Well, according to everything I've read, and most OSS developers have ignored, about interface design, you make common things EASY, and rare things POSSIBLE. You remove things from your design until you can take nothing more away without making it unusable. You make things simple BEFORE you make them general. And you try to be consistant throughout the interface, and unsuprising (e.g. you don't suddenly start forcing the use of the right mouse button when the rest of the application has been done using command keys and the LEFT mouse button. and you don't suddenly shift from drop downs to manual entry).
So something fairly common, like adding a new shared directory or changing a file's attributes, should be EASY and there should be a quick, consistant and unsurprising way to perform them. And for something incredibly obscure and useless like changing the character that performs an operation (something which NEVER should be done, as it essentially removes the consistancy and the un-surprise from the above contraints) should be hidden, hidden, hidden.
Of course, mapping keys at the moment is one of the few things most Linux apps do right. Funny, isn't it...
People like to mention Linux as a solution for the virus-ridden Windows products. This is of course a very FUD non-solution that effectively creates more work for the user with less potential and no address of the real issue.
I mean, think about it. If you had to keep Windows, what's the solution to ridding yourself of virus worries? Education! Learn what to trust, what not to trust. Learn how to lock down your computer. And learn how to find out about new viruses.
Now, if you want to use Linux, what's the first thing you need? Education! A lot more education than simply learning to use Windows Update. And what's more: to keep your Linux install secure, you'll STILL have to educate yourself about viruses. Linux isn't immune to them, and as more people use it, there is more incentive to actively exploit security holes.
The real problem with security isn't the software. It's lazy and ignorant administrators who treat their computers like appliances. There are many, many companies that use MS Windows for SQL, HTTPd, SMB, FTP, SMTP, etc who have NEVER had a problem and never will -- because their administrators are on the ball, willing to test new patches themselves rather than waiting weeks to see if there are complaints on the newsgroups, and basically have set their machines up in an intelligent manner. Place I used to work has 13 webservers running unpatched IIS 4. They still resisted Code Red -- because they had been set up correctly, were running all scripts in user space, weren't running random DLLs and weren't running the (largely unnecessary) indexing service.
Runing Windows is easier than running Linux, and therefore it's easier to run it wrong. By default, all services run as the "local system" account, which is roughly equivalent to root. If you want unix-like security in windows, most of these services can be modified to run in a user context. Before I'll use a Windows 2000 box, I have to shut down at least 13 services that I don't need and that sit there, chewing up my ram. I still prefer this to the THOUSANDS of options I have to know and set on a Linux box. Knowledge may be power, but learning new syntactic and symantic bullshit is a waste of time unless the REAL problem is one of syntax.
Of course you've seen config files out of sync with their GUI components...because Linux developers are still treatin the GUI as an afterthought! The guy who designs the core component doesn't design the GUI; that's done by some underling who probably doesn't have as much stake in doing so.
Windowing software ONLY works when you realize that your users don't give a shit about your API...they only care about what you click on. And they also don't want a mass of options they don't need...yours is a good example. Do most users need that option? I sure fucking don't. Ergo, the registry edit is good enough. In Linux, you'd have to go into the config file to do just about everything...from adding a new Samba share to changing your email forwarding address...and that's a problem.
Which is precisely why the "Linux Desktop" market is so hard to expand -- there is no "Linux Desktop," only "A bunch of programs that LOOK like a Desktop that run under a Linux kernel." The Linux underneath may be the same or similar, but the programs on top are VASTLY different. And yet, they are consistantly grouped together as "Linux Desktop," when "Linux desktop" makes about as much sense as "Goodyear SUV."
This is something everybody should really make a point of...because really, all of Linux' benefits start to fall apart when they hit the desktop, and one of the reasons for this is that people treat the entire set of x servers, window managers, graphics toolkits and desktop packages as "Desktop Linux," when really each is not interchangable with the others. Understand wheat I'm saying? Your machine can use any of a half dozen different mail clients and they're all compatible with each other...but the thing the user uses most, the desktop interface, has no real coherent interoperability save that offered by the ancient and useless X.
X is no longer "good enough." Linux NEEDS something new and universal that is built for new technology, instead of patched to allow it. It's 2000-friggin-4. Let's follow Apple's lead and push the desktop onto the graphics card. Let's follow Be's lead and make the GUI something integral to the system, AS important as the CLI, and not just a "front end" for CLI commands. Let's follow -- gasp -- Microsoft's lead and not immediately assume everybody's RTFM...change defaults to prevent ignorance from killing a system and start failing over with useful error messages.
So? Very rarely do I want anybody I send a doc to outside of the company to edit that doc. Actually, it's never happened.
People within the company don't matter, if we all use the same tool.
I'm well versed in compatibility issues, not because I use OpenOffice or any such nonsense, but because I'm a WordPerfect fan and never really got into MS Word. Tooled around in WordPro for a while, then went BACK to MS Word. And I've never really had a problem with it...and not even any questions sicne i started printing to pdf.
I dunno. I could see an office getting along pretty well without either of these, thanks to a little miracle called "PDF."
Pretty stupid to send around DOC and PPT files anyway, since they have a change history embedded in them. What happens when your prospective client hits Ctrl-Z and discovers you had their company name listed as "Sucker Co.?"
Cheap as in paying $99 for a web brower, email client, multimedia jukebox with CD burning and portable device management, image and text editor, three fun little games, easy file and setting manipulation, a platform that plays 90% of software available for a personal computer and ten years of updates for the same.
That's pretty cheap, man. I'd still go with Panther for $129, but it's a good price considering everything you get.
This is a very circular argument. You don't install the patch because it might break something. But, technically speaking, your machine is broken *NOW*.
Which is worse? A possible BSOD, or a possible break in that renders your machine useless or a spam zombie?
Now, I've personally never had a problem with an autoupdate patch (I've been running them at this office on every computer except the exchange machine for about a yealf and a half) from Microsoft, so I'm quite willing to leave them running. All our computers are generic Dell models and their hardware is pretty well support. I've had my share of trouble emerging the latest and greatest with gentoo, but usually because some mouth breather added the latest version to portage without mentioning that it used a completely different configuration system (thus breaking Postgres on my server for a few days). So there's no way I would leave THAT on auto update.
MYTH 1) Linux is actually a pleisiosaur from the cretatious period living in a lake in Scotland.
FACT: Linux is an operating system kernel.
MYTH 2) In Mandarin Chinese, the phrase GNU/Linux, loosely translated, means "Bit the wax tadpole."
FACT: Linux is developed by hard working, intelligent programmers who submit their source code to a community repository, where fans of the operating system can retreive, adapt, and download the kernel at their leisure.
MYTH 3) In 1953, a saucer full of Linux crashed landed on a farm in Roswell, New Mexico.
FACT: Linux is used in solutions from many of the top software firms around the world, including IBM and Sun Microsystems. Because of its open codebase, it is easy to adapt to just about any hardware configuration without costly customizations.
MYTH 4) Douching with Linux directly after sex prevents pregnancy and/or veneral disease.
FACT: Linux installations make up as much as five percent of the desktop computers in active use, and as much as 80% of webservers.
MYTH 5) Linux is a quality server operating system but still kind of a shoddy platform for everyday usage due to a number of conflicting desktop standards, graphical toolkits and a tireless devotion to supporting underpowered legacy systems rather than creating a single, modern standard. Attempts to critique this obvious shortcoming are met with an intensely emotional tirade that neither solves the inherent problem nor serves to edify the critic.
See, our government is working. It is slow because it has to be. It is corrupt because it will always be. Therefore, we should not prevent people from receiving the aid they need on the grounds that it will create graft, because graft exists even with a vacuum of social programs. There will probably never be a government without graft, because people help their friends. Business is not without graft. Education is not without graft. Sport is not without graft. Graft is to be expected...it's the side effects of graft that we should be concerned with.
The difference between Republican graft and Democratic graft is that the Democrats at least TRY to make things better for the average person while skimming off the top. The Republicans help themselves to the lion's share and hope some of it trickles down to the average person. Problem is, since these same people are trickling jobs offshore and tying up more and more money in the market, the trickle is slow at best.
But I can't be a libertarian. I support government regulation of industry. I believe in social welfare. And as little as I trust government, I still trust it more than the alternative.
Yours is a common, simplistic and wrong opinion. Self destruction in the name of a cause takes immense courage. When a soldier dies in battle, he's said to have made the "ultimate sacrifice." What do you call it when a soldier is captured by the enemy, put into prison, and tried for his crimes?
Surely it would be courageous...but no more so than the other. Facing almost certain death is courageous whether the death is instant, or if it comes after two years of intense, public trials.
Terrorists operate the way they do because they wage war against a perceived threat that is far more massive than their own military ability. They have exhausted all their political options and are yet are unwilling to give in to what they see as immorality on the part of the foe. The only option when faced with insurmountable odds is often surgical suicide strikes. Shit, sometimes that's the only option in regular warfare, such as the first wave on the shore at Normandy.
And of COURSE abortion is serious. I don't think many women are treating abortion with the abandon that most pro-lifers seem to imply. After all, abortion is an expensive, dangerous option. You're looking at $300-$400 for a first trimester and $500-$5000 for a second trimester. On the other hand, estrogen release birth control is $36 per month on the open market, free with many health plans, and a box of condoms in $15. Nobody is having abortions as a form of birth control, and if they are, they are immensely stupid people who would no doubt continue their method of "casual birth control" even if it were made illegal. You can't legislate morality.
You want to stop abortions? Get out of the damned courthouse and start making commercials. Reassure scared young mothers that they have options besides eliminating their child. Streamline the expensive, arduous adoption process. Start a not-for-profit child care and instruction program for working mothers. And make it cool to be a dad again. Most women don't want to abort their child, but you aren't going to change their mind by treating them as a sluts who've ruined their lives. Having a child, even an unplanned child, should be a blessing...and it can be, if you receive the proper support. One of my good friends recently got pregnant during her senior year of college. She married her boyfriend, finished school, and had the kid -- she may have destroyed her future, but you wouldn't know it. Her house is full of joy and exhausted laughter, in spite of legalized abortion.
Oh come on, man. Get post-modern with me: Intolerance IS greed.
See, it works like this. All humans are inherently greedy. All humans are also inherently social. Since seeming greedy is an anti-social behavior, we construct groups. Group A is us, we're fair with us so that we will like each other and maybe we'll help each other with our greed. Group B is foreign. We screw with Group B, because we need somebody to screw with or else we can't be greedy. Why Group B? Well, we say it's because we don't like them, because they're evil, because they're rich, because they're poor, because they're brown, because they worship a different non-existant invisible man in the sky than we do, because they have inferior cars, because their team wears aqua and maroon while ours wears the turquoise and scarlet!
Greed is instinctual, it is the driving force for the survival of the human animal. The hardest thing we as a species have ever been encountered with is the prospect of universal prosperity, because universal prosperity TRUMPS greed. Communism didn't work, because in a communist nation there was no way to serve the greed instinct except for crime, graft and surreptitious power. The reason government managed free market capitalism works so well is that it permits us to feed our greed instincts to whatever level we have...and yet, still make sure that everybody survives to prevent the volleyball of greed from every touching the ground.
I say, let's bomb the fuck out of a state. McVeigh was from Kansas, right? Bomb Kansas. Give them a week or so to get everybody out, and then P*CHEW! Bomb Kansas!
It's like if you're at a tough bar and somebody messes with you, start punching yourself in the face. They'll leave you alone, because you're obviously too high strung and crazy to mess with safely.
I guarantee you: it will do more for global perception of our nation and prevention of future terrorism then fucking with the Middle East. Right now, we're just engaging a cycle of retribution. But if we bomb our own country...the whole world will step back. "Shit. We don't want to mess with them. Did you hear about fucking Kansas, my god! Let's more our hateful scapegoating to Canad, instead. They have a nice, laid back society...let's crash a plane into that!"
Close as I can tell, calling George Bush honest is like calling him a tall man. Sure, he sounds sincere and looks earnest and truthful...but he's a consummate exagerater. His cabinet regularly feeds him with information that somebody CLAIMS is true, without fact checking it first.
But I see from the remainder of your post that you don't really care too much about facts, anyway. For example: your assertation that private schools are better than public schools "9 times out of 10" is just wrong. Most of the evidence from educational journals seems to point to public schools graduating students with about the same collegiate potential as private ones -- that is, the difference in collegiate GPAs between private and public school students is negligible. Sure, students are more likely to graduate from private school, but I suspect that's due to a parent's influence...if you're paying $8000 a year, you're gonna make damned sure Junior graduates. And the average public school has VASTLY superior facilities (not to mention better PAID teachers...around here public schools are populated by teachers who for one reason or another got thrown out of a public school, since you make up to $15,000 less even at a quality academy).
I'm talking AVERAGES here, which is an important distinction. Yes, Exeter Academy graduates a smarter, better prepared student than Troy Public High School. But a recent study from a local paper of state-wide test scores showed graduates from MY local public school -- Gardner-Dickinson -- are more prepared for college than graduates of my local Military Academy or the Catholic school down the road. Would either of these instituions be better if they had more money? Sure they would. But I don't think the allure of privatization is a big as you think. A lot of people -- myself included -- want their children to grow socially as well as academically. I'm a product of public schools, and I am neither dumb nor indoctrinated.
What's sick these days is that the powerbase in this country has shifted SO FAR to the right that pundits like Rush and even Bill O'reilly seem downright moderate.
I am a staunch moderate -- I believe that people's most basic needs should be met, active blocks to their success removed, and beyond that everything else is up to them. Thus, I believe in limited regulation, limited welfare, basic government health care and VERY limited support for foreign governments (because after all, we're a big visible target, so keeping nations on our side should be our prime concern. Everything else will take care of itself). For years I was a registered Republican solely to keep Hillary Clinton's care bear government OUT of office. But recently I find myself stuck in the same leftish barrel as Michael Moore and Barbara Friggin' Streisand, merely because I don't think the war in Iraq was necessary, moral or even beneficial in the long run to the people of Iraq. I find my heart bleeding merely because I think it's totally possible to have an American economy that pays a decent wage to American workers. And as a non-Christian outdoorsman with no direct problem with homosexuals getting married or adopting children or renting videos at BlockBuster, I expect demonization as a long haired, tree hugging hippy.
What the hell happened to making money by having good ideas and selling them? What the hell happened to a cheap, efficient government that ran itself without expensive private interests? What happened to creating DECENT JOBS so people didn't have to rely on welfare and unemployment? And what the hell happened to religion being something you BELIEVED IN and practiced, rather than tried to force on someone else? Is the post cold war hangover so bad that we need to throw away everything we've acheived for people's personal agendas?
I added my website to my sig. Within a week, I had a shitload of spam attached to my article #1.
At least I'm still the first link when you google for "das megabyte." Like I'm sure you always do. I'm also the third link down when you google for "Sorry, ryan."
Re:they EXIST! Re:Checks and Balances
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I don't have to justify it to myself. Nor does anybody. The constitution grants that a party shall be considered innocent until proven guilty...in a court of law. Justice is blind; law enforcement and the private sector are not required to shut their eyes nor will they be admonished for acting as such. It is the auspice of the rest of government to be a little suspicious.
Anyhow, guilt has nothing to do with it. As has been mentioned, the purpose of the DMCA's regulations on the disconnection of suspect material is to prevent further piracy while investigations are ongoing. This disconnection has NOTHING to do with guilt. It will have no effect on the outcome, or even the existance, of future trials. It's merely a protocol for copyright holders to get people to stop bitin' their shit...and for webmasters to avoid unscrupulous manipulations of said rule.
I don't have a problem with it, and I run an ISP AND a website that's held a copyrighted work here and there. For example, I am a distributor for WEFUNK sets...WEFUNK is a radio show out of Canada which plays mostly obscure funk music but mixes it with some popular hip-hop as well. There is no doubt in my mind that some of the 200+ two to four hour sets contain copyrighted material which I shouldn't be hosting in the US. I don't think I'll ever have to worry about it, but it's nice to know if Electra records ever does get its panties in a bunch about thirty people downloading a remix of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, they'll contact my ISP (me) who will then, by law, have to give me a chance to redeem myself.
Considering that before the DMCA it was the ISP's ass on the line and they would drop you like bad habit if you used a popular lyric in your title tags, I'd say our rights have vastly improved.
That great man was Popeye. He didn't feel the need to post anonymously. And neither do I.
Re:Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge the ISP
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At a trial, yes. But this isn't a trial. This is you saying, "hey, that guy's got my stuff!" We then turn to the guy, and he either gives it back or says "Hey, this isn't your stuff," at which point it's out of our hands and into the court's.
If it didn't work like this, the courts would have to be contacted for each and every copyright infringement case, even the blatant ones. That's inefficient and costly. This way is much faster, as if the material is TRULY infringing, or if the accuser is full of shit, the whole matter can be resolved within an hour. Which you have to admit, is a lot better than waiting months and months for the court to get READY to hear anything.
Just because you're not proven guilty doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want. There are a lot of things that you are prevented from doing merely because you are under investigation...for example, if you have a piece of property and somebody claims it's stolen, the police will sieze it even if it's fairly obviously yours.
The check agains this is that falsely reporting a crime is illegal as well. So when your property is returned or your content is restored, you have every right to press charges on the accuser. It's also considered a form of harrassment, which you can receive civil damages for.
Re:Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge the ISP
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I made my own ISP. Free speech IS a cornerstone of my service. But if somebody makes a complaint about copyright infringement, I *HAVE* to take down the material. Legally, I can't NOT do something about it without accepting liability for the infringement, which I'm not going to do.
Usually, I contact the site owner and give them four hours to do it themselves, or to LEGALLY respond to the request (saying, "there nuts i can post if i want" is not enough. you'd need to prove you had ownership of the the content). But if they aren't available, I've got to pull the plug.
Free speech is one thing and getting sued for somebody else's copyright infringement is quite another. I don't give a shit what you say until it starts directly affecting my ability to not-have-to-sell-my-house.
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Well, according to everything I've read, and most OSS developers have ignored, about interface design, you make common things EASY, and rare things POSSIBLE. You remove things from your design until you can take nothing more away without making it unusable. You make things simple BEFORE you make them general. And you try to be consistant throughout the interface, and unsuprising (e.g. you don't suddenly start forcing the use of the right mouse button when the rest of the application has been done using command keys and the LEFT mouse button. and you don't suddenly shift from drop downs to manual entry).
So something fairly common, like adding a new shared directory or changing a file's attributes, should be EASY and there should be a quick, consistant and unsurprising way to perform them. And for something incredibly obscure and useless like changing the character that performs an operation (something which NEVER should be done, as it essentially removes the consistancy and the un-surprise from the above contraints) should be hidden, hidden, hidden.
Of course, mapping keys at the moment is one of the few things most Linux apps do right. Funny, isn't it...
As opposed to now...where Linux looks like Red Sanford built it.
Microsoft: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "What do you want, ya big dummy?"
People like to mention Linux as a solution for the virus-ridden Windows products. This is of course a very FUD non-solution that effectively creates more work for the user with less potential and no address of the real issue.
I mean, think about it. If you had to keep Windows, what's the solution to ridding yourself of virus worries? Education! Learn what to trust, what not to trust. Learn how to lock down your computer. And learn how to find out about new viruses.
Now, if you want to use Linux, what's the first thing you need? Education! A lot more education than simply learning to use Windows Update. And what's more: to keep your Linux install secure, you'll STILL have to educate yourself about viruses. Linux isn't immune to them, and as more people use it, there is more incentive to actively exploit security holes.
The real problem with security isn't the software. It's lazy and ignorant administrators who treat their computers like appliances. There are many, many companies that use MS Windows for SQL, HTTPd, SMB, FTP, SMTP, etc who have NEVER had a problem and never will -- because their administrators are on the ball, willing to test new patches themselves rather than waiting weeks to see if there are complaints on the newsgroups, and basically have set their machines up in an intelligent manner. Place I used to work has 13 webservers running unpatched IIS 4. They still resisted Code Red -- because they had been set up correctly, were running all scripts in user space, weren't running random DLLs and weren't running the (largely unnecessary) indexing service.
Runing Windows is easier than running Linux, and therefore it's easier to run it wrong. By default, all services run as the "local system" account, which is roughly equivalent to root. If you want unix-like security in windows, most of these services can be modified to run in a user context. Before I'll use a Windows 2000 box, I have to shut down at least 13 services that I don't need and that sit there, chewing up my ram. I still prefer this to the THOUSANDS of options I have to know and set on a Linux box. Knowledge may be power, but learning new syntactic and symantic bullshit is a waste of time unless the REAL problem is one of syntax.
Of course you've seen config files out of sync with their GUI components...because Linux developers are still treatin the GUI as an afterthought! The guy who designs the core component doesn't design the GUI; that's done by some underling who probably doesn't have as much stake in doing so.
Windowing software ONLY works when you realize that your users don't give a shit about your API...they only care about what you click on. And they also don't want a mass of options they don't need...yours is a good example. Do most users need that option? I sure fucking don't. Ergo, the registry edit is good enough. In Linux, you'd have to go into the config file to do just about everything...from adding a new Samba share to changing your email forwarding address...and that's a problem.
Which is precisely why the "Linux Desktop" market is so hard to expand -- there is no "Linux Desktop," only "A bunch of programs that LOOK like a Desktop that run under a Linux kernel." The Linux underneath may be the same or similar, but the programs on top are VASTLY different. And yet, they are consistantly grouped together as "Linux Desktop," when "Linux desktop" makes about as much sense as "Goodyear SUV."
This is something everybody should really make a point of...because really, all of Linux' benefits start to fall apart when they hit the desktop, and one of the reasons for this is that people treat the entire set of x servers, window managers, graphics toolkits and desktop packages as "Desktop Linux," when really each is not interchangable with the others. Understand wheat I'm saying? Your machine can use any of a half dozen different mail clients and they're all compatible with each other...but the thing the user uses most, the desktop interface, has no real coherent interoperability save that offered by the ancient and useless X.
X is no longer "good enough." Linux NEEDS something new and universal that is built for new technology, instead of patched to allow it. It's 2000-friggin-4. Let's follow Apple's lead and push the desktop onto the graphics card. Let's follow Be's lead and make the GUI something integral to the system, AS important as the CLI, and not just a "front end" for CLI commands. Let's follow -- gasp -- Microsoft's lead and not immediately assume everybody's RTFM...change defaults to prevent ignorance from killing a system and start failing over with useful error messages.
That's because the first response to every posting is "STFU N00B."
So? Very rarely do I want anybody I send a doc to outside of the company to edit that doc. Actually, it's never happened.
People within the company don't matter, if we all use the same tool.
I'm well versed in compatibility issues, not because I use OpenOffice or any such nonsense, but because I'm a WordPerfect fan and never really got into MS Word. Tooled around in WordPro for a while, then went BACK to MS Word. And I've never really had a problem with it...and not even any questions sicne i started printing to pdf.
I dunno. I could see an office getting along pretty well without either of these, thanks to a little miracle called "PDF."
Pretty stupid to send around DOC and PPT files anyway, since they have a change history embedded in them. What happens when your prospective client hits Ctrl-Z and discovers you had their company name listed as "Sucker Co.?"
Would this be the same team that came together to create a single high quality desktop toolkit and design principle that everybody writing Linux uses?
Because I hear the tooth fairy and Sasquatch just nominated Santa for the position of senior developer.
Cheap as in paying $99 for a web brower, email client, multimedia jukebox with CD burning and portable device management, image and text editor, three fun little games, easy file and setting manipulation, a platform that plays 90% of software available for a personal computer and ten years of updates for the same.
That's pretty cheap, man. I'd still go with Panther for $129, but it's a good price considering everything you get.
This is a very circular argument. You don't install the patch because it might break something. But, technically speaking, your machine is broken *NOW*.
Which is worse? A possible BSOD, or a possible break in that renders your machine useless or a spam zombie?
Now, I've personally never had a problem with an autoupdate patch (I've been running them at this office on every computer except the exchange machine for about a yealf and a half) from Microsoft, so I'm quite willing to leave them running. All our computers are generic Dell models and their hardware is pretty well support. I've had my share of trouble emerging the latest and greatest with gentoo, but usually because some mouth breather added the latest version to portage without mentioning that it used a completely different configuration system (thus breaking Postgres on my server for a few days). So there's no way I would leave THAT on auto update.
MYTH 1) Linux is actually a pleisiosaur from the cretatious period living in a lake in Scotland.
FACT: Linux is an operating system kernel.
MYTH 2) In Mandarin Chinese, the phrase GNU/Linux, loosely translated, means "Bit the wax tadpole."
FACT: Linux is developed by hard working, intelligent programmers who submit their source code to a community repository, where fans of the operating system can retreive, adapt, and download the kernel at their leisure.
MYTH 3) In 1953, a saucer full of Linux crashed landed on a farm in Roswell, New Mexico.
FACT: Linux is used in solutions from many of the top software firms around the world, including IBM and Sun Microsystems. Because of its open codebase, it is easy to adapt to just about any hardware configuration without costly customizations.
MYTH 4) Douching with Linux directly after sex prevents pregnancy and/or veneral disease.
FACT: Linux installations make up as much as five percent of the desktop computers in active use, and as much as 80% of webservers.
MYTH 5) Linux is a quality server operating system but still kind of a shoddy platform for everyday usage due to a number of conflicting desktop standards, graphical toolkits and a tireless devotion to supporting underpowered legacy systems rather than creating a single, modern standard. Attempts to critique this obvious shortcoming are met with an intensely emotional tirade that neither solves the inherent problem nor serves to edify the critic.
FACT: Actually, this is entirely true.
See, our government is working. It is slow because it has to be. It is corrupt because it will always be. Therefore, we should not prevent people from receiving the aid they need on the grounds that it will create graft, because graft exists even with a vacuum of social programs. There will probably never be a government without graft, because people help their friends. Business is not without graft. Education is not without graft. Sport is not without graft. Graft is to be expected...it's the side effects of graft that we should be concerned with.
The difference between Republican graft and Democratic graft is that the Democrats at least TRY to make things better for the average person while skimming off the top. The Republicans help themselves to the lion's share and hope some of it trickles down to the average person. Problem is, since these same people are trickling jobs offshore and tying up more and more money in the market, the trickle is slow at best.
But I can't be a libertarian. I support government regulation of industry. I believe in social welfare. And as little as I trust government, I still trust it more than the alternative.
Yours is a common, simplistic and wrong opinion. Self destruction in the name of a cause takes immense courage. When a soldier dies in battle, he's said to have made the "ultimate sacrifice." What do you call it when a soldier is captured by the enemy, put into prison, and tried for his crimes?
Surely it would be courageous...but no more so than the other. Facing almost certain death is courageous whether the death is instant, or if it comes after two years of intense, public trials.
Terrorists operate the way they do because they wage war against a perceived threat that is far more massive than their own military ability. They have exhausted all their political options and are yet are unwilling to give in to what they see as immorality on the part of the foe. The only option when faced with insurmountable odds is often surgical suicide strikes. Shit, sometimes that's the only option in regular warfare, such as the first wave on the shore at Normandy.
And of COURSE abortion is serious. I don't think many women are treating abortion with the abandon that most pro-lifers seem to imply. After all, abortion is an expensive, dangerous option. You're looking at $300-$400 for a first trimester and $500-$5000 for a second trimester. On the other hand, estrogen release birth control is $36 per month on the open market, free with many health plans, and a box of condoms in $15. Nobody is having abortions as a form of birth control, and if they are, they are immensely stupid people who would no doubt continue their method of "casual birth control" even if it were made illegal. You can't legislate morality.
You want to stop abortions? Get out of the damned courthouse and start making commercials. Reassure scared young mothers that they have options besides eliminating their child. Streamline the expensive, arduous adoption process. Start a not-for-profit child care and instruction program for working mothers. And make it cool to be a dad again. Most women don't want to abort their child, but you aren't going to change their mind by treating them as a sluts who've ruined their lives. Having a child, even an unplanned child, should be a blessing...and it can be, if you receive the proper support. One of my good friends recently got pregnant during her senior year of college. She married her boyfriend, finished school, and had the kid -- she may have destroyed her future, but you wouldn't know it. Her house is full of joy and exhausted laughter, in spite of legalized abortion.
Oh come on, man. Get post-modern with me: Intolerance IS greed.
See, it works like this. All humans are inherently greedy. All humans are also inherently social. Since seeming greedy is an anti-social behavior, we construct groups. Group A is us, we're fair with us so that we will like each other and maybe we'll help each other with our greed. Group B is foreign. We screw with Group B, because we need somebody to screw with or else we can't be greedy. Why Group B? Well, we say it's because we don't like them, because they're evil, because they're rich, because they're poor, because they're brown, because they worship a different non-existant invisible man in the sky than we do, because they have inferior cars, because their team wears aqua and maroon while ours wears the turquoise and scarlet!
Greed is instinctual, it is the driving force for the survival of the human animal. The hardest thing we as a species have ever been encountered with is the prospect of universal prosperity, because universal prosperity TRUMPS greed. Communism didn't work, because in a communist nation there was no way to serve the greed instinct except for crime, graft and surreptitious power. The reason government managed free market capitalism works so well is that it permits us to feed our greed instincts to whatever level we have...and yet, still make sure that everybody survives to prevent the volleyball of greed from every touching the ground.
I say, let's bomb the fuck out of a state. McVeigh was from Kansas, right? Bomb Kansas. Give them a week or so to get everybody out, and then P*CHEW! Bomb Kansas!
It's like if you're at a tough bar and somebody messes with you, start punching yourself in the face. They'll leave you alone, because you're obviously too high strung and crazy to mess with safely.
I guarantee you: it will do more for global perception of our nation and prevention of future terrorism then fucking with the Middle East. Right now, we're just engaging a cycle of retribution. But if we bomb our own country...the whole world will step back. "Shit. We don't want to mess with them. Did you hear about fucking Kansas, my god! Let's more our hateful scapegoating to Canad, instead. They have a nice, laid back society...let's crash a plane into that!"
Close as I can tell, calling George Bush honest is like calling him a tall man. Sure, he sounds sincere and looks earnest and truthful...but he's a consummate exagerater. His cabinet regularly feeds him with information that somebody CLAIMS is true, without fact checking it first.
But I see from the remainder of your post that you don't really care too much about facts, anyway. For example: your assertation that private schools are better than public schools "9 times out of 10" is just wrong. Most of the evidence from educational journals seems to point to public schools graduating students with about the same collegiate potential as private ones -- that is, the difference in collegiate GPAs between private and public school students is negligible. Sure, students are more likely to graduate from private school, but I suspect that's due to a parent's influence...if you're paying $8000 a year, you're gonna make damned sure Junior graduates. And the average public school has VASTLY superior facilities (not to mention better PAID teachers...around here public schools are populated by teachers who for one reason or another got thrown out of a public school, since you make up to $15,000 less even at a quality academy).
I'm talking AVERAGES here, which is an important distinction. Yes, Exeter Academy graduates a smarter, better prepared student than Troy Public High School. But a recent study from a local paper of state-wide test scores showed graduates from MY local public school -- Gardner-Dickinson -- are more prepared for college than graduates of my local Military Academy or the Catholic school down the road. Would either of these instituions be better if they had more money? Sure they would. But I don't think the allure of privatization is a big as you think. A lot of people -- myself included -- want their children to grow socially as well as academically. I'm a product of public schools, and I am neither dumb nor indoctrinated.
What's sick these days is that the powerbase in this country has shifted SO FAR to the right that pundits like Rush and even Bill O'reilly seem downright moderate.
I am a staunch moderate -- I believe that people's most basic needs should be met, active blocks to their success removed, and beyond that everything else is up to them. Thus, I believe in limited regulation, limited welfare, basic government health care and VERY limited support for foreign governments (because after all, we're a big visible target, so keeping nations on our side should be our prime concern. Everything else will take care of itself). For years I was a registered Republican solely to keep Hillary Clinton's care bear government OUT of office. But recently I find myself stuck in the same leftish barrel as Michael Moore and Barbara Friggin' Streisand, merely because I don't think the war in Iraq was necessary, moral or even beneficial in the long run to the people of Iraq. I find my heart bleeding merely because I think it's totally possible to have an American economy that pays a decent wage to American workers. And as a non-Christian outdoorsman with no direct problem with homosexuals getting married or adopting children or renting videos at BlockBuster, I expect demonization as a long haired, tree hugging hippy.
What the hell happened to making money by having good ideas and selling them? What the hell happened to a cheap, efficient government that ran itself without expensive private interests? What happened to creating DECENT JOBS so people didn't have to rely on welfare and unemployment? And what the hell happened to religion being something you BELIEVED IN and practiced, rather than tried to force on someone else? Is the post cold war hangover so bad that we need to throw away everything we've acheived for people's personal agendas?
I added my website to my sig. Within a week, I had a shitload of spam attached to my article #1.
At least I'm still the first link when you google for "das megabyte." Like I'm sure you always do. I'm also the third link down when you google for "Sorry, ryan."
I don't have to justify it to myself. Nor does anybody. The constitution grants that a party shall be considered innocent until proven guilty...in a court of law. Justice is blind; law enforcement and the private sector are not required to shut their eyes nor will they be admonished for acting as such. It is the auspice of the rest of government to be a little suspicious.
Anyhow, guilt has nothing to do with it. As has been mentioned, the purpose of the DMCA's regulations on the disconnection of suspect material is to prevent further piracy while investigations are ongoing. This disconnection has NOTHING to do with guilt. It will have no effect on the outcome, or even the existance, of future trials. It's merely a protocol for copyright holders to get people to stop bitin' their shit...and for webmasters to avoid unscrupulous manipulations of said rule.
I don't have a problem with it, and I run an ISP AND a website that's held a copyrighted work here and there. For example, I am a distributor for WEFUNK sets...WEFUNK is a radio show out of Canada which plays mostly obscure funk music but mixes it with some popular hip-hop as well. There is no doubt in my mind that some of the 200+ two to four hour sets contain copyrighted material which I shouldn't be hosting in the US. I don't think I'll ever have to worry about it, but it's nice to know if Electra records ever does get its panties in a bunch about thirty people downloading a remix of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, they'll contact my ISP (me) who will then, by law, have to give me a chance to redeem myself.
Considering that before the DMCA it was the ISP's ass on the line and they would drop you like bad habit if you used a popular lyric in your title tags, I'd say our rights have vastly improved.
A great man once said, "I yam what I yam."
That great man was Popeye. He didn't feel the need to post anonymously. And neither do I.
At a trial, yes. But this isn't a trial. This is you saying, "hey, that guy's got my stuff!" We then turn to the guy, and he either gives it back or says "Hey, this isn't your stuff," at which point it's out of our hands and into the court's.
If it didn't work like this, the courts would have to be contacted for each and every copyright infringement case, even the blatant ones. That's inefficient and costly. This way is much faster, as if the material is TRULY infringing, or if the accuser is full of shit, the whole matter can be resolved within an hour. Which you have to admit, is a lot better than waiting months and months for the court to get READY to hear anything.
Just because you're not proven guilty doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want. There are a lot of things that you are prevented from doing merely because you are under investigation...for example, if you have a piece of property and somebody claims it's stolen, the police will sieze it even if it's fairly obviously yours.
The check agains this is that falsely reporting a crime is illegal as well. So when your property is returned or your content is restored, you have every right to press charges on the accuser. It's also considered a form of harrassment, which you can receive civil damages for.
I made my own ISP. Free speech IS a cornerstone of my service. But if somebody makes a complaint about copyright infringement, I *HAVE* to take down the material. Legally, I can't NOT do something about it without accepting liability for the infringement, which I'm not going to do.
Usually, I contact the site owner and give them four hours to do it themselves, or to LEGALLY respond to the request (saying, "there nuts i can post if i want" is not enough. you'd need to prove you had ownership of the the content). But if they aren't available, I've got to pull the plug.
Free speech is one thing and getting sued for somebody else's copyright infringement is quite another. I don't give a shit what you say until it starts directly affecting my ability to not-have-to-sell-my-house.