer it was done on, and whether a flat-screen television was built into the book prop used on the show. The comment beside the phone number was not flattering."
The reason the TV series was, in many ways, very good, is because Adams realized with the medium of television, he had a whole new outlet for his humor that was simply impossible to do on Radio. Also, there's simply no way you can condense the book into an 1.5 hour movie. THGTTG isn't an anecdote to be shortly told with expensive special effects... it's a Decameron, a Canterbury Tales collection of stories that gives the reader (or listener, or viewer) a rolicking feeling of traveling from place to place.
Downtown Crossing is still A-OK.
/. is keeping me.)
(I gotta get outta' the damned office, but the fat pipe connection and
Hi, troll.
Normally I wouldn't bother responding to bottom-feeders like yourself, but when the topic is fitness or diet, misinformation can lead to people hurting themselves, so I'll bite.
First off, your link was very informative. Unfortunately, I fail to see how scientific articles on malaria, breast cancer, chemotherapy or viruses has any relation to the topic at hand. Perhaps you had something more particular in mind, so please, do share when you get a chance.
As for muscle growth -- there is a great deal of literature available that all says basically the same thing. Muscle cells get their energy from ATP. When ATP is exhausted (for instance, by working out), your muscles fatigue. When you continue to stress them, you tear the aactin/myosin filaments at their weakest link. During rest, your body repairs the damage in a manner analogous to scar tissue forming over a wound, so that the next time you perform the same action, your body will be less susceptible to injury.
So listen, 7-Vodka (195504), do yourself a favor: stop trolling discussion boards, stop convincing yourself there's some get-strong-quick method to building muscles that doesn't require exercise, and pick up some weights. Your body will thank you.
One side effect that I remember was increased agitation. Of course, the inferior boobs surrounding me at work could have caused that.
You know, you start working out, and all of a sudden your standards go through the roof. The chicks around you aren't pretty enough... they're not fit enough... their boobs are "inferior". Jeez.
I believe Creatine also increases the amount of cellular water retention, but that once you stop taking it everything goes back to "normal". I also used Cell-Tech's Creatine mix, and concur with your statement that you should drink extra water.
People should understand that taking supplements doesn't gives you muscles. The only thing that increases muscle mass is your body repairing damaged muscle tissue. That's why you lift weights. If you've ever done bar-dips, you probably know the tingling feeling of micro-muscle tears. Supplements, steroids, it's all for the same purpose: to enable you to better wear out your muscles. Of course, people are always looking for shortcuts, often to their detriment (in the case of steroids), yet overlook some of the most basic and essential needs the body requires.
This is why sleep and diet are so crucial to muscle development. A proper diet, particularly one rich in protein, not only gives you the right building blocks for new muscle material, but also gives you energy when you're working out. Sleep is just as important, because it is during sleep (not during exercise) that your body repairs itself and rebuilds muscle. I've seen too many people work out every day, and then stay up late into the evening, complaining that they aren't seeing any results. They simply never give their body a chance to heal before they're breaking it down again in the gym.
Sorry for the fitness diatrabe, I just thought I'd add my two cents for anyone interested.
Or you could just read the free, searchable online version here
i already have an ibm mouse that does this. have had it for 3 years
Yeah, the first thing I thought when I used my bi-directional scrolling mouse to click on this page was, "So. Fucking. What!" El-cheapo Taiwanese manufacturer A4 has been making these mice since the 90's. Why in the hell is this on the front page as "news".
Hey, in other news, you can combine 3 color screens in a cathode ray tubes and create a "color monitor" that makes web viewing so much more vibrant.
All that being said, the whole debate [...] is a moot point - the 'gentleman' in question VOLUNTARILY gave up his right to a trial and plead guilty...
Well, voluntary is a funny word. If I hold a gun to your head and ask for your wallet, and you give it to me, I haven't actually hurt you. You voluntarily gave your wallet to me. Of course, that 'voluntary' action was made under serious duress, hence it's not actually voluntary.
Now, if the FBI decided to charge me with a completely bogus crime, then said, "Plea now, or we'll make sure you get ass-raped by a rotating array of big, angry men every day for the next twenty years" -- well, suffice to say, I'd plea bargain.
When the government's got your nuts in a vice, you don't have very far to run.
Dear SCO,
Thank you for the good laugh this afternoon. Our network administrator actually wet his pants, while the rest of us were in such hysterics and tears that work became all but unmanageable. I don't get all the bad press about you guys... I think you've got a great sense of humor.
Sincerely,
LinuxCorp.
phpMyAdmin is a wonderful little administration tool, don't get me wrong. I use it all the time, and have it installed on my WinBoxen along with mySQL, PHP and the rest. The problem is that it is NOT a front-end. I'm talking about a very, very simple graphical front end where I can change the widths of the columns by dragging the sides, where I can scroll down the entire list in a table without limiting my view to 30 items, where I can set up relationships between fields and SEE them... phpMyAdmin is nice because at least you can do some work on a database, but I almost always create my DB's in Access and export them to mySQL before installing on Linux web boxes. It's just so much easier.
I completely agree with you. But Linux is even worse than that, because so many things are simply not part of the "normal" installation -- I suppose that's because there is no normal installation with Linux. The apps you need for a firewall or a web server are different than those you'd need for doing graphics or video editing. And Linux users still don't think a GUI is necessary. What decade is this? GUI's aren't just a feature for the clueless -- they came about as an evolution from the command line. To dismiss the benefits of a GUI with offhand remarks like "RTFM and you'll be fine... Read the sundry forums and you'll be fine... Buy a tree's worth of manuals and you'll be fine... Learn to use and love the command line and you'll be fine" fly in the face of reason.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, Linux applications are still just not there to justify huge companies replacing their entire architecture. If the OSS community keeps at it, as I'm sure they will, then perhaps in five or ten years enough alternatives will exist for companies to switch. But right now, there's no alternative to Photoshop, 3DSMax, Pagemaker/InDesign, and the hundreds of thousands of games that already exist in mature forms for Windows systems. If you want to convince a school or architecture firm or management consultancy to replace their proprietary software for Linux alternatives, you'll have to convince them that they won't also have to find replacements for all the other software they use on a daily basis (Outlook/Exchange, TrueType fonts by default, A cross-application clipboard, even Access - I mean, come on, can't the OSS community come up with a SINGLE good-looking graphical frontend for mySQL!?)
I don't understand the purpose of this law. Anyone with a snazzy enough backend can just configure a computer to log your info and save it to assigned IP addresses.
To keep "session" info, just add the ?user&bigrandomnumber after the URL, then bookmark it. All it has to do is check if the data is correct in the db, then it calls up your info. No session info required. It's still early, and I haven't had enough coffee, but I believe this would work.
Sugar Cane used to be grown in Hawaii.
No. Sugar cane used to be grown in Bermuda and other areas of the Carribean, aided in large part to the use of slavery. Very similar situation here, except now the slavery is legitamized under the big umbrella of "market forces".
Programming is simply a commodity. I oughta know, I am a programmer.
No, programming is a service. But the important point is that those jobs you listed in the beginning were blue collar jobs, requiring little additional education. The problem isn't that programmers are being moved overseas. The problem is that the level of job being moved overseas is steadily increasing at an almost logarithmic scale.
General manufacturing (textiles, metal works, food production) moved west at the turn of century, then overseas where it was viable. Too bad for the uneducated worker. In the 50's and 60's, you've got skilled construction (auto assembly, electronics manufacturing, etc.) moving overseas. Too bad for the high school graduate. Now even our service jobs are being shipped overseas (call centers, programmers, etc.). So those of us saddled with thousands of dollars of college debt are now screwed.
So the jobs were taken from the lower class, then lower-middle, and now middle class. The upper-middle's filled with lawyers and doctors, so look for them to be "transplanted" in the next couple of decades. Then you've got the upper class, which is basically just property owners living off their investments. That won't change much. But the society underneath them will be markedly shifted from three-tiers to two, and our country will resemble feudal times, where jobs are so scarce and the workforce so enormous that people will struggle just to pay their rents.
This isn't paranoid delusion -- it's already happenning. Used to be, a general education would provide you with the tools you needed to get a decent job, and perhaps 30% of your income would go to housing. According to a recent report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, more than 14 million households spend more than half their income on housing, and another 17.3 million spend between 30-50 percent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines on housing afforability suggest spending no more than 30%, but this is getting increasingly difficult.
There's numerous people that misuse HTML/javascript/css/... but there we rarely blame the formats...? What's so different about Flash?
Because it's a really well-implemented, close-sourced, not-free (as in cash) program/scripting language that's the best in the industry. That's a very bitter pill for a lot of people around here to swallow. Unfortunately, it's true. There's just so much functionality, speed, and extensability in Flash that unless Macromedia seriously drops the ball, no one is going to catch up. I wish everyone who used Flash had the skills of Praystation and the like; unfortunately like any tool, it takes practice and skill to master, and in the wrong hands can be seriously misused.
If you're just a OSS zealot, I can understand disliking Flash. But bashing its feature-set is just childish, particularly since there's nothing else out there that can do half of what it does.