Fox News exercises much more centralized control of reporting than traditional news media. For example, John Moody, the VP of news, sends daily memos specifying the kinds of language that reporters and commentators should work into their discussion of various issues or people.
Yes, I think I read that (and actually most of your post) on Wikipedia the other day. Basically, the allegation is that Moody wants reporters to do things like ensure they refer to U.S. soldiers who shoot enemies from a distance as "sharp shooters" rather than "snipers" because the former has more positive connotations. I hardly see how that is going to bat for the Republican party. If anything, it's perhaps a bit jingoistic but I don't see anything inherently wrong with it.
While we're on the subject, I happened to note that just tonight O'Reilly referred to our green berets who were repeatedly charged then cleared of wrongdoing as "snipers." Oops, I guess he didn't get the memo?
It is unlikely that this will come as a surprise if you try watching Fox News over the course of a single day when a controversial news story is in progress, rather than flipping through the channel. Commentator after commentator will not only pull up the exact same tu quoque examples to deflect criticism of Republican officials, they'll use the exact same words and catch phrases. That's basic propaganda: if an opinion is shared by many people, it appears more credible, so the propagandist arranges that his voice speaks through many mouths.
I do notice this and it works both ways. Every which way actually. Criticism of Republicans and criticism of Democrats and praise for Republicans and praise for Democrats is generally reported consistently on Fox News. And, indeed, you will notice that the (very rare) praise for Republicans and praise for Democrats and so on and so forth found on MSNBC and CNN and CNBC and everywhere else is also very consistently worded.
I don't believe the idea is to go to bat for Republicans so much as ensure that Fox News presents consistent reporting which makes viewers trust the network more. It's a smart business decision. Fortunately, Fox News also carries several opinion programs where guests of varied viewpoints are invited to speak. One of those is the O'Reilly Factor. Another one is Special Report (w/ Brit Hume). Obviously the formats are different. Special Report is basically a clone of CNN's Crossfire (is that even still around?) The O'Reilly Factor has no analog as far as I know. There's also Hannity and Colmes if you can stand it, but there you just get a looney supposed conservative and a looney supposed liberal. Actually, I don't think they're that bad but I get the feeling that there's a lot of very heavy scripting going on with that show. Alan often espouses Democrat talking points he clearly doesn't believe. Hannity also has a habit of just espousing Republican talking points. He is more convincing though because he comes off as actually believing what he's saying.
That they sometimes go after Republicans doesn't prove anything. They go after Republicans that don't toe the leadership's line. That's hardly independence.
I'm sure it's much easier for you to shoehorn it into that but that is simply untrue. That said, I've seen O'Reilly toe the party line. For example, he supported the immigration bill "compromise" along with all of the Republicans at that point. Meanwhile, nearly every conservative commentator said W.T.F. That wasn't the party line. That wasn't the Bush line. Or maybe it was? I dunno, who was toeing the party line? I'm not even sure what exactly the party line was. The republicans in congress wanted to pass it, their constituents didn't like it. Of course, maybe it was all a conspiracy and the plan was never to pass it but instead to capitulate to the Democrats to gain trust and then bring out the big guns like Rush to make sure the Democrats would wind up with egg on thei
I have no idea what Ron Paul would do. I've seen him with my own eyes take the stance that we must leave. More importantly, I watched him fail to enumerate the costs and benefits of leaving vs. staying and fail to provide any concrete reason for leaving. Instead, I watched him attack the Bush administration for making what is in his eyes, and the eyes of many others, a bad decision.
That does not, however, make it a bad decision. There were already clear signs of Al Queda moving out of Afghanistan and looking for a nation in the region more friendly to their interests. Our state department, headed by Colin Powell at the time, made it quite clear to the world that harboring Al Queda would not be tolerated. Bush made a speech containing a severe distillation of this with the phrase "you're either with us or against us." Most nations in the region took heed and decided to make it their national policy that they would not harbor terrorists. Some of them have anyway; sometimes simply because it's nearly impossible to enforce a border. We can relate to that since we can't do it either.
Despite the "with us or against us" comment, simply laying low is and has been enough to avoid getting oneself in our crosshairs. See for instance Syria and pre-Ahmadinejad Iran. But one man apparently felt the need to test our resolve and chose instead to begin welcoming Al Queda into his country despite not aligning with their principle beliefs. In a classic case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Saddam began allowing Al Queda training camps within Iraq. To further test our resolve, he decided to violate the treaties he signed after the Gulf War. That it turns out he did not have any usable weapons does not put into dispute the fact that he violated his treaty to allow weapons inspectors.
Those are a subset of the many stated reasons for using military force in Iraq. They were accepted by Congress when they passed the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002." So it would seem your assertion that Bush has ignored Congress is clearly false. Perhaps though, you mean that he has since then ignored Congress. Of course, you'd need an example for that and unfortunately for you there are none to be found. Congress continues to fund the war and has not repealed the resolution. I don't doubt that you, and probably Ron Paul as well, really believe that Bush went to Iraq and stays in Iraq without Congressional approval. But believing in a falsehood does not make it true.
What Congress should be doing now is letting the President do what he is sworn to do. Congress should also be checking to make sure that he's not failing at what he's doing. Indeed, we see that not even a month ago, General Petraeus gave a report to Congress. Furthermore, he has promised a second report in March. So it would seem that Congress is doing their job and that the President is doing his.
Why is it so hard to understand that our government is working correctly? Is it simply because the result has thus far not been good? Clearly the majority of Congress believes that it's possible for a victorious result or else they'd have already voted for an immediate withdrawal.
Wow, how clever. Take a broadcast where Mr. O'Reilly refers to NBC and trim out all references then put it up there with a TV capture of the show displaying the Fox News logo.
For what it's worth, I flip around the various news stations. My observation is that many of the commentators on Fox News have conservative/traditional views. What I don't see are commentators going to bat for Republicans acting badly just because they are Republicans. In fact, Fox News is more critical of Republicans than other news organizations, precisely because their commentators tend to criticize non-conservative polices from any candidates, whether they be Republican or Democrat. Also, not every commentator or guest necessarily has the same views. For instance, O'Reilly is really pretty liberal, at least in the more traditional sense of the word. My dad refers to this as "New York Liberal." On the other hand, there are guys on there like Hannity who are very conservative and fairly close-minded about it. Hannity clearly comes off as being a Republican cheerleader although occasionally he makes a good point. I also see quite a number of moderate Democrats as well as the occasional far-left Democrat. And often times, even the far-left Democrats have a well-reasoned point even if I happen to disagree with their conclusion. The moderate ones almost always have a very well-reasoned point.
On the other hand, I can hardly stand to watch MSNBC anymore. It feels like I'm watching a Democrat rally. Any politician who kow-tows to the far left wing of the Democrat party gets a pass. Everyone else gets slandered.
I'll tell you one thing I don't like about Fox News though: Alan Colmes. Not because he's liberal, but because his schtick is to give Hannity a hard time. Half the time I don't believe he even believes what he's saying. He does exactly the sort of Democrat cheerleading that MSNBC does except not as well. I used to watch the program but lately I flip off the TV after O'Reilly. If I want to get a balanced viewpoint, O'Reilly's program is far better because despite claims otherwise, he does give his guests a fair shake.
O'Reilly also serves a good purpose of weeding out the idiots who otherwise look good. Take Ron Paul for instance. Mr. Paul sounds good at first, a libertarian with conservative religious views and liberal social views. Then you find out he's on the "get out of Iraq now, damn the consequences" bandwagon. Well, I'm sorry, but that line of thinking is not what I'm looking for in my next president. Even Hillary Clinton has softened her position on the war to that of a reasoned debate rather than a knee-jerk reaction. I'd sooner vote for Clinton than Paul and I don't like many of Clinton's viewpoints at all.
Of course, the "damn the consequences" viewpoint is very prevalent so I'm sure that Paul's idiocy appeals to a lot of people who are also idiots.
Then again, I am really only familiar with server products.
Excellent point. I, too, am focused on the server side. Come to think of it, why not avoid the fuss and bother and write your desktop app in Java? I have a Rio Car: an mp3 car stereo. It has a Linux kernel and originally came with Windows-only compatible desktop software, too. Some clever wag wrote a Java desktop version, so it now runs on my Mac, my Linux box, DW's Windows machine, or my Solaris box.
Perhaps because at least on Macs, Java GUIs are horrid. Actually, just about every cross-platform GUI toolkit fails to provide a respectable experience on Mac because the UI paradigms are different.
There is basically no alternative to Office on Linux. OpenOffice.org? Please.
I can't agree with you here. I use OO exclusively for intercommunication with my coworkers. I find it perfectly adequate. The only shortcomings I have seen that affect me are problems with the presentation software (Impress, I think it's called). I have frequently seen presentations made with PowerPoint or StarOffice that come off differently when I look at them. The point comes across, though. I think that's the main concern; will the software allow me to communicate with my coworkers effectively, regardless of what Office software they're using? Yes. That's all I need or want from the package.
Again, from a Mac users perspective, it's really clunky. You're right, it's perfectly adequate. Not great, just adequate. Microsoft has done a really nice version of Office for Mac and Apple has done really good Office-like programs for Mac. The screenshots I'm seeing from Office 2008 are looking really good. I still don't like the fact that Office uses Windows-style keybindings (e.g. Home goes to the beginning of line instead of Cmd+left, etc.) but it's otherwise a pretty good product. I fortunately can get by quite nicely with the much cheaper iWork so my usage of Office Mac has been limited to other people's Macs.
I have yet to meet a person who had any real reason for running Linux on their desktop
I have an OSX Mac as well, and really like it. I still use Linux for my primary development platform because I have access (through work) to powerful PC hardware, but none that's approved for OSX. I suspect that the answer is the same for most Linux folks. Obtain a Windows machine, replace Windows with a happier-making OS. If I could install OSX on my current box, I probably would. I just can't score the work-$$ to buy an equivalent piece of OSX hardware (2xAMD Opteron 250, 3GB RAM).
Yeah, money is usually the only reason. Then again, money isn't all that hard to come by. Befriend your local bean counter and it gets easier. Of course, if you're working for Sun it might be hard to justify purchasing a competitor's product. You could always, of course, hack OS X to run on a non-Apple system. It's not particularly difficult. I've gone as far as getting a base Darwin system going. To get OS X though you'd have to break the license agreement as well as the binary encryption. The latter is trivial but the former is questionable. I've always found it funny though that the license agreement says you may run it on an "Apple-labeled" computer. And the boxed OS includes two white Apple stickers. I guess it depends on how you parse "Apple-labeled."
I posted to a forum asking what the best method was to jail SFTP users. I wanted something like FTP, but secure, and I didn't want users to be able to browse the whole filesystem. Some security expert chimed in basically calling me a moron, that if I didn't want people to browse the whole filesystem, I should use FTP and jail people. A lot of people in the forum agreed.
Forums are generally the blind leading the blind. The solution to your problem lies in the way SFTP works. Basically, the SFTP client builds atop an SSH client which connects to the SSH server asking for the SFTP subsystem (the sftp-server process). I've never done it but it ought to be possible to make a chroot environment containing a bare-minimum environment (specifically you'd need at least the sftp-server binary and any dependent libraries and/dev entries). You then ought to be able to configure sshd (see sshd_config manpage) with a different Subsystem sftp that uses your custom binary. Assuming you do it right (e.g./sbin/nologin for login shell) and don't write any security holes in your binary that chroot's and runs the real sftp you should be fine.
Keep in mind that in order to call chroot successfully you must have root privileges which means your binary (that you'll have to write) needs to be setuid root. It should be able to chroot to the proper dir, drop effective root privileges (thus reverting back to the real user ID that ran it) then run the real sftp-server.
To avoid having to create a billion jails I'd probably recommend using just one for all users and depending on the users new "home directories" simply not having group or world rwx permissions.
If you have a bit of knowledge about C you ought to be able to write the program using the manpage from chroot, seteuid, and execve. If you don't know how to roll your own, then you could always pay someone to do it, such as myself.
The RHEL support seems to be a big one. Most of the time, software designed to run on RHEL will also run on properly-configured Fedora and of course also on the generic builds of RHEL built from the same source packages Red Hat used. Then again, I am primarily familiar with Red Hat's offspring so I have no idea how well Debian-based distros fare. I imagine if a product works on both RHEL and SLES then it probably has a pretty good chance of working on a Debian-based rig as well.
Then again, I am really only familiar with server products. The server space seems to work well for Linux because most people are happy with the built-in functionality. Where that functionality is lacking, they are (at least now) able to purchase products which will run on their server. Most importantly, they are willing to do at least a little bit of work to get products running if they don't happen to be using one of the officially-supported distros.
The desktop space is much harder to get into. Desktop Linux can be good for people with little to no knowledge of computers if someone else sets up and installs the system. But as a third-party software vendor you run into a problem. It's very hard to write software that works cross-distro and there really isn't a clear winner in the desktop distro market. On top of that, typical desktop users aren't willing to futz with various files just to get a new program installed. Of course, there are desktop Linux users with knowledge who are willing to futz with the system to get a third-party program installed, but that's a niche of an already niche market.
I used Linux as my main desktop system for a number of years and found it reasonable. But then again, I'm a developer. But for about 5 years now I've been using Mac OS X on my desktop. The reason is simple. I can do nearly everything I could do with Linux (MacPorts is great) plus I can "cheat" once in a while and (gasp) actually buy a program that runs on my machine.
In fact, I think one of the biggest attractions to Mac OS X is the availability of third-party programs. Sure, there's less than Windows but what is available is generally really damn good. For instance, GPSNavX and its newer brother MacENC are top-notch marine GPS navigation programs. Likewise, EyeTV is a damn cool piece of software for watching and recording TV and, perhaps most importantly, they have a list of supported capture hardware and their supported hardware is actually AVAILABLE for purchase, even in a big box store. Oh, and did I mention that Microsoft makes Office for the Mac and that it actually works better and generally more intuitively than the Windows version? And if you don't like Microsoft and/or don't need perfect Word/Excel compatibility you can always buy iWork for $80 now. There is basically no alternative to Office on Linux. OpenOffice.org? Please. They sure succeeded in creating a near clone of the Windows version of Office. I wonder who the hell really wants that though? I want something better.
Then there's the open source stuff. VLC on the Mac is great. You drop the app bundle somewhere on your drive. Double-click. Done. You don't go hunting through your distro's available software list. You don't go find the.rpm or.dpkg for your distro and double-click to install it and then get to use it. You drag the damn thing into your Applications folder and you're ready to roll. Likewise for Mozilla stuff like Firefox, Seamonkey, Thunderbird, and Camino.
Furthermore, there's even a lot of stuff out there that is cross-platform between Windows and Mac. Take something like TurboTax or TaxCut. You don't see those on Linux but by god there's enough people doing their taxes on Macs to justify porting them. The quality is a little shitty, looking like a crappy port from Windows, but hey, if I can do my taxes without rebooting into Windows, great.
I could go on a lot more but the bottom line is that desktop Linux isn't really headed in a direct
At least on my iPod, I can get true gapless playback by simply using an encoding scheme which isn't affected by gaps. That is, either plain PCM or Apple Lossless. Sure, it's not gapless playback of MP3 or AAC but it does the job and the types of music I want to listen to gapless I also usually want to hear in their original fidelity.
For what it's worth, the older models (I previously had a 2G) would put little gaps in even when playing WAV and didn't support Apple Lossless at all. The new ones (I now have a 5G) seem to no longer have this problem presumably by simply concatenating each song without any silence gaps in the buffer. Couple that with a simple cable from SiK that gives a pure line out from the dock connector and you've got a great way of playing tunes through a good stereo without losing any fidelity compared to playing them using a CD player.
Define a user of BitTorrent vs. an abuser? I don't believe Comcast is disallowing seeding completely, they are simply dropping connections when bandwidth is tight which has the effect of rate-limiting BitTorrent. It most likely allows 1 in x connections to go unscathed and/or allows connections to last only for a certain amount of time (enough to get a few chunks through) which means you aren't really prevented from seeding and BitTorrent still works for everyone, just not as quickly. The BitTorrent program by design will go seek another peer.
Essentially, the point is that use of BitTorrent at all beats the shit out of Comcast's network. If bandwidth is available, it can be allowed to work. If bandwidth is unavailable then it needs to be throttled down because BitTorrent is a very abusive protocol.
Huh? Have you ever even set up a firewall? Assume you do a real one where the firewall system sits in the middle of all connections. There's various ways to handle the blocking of ports. One way is to outright block the port. Another way is to send something like an ICMP service unavailable (in response to UDP) or a TCP reset (in response to TCP). Either way, the firewall basically must forge the source address of the packet.
When I set up a firewall I often outright drop anything coming in from the internet destined for windows file sharing ports (135, 137, 138, 139, and 445 among others). The traffic simply never passes the firewall and just goes into a black hole. However, if the traffic came from the network I am firewalling (the "inside" so to speak) then I'll usually configure the firewall to respond with a TCP RST. Why? Because if you respond with a TCP RST then the Windows client will immediately recognize that it can't connect rather than waiting for 60 seconds or longer. If I accidently mistype an IP of some machine I really don't want to have to wait 60 seconds while Windows Explorer completely HANGS because there is basically no way to cancel a request.
By your logic, I should now be brought up on charges because I forged a TCP RST.
Now, in this case their firewalls aren't in the middle but are merely snooping on traffic. When they want to drop a TCP connection they simply send a RST to both ends which does the job nicely without having to have the firewall pass all traffic. If it drops a packet, it's not that big of a deal. If it goes down there's simply no longer a firewall.
What most people seem to be mad about is that Comcast is using a firewall on their traffic. But ask yourself what would you do if you were in Comcast's position. There is no way in hell they could afford to provide the full advertised downstream and upstream bandwidth 24/7. That's why your cable modem costs a whole lot less than a bandwidth-guaranteed T1. And it's not just for consumers. Businesses who just want an internet connection are now able to get cable modems as well and it's a huge money saver over a T1 because it means you get to burst at much faster speeds and aren't paying for the full bandwidth all the way to an internet backbone which you aren't even using anyway.
BitTorrent is by design a very greedy protocol. It is fully intended to suck up every last drop of available bandwidth. Comcast has a number of customers to serve with its limited uplink bandwidth. What it does have is pretty amazing but it's still nowhere near capable of saturating every subscriber's line simultaneously. When you got your cable modem service you agreed to this. That's what the whole "speeds may vary" footnote that accompanies cable and DSL advertisements is for.
Comcast is not in fact outright blocking BitTorrent traffic. It seems instead that they send a RST to both ends of BitTorrent TCP connections to force them to close. BitTorrent will turn around and make another connection with different peers. My guess is that they aren't killing all connections, just a random subset of them. This has the effect of throttling BitTorrent down without actually preventing anyone from using BitTorrent, just preventing BitTorrent from taking up all available network bandwidth.
What would you suggest that Comcast do? Not throttle anything? They'd have to increase their uplink bandwidth considerably. Do you suggest the government force them not to firewall anything? Now what.. who do you think is going to pay the added cost? It sure as hell isn't going to be Comcast, they'd sooner exit the business entirely, as would any other sensible business person.
The bottom line is that it really makes no difference what BitTorrent is being used for. Even if you're using it only to download the latest ISO of your favorite Linux distribution it still costs Comcast a lot of bandwidth. A lot more than if you were to just find a fast mirror with the ISO you want. I am pretty
If those sites are what you've been reading then it's no wonder you're worried about the U.S. declining. If find the anti-Bush site particularly interesting. There's a lot of good sound bites in there and there's a grain of truth in every one of them but the author is insinuating a number of cause-effect relationships where there is only correlation. Please, let's not forget about reason. Correlation does not prove causation. It's not just something you use when doing science, it's a foundation of any sound reasoning.
I'm not going to go through everything you posted and rebut each one but I can at least cherry pick a few as examples. For instance, "I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period." Or how about, "I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market. " The government does not control the stock market last I checked although they do regulate it. Let's also not forget that when Bush took office we had a highly inflated stock market due to several investors speculating on companies with no serious business plan. But I'm not going to turn around and blame Clinton for that even though that occurred on his watch. Anyone who puts his money into a company with no sound plan is taking a huge risk. Sometimes it pays off. I find it odd that anyone would hold the government responsible for this at all.
Sayers discussed this quite a bit in her excellent book The Mind of the Maker. Why is it that people look to politicians to solve their problems? That is simply not their job. Their job is to keep the government running as in protect the country from invasion and to allow the people in the country to live their lives with as little interference as possible. That's it. If you haven't read The Mind of the Maker you should. It unfortunately gets shoehorned into the theology category so you may find it over in that section of your local bookstore. You can also find various copies of it online since the copyright has long expired. The online copies all have varied levels of transcription errors.
Anyway, getting back to the point, some of the criticisms of Bush are valid. For instance, "I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security " Yeah, he did do that, and I'm not particularly happy about it although I'm not sure that what existed before with various government agencies fulfilling overlapping niches was necessarily better.
Then there's the Olbermann piece. Frankly, I find Olbermann to be as much of a journalist as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. He's an opinion maker and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that except for that he tries to pass off his opinion pieces as hard news which in my book makes him a hack.
NBC regularly puts Olbermann on the Nightly News identifying him as a reporter. Every segment he does is absolutely loaded with opinion. Again, there's nothing wrong with being an opinionated journalist but please don't pass it off as hard news reporting. It would be like FNC putting O'Reilly or Hannity on the Fox Report. Not that the Fox Report is unbiased but it is intended to be a hard news pure reporting program, not an opinion/entertainment program. I'm very wary of anyone claiming to do a hard news program. It's impossible for any normal human not to have some level of bias. Better to disclose your bias than to try to keep it in the closet. Sooner or later anyone with half a brain can clearly see what's going on.
Well, your earlier post said that you were socially more in tune with the Democrats, but supported the financial platform of the Republicans. If they aren't doing the one thing you supported them for, shouldn't you then throw your support behind the guys who you do support 50%, rather than the ones you support 0%?
Basically you are using the political compass here with its two axis, social and economic issues. I'm socially libertarian and economically right. The Democrats are socially libertarian and economically left. The Republicans are socially authoritarian and claim to be economically right but are really economically more centrist or even somewhat leftist if not just as leftist as the Democrats. Therefore, it's better for me to vote for Democrats because at least we're both socially libertarian and there is no one in politics who's truly economically right anymore.
At least that's how I read your analysis. I could be wrong and I apologize if I am because that would basically make the above a strawman. The thing is, that is how I read your comment and I disagree with the analysis.
On the social side of things you suppose that Democrats are towards the libertarian side and Republicans are toward the authoritarian side. The problem is, how do you measure this? The political compass website does this for some notable politicians and historical figures by looking at their actions. But this is a problem because some actions that you consider authoritarian don't strike me as being so.
Take for instance the NSA wiretap program. Recall that the Bush administration actually admitted to eavesdropping on any phone calls where one or both endpoints were foreign. To you, I am sure this in and of itself strikes you as extremely authoritarian and thus anybody supporting it must therefore be authoritarian. Yet I don't see it that way. Looking back just a little bit we can see that letters going in and out of the country during WWII were intercepted. Was that authoritarian? Looking back further we'll realize that there is quite a long history of intercepting as much as possible coming in and out of the country. Is that authoritarian, or is it just good sense?
Now, some people claim that the NSA actually uses the equipment to spy on purely domestic calls as well. I do not forget the story of the guy in San Francisco who blew the whistle on the equipment being installed capable of doing this. But you know what? I'm not sure even something like that is necessarily authoritarian. Is data transmitted over lines that neither endpoint owns that travels through public right of ways and is switched in third-party (i.e. the phone company) buildings really private? Any third party (not just the government) can tap a phone line without anyone knowing about it. It really goes back to the old saying: don't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times.
Perhaps then by liberal standards I am an authoritarian. But the problem is that by liberal standards anything short of looking the other way every time is authoritarian. But is that line of thought really valid? I don't disagree that ideally I'd like to be able to talk with someone at distance without the fear of a man in the middle but I'm also keenly aware that the physics of it are that anyone with the right know-how and equipment can eavesdrop at any point between me and the other party. So it's therefore prudent not to say anything I wouldn't want other people to know. If I'm really serious I can always use something like encrypted VOIP. Of course, that doesn't stop the other party from disclosing what I said. And even worse, if a key exchange is required to set up the encryption line then I've now actually proven that I said those things because I had to use a digital signature to get encryption. So again we go back to not saying anything over a telephone line that you wouldn't want disclosed.
That's just one example but it highlights an inher
I'm really curious what actual evidence you've seen that these statements are true. It may be their "platform", but given complete control of the entire federal government for 6 years, I certainly didn't see any moves towards decreased government, did you?
No, I haven't. So now what? I'm left with a choice between someone who's telling me he's going to increase government spending and who I'm sure will follow through on his promise and someone who's telling me he's going to decrease government spending but will most likely increase it some.
Either way I'm basically fucked. What am I going to do? Not vote? I'd rather go and pick the best of 2 or 3 bad options than not go and let a man win because I failed to let him know I disagreed with him. And in some ways I guess I'd rather pick the guy whose ideals, even though compromised, match mine rather than pick the guy whose ideals do not match mine at all.
If you have a better idea I am extremely open to hearing it.
Let's also not forget that Democrats and Republicans each have special interests and increase government spending in different ways. Democrats tend to want to socialize everything. Every program they socialize not only screws me once in my pocketbook by having to pay for everyone to have the same level of service but also screws me again when I desire a better level of service because in order to do that I have to continue to pay for the shitty service I don't use and fully pay for the better service I want. See public education for an example of that one. If my locality isn't providing good public education I can either move to one that is or I can put my kids (future kids as the case is) in a private school. But if I do the latter I still have to pay for them to be in public school even though they are not.
And what of socialized medicine? If the plans I'm hearing from Democrats ever get passed It's going to be the same situation where I will be forced to pay for the standard level of service but if I want anything above that I pay a private party entirely out of my own pocket and I don't get a single dime back from the government because I had the audacity to go outside of the single-payer system.
The biggest bitch Republicans have is the defense industry and other large businesses. But don't kid yourself, Democrats are beholden to them about as much as Republicans are. I guarantee you that even if we wind up with a democratically controlled congress and presidency we won't see defense spending cut for the giant contractors. They'll still get their piece of the action regardless of who's in office since they are shrewdly paying everyone off.
Right, and he seems to be suggesting that Libertarians are leftists. This another enormous assumption. I tend to think that libertarianism is the greatest thing that ever happened to the Republicans because it makes a lot of people who have liberal social values like not caring what drugs people take on the weekends or how others have sex feel that somehow their views are better expressed by the Republicans than the Democrats. I agree the twin parties both suck at this point and that the Democrats hardly seem like an alternative, but I know people who clearly have liberal social values and take drugs and have kinky sex lives who, due to their faith in libertarianism, actually vote Republican because they think it is closer to this libertarian ideal that they have in their minds.
I'd like to go ahead and admit that I'm one of these people. Unfortunately, the Republicans now are starting not to follow through on the fiscal conservatism which is a problem. All of the bullshit restrictions on personal behavior are just that, bullshit. You can have all the laws in the world about not performing certain sex acts but none of them really matter. Consenting adults having sex in private can basically do whatever they wish because even if what they are doing is against the law such a case can never be prosecuted for lack of evidence.
Therefore, I can allow a politician to pander to some group of sexually-suppressed idiots knowing that he'll have no power to actually follow through on his empty promises. If he's otherwise good and is willing to reduce the size of government and keep government power (including his own power) at a smaller more manageable level then he's got my vote. That millions of idiots voted for him solely because he waxed eloquent about the virtues of family values does not affect me in the least.
This is where the Republican party got it right and the Democrats have failed miserably. The Democrat party pushes a platform of people being free to do what they want but at the same time pushes a platform of increased government which can only eventually lead to people not being free to do what they want. The Republican party pushes a platform of personal responsibility and sometimes panders to people wishing to restrict the freedom of others but at the same time pushes decreased government which will actually lead to people being responsible for themselves.
Therefore, my vote goes to the guy who's going to remove his own power to restrict other's freedoms. Again, sadly not all Republicans are for this so it pays to pay close attention to their underlying principles and ignore whatever bullshit they say about gays and defending marriage and so on.
Well, wxWidgets is actually licensed under the wxWindows license, not BSD nor X11. The wxWindows license is a modified LGPL which allows for static linking. So long as the endusers to whom they distributed their work (application, library, whatever) are aware that wxWidgets was used (via including the license with the distribution) and can request and receive the particular wxWidgets codebase that was used then there is no legal harm.
Without knowing what the changes were it's hard to know whether it's even worth it to pursue. Several companies do their own changes and give them back to the wxWidgets project and several others hire wxWidgets developers to do changes and give them back to the project. A few people with a bad attitude aren't going to hurt the project in any way because there is already plenty of code flying back and forth.
Most of the time, users of wxWidgets find it easier to get code into the official codebase rather than attempt to maintain a custom tree. Most of the developers of wxWidgets are doing paid consulting work or are working for companies using wxWidgets in one way or another. I don't think anyone has any real desire to pursue users of wxWidgets who have failed their obligations to the license simply because either their changes are likely stupid little hacks which are useless anyway or they made no changes in which case it doesn't do anyone any good to force them to maintain a way for their customers to receive the specific wxWidgets version that was used since any normal person can download it straight from the wxWidgets project.
I should also take a bit of time and mention the issue with static linking. A few years ago I carefully read the LGPL and discovered that it does not like most people assume prevent static linking. A user of an LGPL library may choose to statically link the library with other non-LGPL code so long as the end-user is able to relink with a modified library. One way of accomplishing this for static linking is to simply distribute an archive (.a) of the object (.o) files that were linked together with the static LGPL library. That alone satisfies the requirement that the user be able to relink with a modified copy of the LGPL library. Of course, no such thing is needed with the wxWidgets license because we explicitly allow for static linking.
I don't think we have any rabid pro-GPLers in the project anymore since they tend to be the same sort of person who likes to start flame-fests on the mailing list and therefore they don't tend to last very long. That is not to say that I am encouraging anyone to break the wxWidgets license. I'm just pointing out that it's in a user's best interest to contribute back to the project and foster good will with the community.
Theo is bringing up two independent points in his message. The first point is that choosing to use the code under the GPL license does not mean you are allowed to remove the notice that it may be used under the BSD license. The second point is that while you are allowed to license modifications under a different license you are encouraged to license them under the BSD license. The points are somewhat intertwined which is why he makes them together.
As for the first point, his argument is simply that the BSD license requires that it not be removed from the source file. It is a modified BSD so it no longer requires acknowledgement when advertising a product using the code which is the specific part that made it incompatible with the GPL. It does still require that the notice remain with the code. You will note if you look at a project such as Apple's xnu that the BSD copyright notice and license remain intact on BSD source files with the APSL added to it. Likewise, the Mach copyright notice and license remain intact on files that came from Mach. Similarly, I moved the region code from X11 into wxWidgets and you can clearly see in the source code (src/generic/regiong.cpp) that the X11 license remains intact. Did I have to do this? For X11 no because X11 only requires that the copyright stay in the source file and the license be part of the program's supporting documentation. Had it been BSD licensed I would have been forced to keep the BSD license in the source code. Regardless, I did it anyway as a gesture of good faith.
This brings us to the second point, that of giving back to the commons you took from. As you point out, the BSD license does not require it! Yet somehow, the BSD codebase continues to grow with contributions not only from individuals but also from companies. The reason for this is that people feel obligated to give back useful portions of their work to the commons despite not being legally obligated to do so. Theo's observation here is simply that many companies are contributing back to BSD but that individuals wanting to use the code for GPL projects are taking a hard-line stance that because BSD does not require it, they will not do it. He's also pointing out that it's gotten worse than that because it has become so prevalent to insert BSD code into a GPL program and license the modifications under only the GPL that several individuals now feel they can remove the BSD license and copyright notices as well.
In other words, modifying the BSD code and licensing the modifications under a different license is allowed by the license and therefore technically legal but considered wrong. Removing the BSD license is against the license and therefore illegal.
I watch NBC quite a bit, but not for any of the shows mentioned in this story. Last season I purchased a USB tuner stick and a copy of EyeTV. Forget watching low-res iTunes versions of the shows. I recorded them and watched them in full HD quality. Granted, each show after trimming out commercials to bring it down to about 44 minutes will barely fit on one single-layer DVD but my god they look gorgeous on a cinema display.
If I happened to miss recording one I could always either wait for it to rerun or simply grab it from a torrent site. For Studio 60 most of the torrent rips seemed to be from Canada, presumably because the show aired on Sunday rather than on Monday. Quality was not quite the original MPEG-2 1080i but the re-encoding (Xvid I think?) was not that bad and the whole thing still looked far better than what NBC sold on iTunes.
I really don't get why NBC is so concerned about DRM though. Their shows are already broadcast and recordable (quite legally) by anybody and distributing them over the internet is at best a gray area. In other words, the content is already quite readily available so the best thing for NBC to do is realize this and convince someone like myself that for say $2 I can avoid doing the recording myself and just buy the show whenever I feel like it.
All the legislation in the world will never change the fact that I'm already able to record the shows using the hardware I've already purchased. The "broadcast flag" is never going to happen no matter how hard they push for it. Even if they get such a dogpile passed it won't change anything since boxes will be modifiable. In the case of the USB tuner sticks the MPEG-2 stream goes directly in through the USB port. It's entirely up to the software program to enforce any restrictions that may be flagged in the MPEG transport stream.
I have a feeling though that rightly or wrongly, NBC isn't targeting people like me since we're already aware that the shows can be recorded in full over the air. NBC is clearly trying to convince people who aren't aware that you can receive and record their programming for free. It still amazes people when I tell them I get HD programming for free. Hell, depending on where you're at you don't even need a spectacularly good antenna. I've got a $20 indoor VHF/UHF model I bought at Wal-Mart. I set my parent's bedroom TV up with a short piece of coax with a 75/300 balun screwed onto the opposite end. The little leads on that balun are enough to receive HD!
Another friend of mine has a DirectTV DVR box. Those boxes have ATSC/NTSC inputs and after a bit of prodding I convinced him to just do what I did and pick up a cheap antenna. He swore it would never work due to all the interference from Norfolk Naval Station. Guess what? It works. And because it's hooked into his DVR he's able to record from it as if it were a satellite signal. Perhaps that's why DirectTV isn't so interested in running local HD signals over their bandwidth. It's basically unnecessary since most people can pick up HD TV directly from their antenna with a very clear signal.
I would love to discuss the mindset trend in North America where people think it is OK to "get free stuff" by creating complete asses of themselves.
How is asking for recovery CDs to be included as part of the computer purchase making an ass of oneself? Seems like it's just good old-fashioned haggling. Assume I don't know anything about computers but the salesman tells me I absolutely need to have recovery CDs in case anything goes wrong with the computer and informs me that I must pay an additional amount for these CDs and I cannot make them myself. I would simply inform him that he has no sale at all then because if the CDs are required and I'm unable to make them myself then they ought to be included as part of the computer.
This puts the salesman in a bad position. If he's truly unaware that the discs can be burned by the purchaser then he now either has to kill the sale or give up some profit. If he is and was aware that the discs can be burned by the purchaser then admitting it at this point means he was lying earlier. Or he could (pretend to) go ask someone else (like a tech) and find out that indeed the discs can be burned later by the purchaser, but if he does that he now looks ignorant of what he's selling.
Personally, I'd love to discuss the mindset of people who go, oh gee, only an additional $40 to be able to recover my computer, that seems okay!
You're welcome. I usually make a habit of reading macosxhints.com so I can keep up on the latest tips and tricks. Even if I don't use them myself I can always recommend to others.
Also, I should mention that I believe if your mini is one of the older Intel minis (one with a Core Solo/Duo rather than the new Core 2 Duo) that didn't come with Wifi or bluetooth you can still add the features as the mini-PCIe slots still exist in the mainboard. One guy even decided that 802.11g that he already had wasn't enough and so came up with a guide for installing 802.11n on an Intel Mini including installation of a second antenna needed for 802.11n to reach n speeds. Of course, it's probably way cheaper to do external devices but if you want to keep the aesthetic of the self-contained unit then it's possible to upgrade this way.
As for the mouse accelleration, I dunno, it has just never bothered me and I didn't even notice the change back when Panther (10.3) was released that a lot of Mac users complained about. Then again, I'm now running 1920x1200 on a 23" ACD and also 1920x1200 on a new MacBook Pro 17" with the displays side by side. With that kind of real-estate I like the accelleration curves the way they are since I'm able to do precision movements if I move at a reasonable pace and fast movements if I move fast. I thought there was supposedly some auto-adjust mechanism in OS X so that it changes accelleration curves based on how big your display is which is why it's not a user-selectable thing, it's supposed to be full-auto.
Don't forget also that Apple's accelleration curves are designed for Apple displays and Apple mice. If you're using something like a Microsoft or Kensington or Logitech mouse then you can try MouseFixIt that I mentioned or apparently most of the vendor-specific mouse drivers have accelleration adjustments. Though word is that Microsoft's software is not so great (I can attest to this for the older versions at least) but Kensington's is pretty decent and will work with every brand of mouse except for Apple.
We're talking about the iPhone, here. The iPhone is not subsidized by AT&T, but the 2-year contract is still mandatory.
Not entirely. As others have pointed out, if you have really bad credit or if you enter 999-99-9999 as your social security number when activating you can choose the GoPhone pay-as-you-go plan.
But this does bring up an interesting point. Why is it that AT&T really wants you locked into a 2-year contract when they haven't paid a dime for your phone? And maybe more importantly, assume other carriers didn't subsidize the phones, why would they still want you in a contract?
The underlying reason for contracts is that by putting you into a contract you have signed effectively an IOU to AT&T saying that you will pay them $x/mo for at least the next 24 months. That enables them to book $24x of revenue IMMEDIATELY which looks awfully good on their balance sheet because they have yet to book the expenses of providing you with that service.
It's not purely an accounting trick though. In order to continue to provide better service they are constantly upgrading their network. That takes money. It's a lot easier to get money (e.g. a loan) when you can show you are clearly able to pay it back. Even if you don't wind up taking out an external loan, it still looks better to your own accountants when they already know that you have a 2 year revenue stream coming in to pay for your expenses.
Yeah, it is a rather odd thing that basically they are then wealthy only on paper, but those IOUs are as good as gold as far as accountants are concerned.
I mean, in your world, does everyone drive a Lexus and shit on those who deign to drive a Saturn?
Nah. A Saturn is a totally reasonable choice of car. Relatively economical, good build quality. A Lexus on the other hand is a clear mark of someone wasting their money since they could've just bought a Toyota Camry or an Avalon or a Highlander for less money.
I believe the original poster specifically compared a ricer to a BMW. Sure, you can get both cars to perform well but the ricer looks and sounds like shit and is generally not a well-balanced vehicle while even a low-end BMW looks good, sounds good, and handles exceptionally well. You can even buy a used BMW for a reasonable price and still have a better car (IMO anyway) than the ricer.
I'll try to address these 1 by 1 and see if I can come up with some solutions for you.
1. I have some cheap usb hardware (wireless network dongle, bluetooth, etc). No drivers for mac. (I've spent hours searching mailing lists)
Unfortunately, you are pretty well screwed on USB unless the peripheral is of some standard device class that Apple supports (e.g. keyboard, mouse, hard drive, most cameras) or Apple has provided support for it. As far as I know, most Bluetooth adapters do work, particularly the Dlink ones. Look for an OS X logo on it, although what Mac did you buy recently that didn't have bluetooth built in? The networking situation is similar where most of the time the built-in gigabit and 802.11 support is sufficient for 99% of people. If you really need more network ports it's like any other system really, buy supported hardware.
2. I want to adjust mouse acceleration. I can't figure out how without buying an expensive 3rd party app.
There's a few different solutions. A google search for OS X mouse accelleration will get you to a couple of different macosxhints.com articles, one of which mentions MouseFix. Another article mentions a rebuilt HID driver although I would do that at your own risk. Or you can pay the measly $20 for SteerMouse.
I might also make a suggestion that you may simply be using your mouse incorrectly or using a bad mouse. Apple's mice are designed very lightweight and are extremely easy to pick up when doing long drags. If you're just trying to flick across the screen quickly I don't have any trouble doing that by moving the mouse a mere inch or so to get it from one side of a 1920x1200 screen to the other although admittedly you have to do it extremely rapidly for it to work.
3. I want to be able to launch my apps with one or two-key keyboard shortcuts. I can't figure this one out either.
4. My scrollbar in firefox doesn't work right. Is this normal?
I have no idea. I am not very enthralled with Firefox on Mac. If you just want the Mozilla rendering engine you could try the sister project Camino. If you just want a browser then of course Safari is already there. Granted not all websites work with Safari but if it's something like a banking site I'll go use Camino or Firefox and then simply complain to the site that it should work in Safari. Did that to Verizon Wireless and what do you know, they fixed it.
5. Many open source apps that I love don't have standard maintained OS X distributions (gvim, pidgin, etc). I could try compiling myself, or I've found older versions that other people have built for them, but that's rather a step backwards instead of forwards.
There are basically two ways to get this. One way is to get Fink which is okay but I'm less than thrilled with the way they manage their port tree. Generally, Fink won't work with new OS X releases until a few weeks to a month after official release. The upside of Fink is that they have precompiled packages and use dpkg/apt plus some custom code (Python or PERL, can't remember which) to manage all of it.
The other way is to get MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts). If on Tiger then download the Tiger binary dmg. If on Leopard, grab the source tarball then do the usual configure/make/make install. Either way will stick everything in a new/opt/local hierarchy. From there run sudo port -v selfupdate to make sure you are up to date and then if you want gvim the port is vim and you want either the athena variant or the gtk2 or gtk1 variant. The athena variant is obviously the most lightweight gvim you can build and if you can live with ugly menus and dialogs then I recommend it. Otherwise I'd suggest the gtk2 ve
This looks quite similar to Novell's iFolder but with you running the server yourselves instead of having your users set up an iFolder server. Last I used iFolder was in the 1.x or 2.x days and it frankly wasn't anywhere near the polished product you have here. Now it seems that iFolder 3.x is open source and looks a lot more polished.
Still, I think you surely have a great service market here even though the polished front-end app seems to now be done open source. Best of luck to you on your new venture!
As has Pink Floyd's "don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit" and Steve Miller's "funky shit goin' down in the city."
It used to be this way on the big classic rock station around here but they've since decided to silence the shit part of bullshit which totally screws up the rythmic/lyric combination going on at that point in the song.
As for Steve Miller, it turned into "funky kicks goin' down in the city." which isn't quite as bad.
I don't think that if you bought Dark Side of the Moon at Wal-Mart it would be censored though. Just like Dave Matthews' Before These Crowded Streets is not censored, or at least wasn't when I bought it there, despite the fact that it quite clearly contains the word "fucking" in one song. On the other hand, Matthews didn't use it as an expletive but to refer to the act of copulation. The line being "Tell me are you satisfied with fucking?"
If Wal-Mart's concern is degenerate music then they should simply not sell it. It's one thing to throw an expletive or two in a song but when it turns into a 5 minute talk about killin' dose niggas and beatin' dose hoes it has degenerated into hate speech. To sell it at all is a tacit admission that they find the music acceptable enough to contribute to the artist's riches and allow a bunch of white-collar record executives to make a lot of money feeding hate into the minds of people.
Has anyone considered using something like Squid as a web proxy with special properties for ad-serving domains? I am thinking something like using the normal timeout for normal sites but limiting the timeout to like 3 seconds on an ad-serving site. If it doesn't load in 3 seconds, just have the proxy return its standard timeout page.
That would allow most ads to pass, which I feel is a good thing because I don't want to penalize those who are doing the right thing. But for ad servers that can't keep up, it would just timeout and close the connection.
I hate to admit it, but a few years ago I did an update on a Fedora box which renamed protocol 50 from ipv6-crypt to esp or something of the sort. Due to this, the firewall rules failed to load at startup which left the outside portion of the network completely unfirewalled instead of nearly completely firewalled.
Now ordinarily this wouldn't be a huge problem as one should reasonably hope that even an unfirewalled system is secure. And indeed, the Windows 2000 webserver we had was reasonably secure. It was up to date with all the patches and running great. The ultimate attack vector had nothing to do with lack of patches but rather an ultra-weak password. You see, someone else had an account in the administrators group with a password of 121212. With the firewall being down this account could be used to log in to the SMB shares and thus execute anything with that account's privileges.
Fortunately, the webserver had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the network which was behind a second firewall with a totally different authentication/directory system and a different set of usernames and passwords. So the attacker was able to get access to a webserver with nothing of any interest on it. It is at that point when I began to research how the hell he got in and realized that the firewall was not firewalling anything. Later on, we decided the 121212 password on an Administrators group account was the ultimate culprit.
This just goes to show you that a break-in can happen to anybody. Granted, in this story's case, taking down a firewall on purpose to transfer some data was probably not a good idea and could/should have been avoided. But that's a mistake, not an invitation to burn the perpetrator at the stake.
Ultimately, a security failure should result in a procedural change. In our case, checking that the firewall rules installed correctly at boot became part of the checklist of things to do when upgrading that server. We also changed the passwords on the webserver and implemented several new policies. Prior to the attack, the webserver passwords were a combination of knowable information like birthdate, hire date, and part of SSN. Their purpose was to secure read-only access to a site with company policy information so it wasn't thought they needed to be highly secure. Unfortunately, all of the users were full Windows users so for all we know it might not have been the weak password on the admin account but instead an disgruntled (ex-)employee coupled with a possible privilege elevation bug. Due to this, we changed all of the user's passwords to be random and moved all of the users out of the Users group and into a group that only allowed logins to the website and not on the console.
All that for a measily webserver with some simple read-only access to data that doesn't have to be all that secure. Now consider having a web application with critical data like patient reecords and several thousand users all from different hopsitals. That's basically an accident waiting to happen. If I were a company doing that, I'd be sure to have a huge insurance policy to cover the liabilities and/or make damn sure the contracts with customers indemnified the company against lawsuits for accidental breaches.
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Fox News exercises much more centralized control of reporting than traditional news media. For example, John Moody, the VP of news, sends daily memos specifying the kinds of language that reporters and commentators should work into their discussion of various issues or people.
Yes, I think I read that (and actually most of your post) on Wikipedia the other day. Basically, the allegation is that Moody wants reporters to do things like ensure they refer to U.S. soldiers who shoot enemies from a distance as "sharp shooters" rather than "snipers" because the former has more positive connotations. I hardly see how that is going to bat for the Republican party. If anything, it's perhaps a bit jingoistic but I don't see anything inherently wrong with it.
While we're on the subject, I happened to note that just tonight O'Reilly referred to our green berets who were repeatedly charged then cleared of wrongdoing as "snipers." Oops, I guess he didn't get the memo?
It is unlikely that this will come as a surprise if you try watching Fox News over the course of a single day when a controversial news story is in progress, rather than flipping through the channel. Commentator after commentator will not only pull up the exact same tu quoque examples to deflect criticism of Republican officials, they'll use the exact same words and catch phrases. That's basic propaganda: if an opinion is shared by many people, it appears more credible, so the propagandist arranges that his voice speaks through many mouths.
I do notice this and it works both ways. Every which way actually. Criticism of Republicans and criticism of Democrats and praise for Republicans and praise for Democrats is generally reported consistently on Fox News. And, indeed, you will notice that the (very rare) praise for Republicans and praise for Democrats and so on and so forth found on MSNBC and CNN and CNBC and everywhere else is also very consistently worded.
I don't believe the idea is to go to bat for Republicans so much as ensure that Fox News presents consistent reporting which makes viewers trust the network more. It's a smart business decision. Fortunately, Fox News also carries several opinion programs where guests of varied viewpoints are invited to speak. One of those is the O'Reilly Factor. Another one is Special Report (w/ Brit Hume). Obviously the formats are different. Special Report is basically a clone of CNN's Crossfire (is that even still around?) The O'Reilly Factor has no analog as far as I know. There's also Hannity and Colmes if you can stand it, but there you just get a looney supposed conservative and a looney supposed liberal. Actually, I don't think they're that bad but I get the feeling that there's a lot of very heavy scripting going on with that show. Alan often espouses Democrat talking points he clearly doesn't believe. Hannity also has a habit of just espousing Republican talking points. He is more convincing though because he comes off as actually believing what he's saying.
That they sometimes go after Republicans doesn't prove anything. They go after Republicans that don't toe the leadership's line. That's hardly independence.
I'm sure it's much easier for you to shoehorn it into that but that is simply untrue. That said, I've seen O'Reilly toe the party line. For example, he supported the immigration bill "compromise" along with all of the Republicans at that point. Meanwhile, nearly every conservative commentator said W.T.F. That wasn't the party line. That wasn't the Bush line. Or maybe it was? I dunno, who was toeing the party line? I'm not even sure what exactly the party line was. The republicans in congress wanted to pass it, their constituents didn't like it. Of course, maybe it was all a conspiracy and the plan was never to pass it but instead to capitulate to the Democrats to gain trust and then bring out the big guns like Rush to make sure the Democrats would wind up with egg on thei
I have no idea what Ron Paul would do. I've seen him with my own eyes take the stance that we must leave. More importantly, I watched him fail to enumerate the costs and benefits of leaving vs. staying and fail to provide any concrete reason for leaving. Instead, I watched him attack the Bush administration for making what is in his eyes, and the eyes of many others, a bad decision.
That does not, however, make it a bad decision. There were already clear signs of Al Queda moving out of Afghanistan and looking for a nation in the region more friendly to their interests. Our state department, headed by Colin Powell at the time, made it quite clear to the world that harboring Al Queda would not be tolerated. Bush made a speech containing a severe distillation of this with the phrase "you're either with us or against us." Most nations in the region took heed and decided to make it their national policy that they would not harbor terrorists. Some of them have anyway; sometimes simply because it's nearly impossible to enforce a border. We can relate to that since we can't do it either.
Despite the "with us or against us" comment, simply laying low is and has been enough to avoid getting oneself in our crosshairs. See for instance Syria and pre-Ahmadinejad Iran. But one man apparently felt the need to test our resolve and chose instead to begin welcoming Al Queda into his country despite not aligning with their principle beliefs. In a classic case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Saddam began allowing Al Queda training camps within Iraq. To further test our resolve, he decided to violate the treaties he signed after the Gulf War. That it turns out he did not have any usable weapons does not put into dispute the fact that he violated his treaty to allow weapons inspectors.
Those are a subset of the many stated reasons for using military force in Iraq. They were accepted by Congress when they passed the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002." So it would seem your assertion that Bush has ignored Congress is clearly false. Perhaps though, you mean that he has since then ignored Congress. Of course, you'd need an example for that and unfortunately for you there are none to be found. Congress continues to fund the war and has not repealed the resolution. I don't doubt that you, and probably Ron Paul as well, really believe that Bush went to Iraq and stays in Iraq without Congressional approval. But believing in a falsehood does not make it true.
What Congress should be doing now is letting the President do what he is sworn to do. Congress should also be checking to make sure that he's not failing at what he's doing. Indeed, we see that not even a month ago, General Petraeus gave a report to Congress. Furthermore, he has promised a second report in March. So it would seem that Congress is doing their job and that the President is doing his.
Why is it so hard to understand that our government is working correctly? Is it simply because the result has thus far not been good? Clearly the majority of Congress believes that it's possible for a victorious result or else they'd have already voted for an immediate withdrawal.
Wow, how clever. Take a broadcast where Mr. O'Reilly refers to NBC and trim out all references then put it up there with a TV capture of the show displaying the Fox News logo.
For what it's worth, I flip around the various news stations. My observation is that many of the commentators on Fox News have conservative/traditional views. What I don't see are commentators going to bat for Republicans acting badly just because they are Republicans. In fact, Fox News is more critical of Republicans than other news organizations, precisely because their commentators tend to criticize non-conservative polices from any candidates, whether they be Republican or Democrat. Also, not every commentator or guest necessarily has the same views. For instance, O'Reilly is really pretty liberal, at least in the more traditional sense of the word. My dad refers to this as "New York Liberal." On the other hand, there are guys on there like Hannity who are very conservative and fairly close-minded about it. Hannity clearly comes off as being a Republican cheerleader although occasionally he makes a good point. I also see quite a number of moderate Democrats as well as the occasional far-left Democrat. And often times, even the far-left Democrats have a well-reasoned point even if I happen to disagree with their conclusion. The moderate ones almost always have a very well-reasoned point.
On the other hand, I can hardly stand to watch MSNBC anymore. It feels like I'm watching a Democrat rally. Any politician who kow-tows to the far left wing of the Democrat party gets a pass. Everyone else gets slandered.
I'll tell you one thing I don't like about Fox News though: Alan Colmes. Not because he's liberal, but because his schtick is to give Hannity a hard time. Half the time I don't believe he even believes what he's saying. He does exactly the sort of Democrat cheerleading that MSNBC does except not as well. I used to watch the program but lately I flip off the TV after O'Reilly. If I want to get a balanced viewpoint, O'Reilly's program is far better because despite claims otherwise, he does give his guests a fair shake.
O'Reilly also serves a good purpose of weeding out the idiots who otherwise look good. Take Ron Paul for instance. Mr. Paul sounds good at first, a libertarian with conservative religious views and liberal social views. Then you find out he's on the "get out of Iraq now, damn the consequences" bandwagon. Well, I'm sorry, but that line of thinking is not what I'm looking for in my next president. Even Hillary Clinton has softened her position on the war to that of a reasoned debate rather than a knee-jerk reaction. I'd sooner vote for Clinton than Paul and I don't like many of Clinton's viewpoints at all.
Of course, the "damn the consequences" viewpoint is very prevalent so I'm sure that Paul's idiocy appeals to a lot of people who are also idiots.
Excellent point. I, too, am focused on the server side. Come to think of it, why not avoid the fuss and bother and write your desktop app in Java? I have a Rio Car: an mp3 car stereo. It has a Linux kernel and originally came with Windows-only compatible desktop software, too. Some clever wag wrote a Java desktop version, so it now runs on my Mac, my Linux box, DW's Windows machine, or my Solaris box.
Perhaps because at least on Macs, Java GUIs are horrid. Actually, just about every cross-platform GUI toolkit fails to provide a respectable experience on Mac because the UI paradigms are different.
There is basically no alternative to Office on Linux. OpenOffice.org? Please.
I can't agree with you here. I use OO exclusively for intercommunication with my coworkers. I find it perfectly adequate. The only shortcomings I have seen that affect me are problems with the presentation software (Impress, I think it's called). I have frequently seen presentations made with PowerPoint or StarOffice that come off differently when I look at them. The point comes across, though. I think that's the main concern; will the software allow me to communicate with my coworkers effectively, regardless of what Office software they're using? Yes. That's all I need or want from the package.
Again, from a Mac users perspective, it's really clunky. You're right, it's perfectly adequate. Not great, just adequate. Microsoft has done a really nice version of Office for Mac and Apple has done really good Office-like programs for Mac. The screenshots I'm seeing from Office 2008 are looking really good. I still don't like the fact that Office uses Windows-style keybindings (e.g. Home goes to the beginning of line instead of Cmd+left, etc.) but it's otherwise a pretty good product. I fortunately can get by quite nicely with the much cheaper iWork so my usage of Office Mac has been limited to other people's Macs.
I have yet to meet a person who had any real reason for running Linux on their desktop
I have an OSX Mac as well, and really like it. I still use Linux for my primary development platform because I have access (through work) to powerful PC hardware, but none that's approved for OSX. I suspect that the answer is the same for most Linux folks. Obtain a Windows machine, replace Windows with a happier-making OS. If I could install OSX on my current box, I probably would. I just can't score the work-$$ to buy an equivalent piece of OSX hardware (2xAMD Opteron 250, 3GB RAM).
Yeah, money is usually the only reason. Then again, money isn't all that hard to come by. Befriend your local bean counter and it gets easier. Of course, if you're working for Sun it might be hard to justify purchasing a competitor's product. You could always, of course, hack OS X to run on a non-Apple system. It's not particularly difficult. I've gone as far as getting a base Darwin system going. To get OS X though you'd have to break the license agreement as well as the binary encryption. The latter is trivial but the former is questionable. I've always found it funny though that the license agreement says you may run it on an "Apple-labeled" computer. And the boxed OS includes two white Apple stickers. I guess it depends on how you parse "Apple-labeled."
Forums are generally the blind leading the blind. The solution to your problem lies in the way SFTP works. Basically, the SFTP client builds atop an SSH client which connects to the SSH server asking for the SFTP subsystem (the sftp-server process). I've never done it but it ought to be possible to make a chroot environment containing a bare-minimum environment (specifically you'd need at least the sftp-server binary and any dependent libraries and /dev entries). You then ought to be able to configure sshd (see sshd_config manpage) with a different Subsystem sftp that uses your custom binary. Assuming you do it right (e.g. /sbin/nologin for login shell) and don't write any security holes in your binary that chroot's and runs the real sftp you should be fine.
Keep in mind that in order to call chroot successfully you must have root privileges which means your binary (that you'll have to write) needs to be setuid root. It should be able to chroot to the proper dir, drop effective root privileges (thus reverting back to the real user ID that ran it) then run the real sftp-server.
To avoid having to create a billion jails I'd probably recommend using just one for all users and depending on the users new "home directories" simply not having group or world rwx permissions.
If you have a bit of knowledge about C you ought to be able to write the program using the manpage from chroot, seteuid, and execve. If you don't know how to roll your own, then you could always pay someone to do it, such as myself.
The RHEL support seems to be a big one. Most of the time, software designed to run on RHEL will also run on properly-configured Fedora and of course also on the generic builds of RHEL built from the same source packages Red Hat used. Then again, I am primarily familiar with Red Hat's offspring so I have no idea how well Debian-based distros fare. I imagine if a product works on both RHEL and SLES then it probably has a pretty good chance of working on a Debian-based rig as well.
Then again, I am really only familiar with server products. The server space seems to work well for Linux because most people are happy with the built-in functionality. Where that functionality is lacking, they are (at least now) able to purchase products which will run on their server. Most importantly, they are willing to do at least a little bit of work to get products running if they don't happen to be using one of the officially-supported distros.
The desktop space is much harder to get into. Desktop Linux can be good for people with little to no knowledge of computers if someone else sets up and installs the system. But as a third-party software vendor you run into a problem. It's very hard to write software that works cross-distro and there really isn't a clear winner in the desktop distro market. On top of that, typical desktop users aren't willing to futz with various files just to get a new program installed. Of course, there are desktop Linux users with knowledge who are willing to futz with the system to get a third-party program installed, but that's a niche of an already niche market.
I used Linux as my main desktop system for a number of years and found it reasonable. But then again, I'm a developer. But for about 5 years now I've been using Mac OS X on my desktop. The reason is simple. I can do nearly everything I could do with Linux (MacPorts is great) plus I can "cheat" once in a while and (gasp) actually buy a program that runs on my machine.
In fact, I think one of the biggest attractions to Mac OS X is the availability of third-party programs. Sure, there's less than Windows but what is available is generally really damn good. For instance, GPSNavX and its newer brother MacENC are top-notch marine GPS navigation programs. Likewise, EyeTV is a damn cool piece of software for watching and recording TV and, perhaps most importantly, they have a list of supported capture hardware and their supported hardware is actually AVAILABLE for purchase, even in a big box store. Oh, and did I mention that Microsoft makes Office for the Mac and that it actually works better and generally more intuitively than the Windows version? And if you don't like Microsoft and/or don't need perfect Word/Excel compatibility you can always buy iWork for $80 now. There is basically no alternative to Office on Linux. OpenOffice.org? Please. They sure succeeded in creating a near clone of the Windows version of Office. I wonder who the hell really wants that though? I want something better.
Then there's the open source stuff. VLC on the Mac is great. You drop the app bundle somewhere on your drive. Double-click. Done. You don't go hunting through your distro's available software list. You don't go find the .rpm or .dpkg for your distro and double-click to install it and then get to use it. You drag the damn thing into your Applications folder and you're ready to roll. Likewise for Mozilla stuff like Firefox, Seamonkey, Thunderbird, and Camino.
Furthermore, there's even a lot of stuff out there that is cross-platform between Windows and Mac. Take something like TurboTax or TaxCut. You don't see those on Linux but by god there's enough people doing their taxes on Macs to justify porting them. The quality is a little shitty, looking like a crappy port from Windows, but hey, if I can do my taxes without rebooting into Windows, great.
I could go on a lot more but the bottom line is that desktop Linux isn't really headed in a direct
At least on my iPod, I can get true gapless playback by simply using an encoding scheme which isn't affected by gaps. That is, either plain PCM or Apple Lossless. Sure, it's not gapless playback of MP3 or AAC but it does the job and the types of music I want to listen to gapless I also usually want to hear in their original fidelity.
For what it's worth, the older models (I previously had a 2G) would put little gaps in even when playing WAV and didn't support Apple Lossless at all. The new ones (I now have a 5G) seem to no longer have this problem presumably by simply concatenating each song without any silence gaps in the buffer. Couple that with a simple cable from SiK that gives a pure line out from the dock connector and you've got a great way of playing tunes through a good stereo without losing any fidelity compared to playing them using a CD player.
Define a user of BitTorrent vs. an abuser? I don't believe Comcast is disallowing seeding completely, they are simply dropping connections when bandwidth is tight which has the effect of rate-limiting BitTorrent. It most likely allows 1 in x connections to go unscathed and/or allows connections to last only for a certain amount of time (enough to get a few chunks through) which means you aren't really prevented from seeding and BitTorrent still works for everyone, just not as quickly. The BitTorrent program by design will go seek another peer.
Essentially, the point is that use of BitTorrent at all beats the shit out of Comcast's network. If bandwidth is available, it can be allowed to work. If bandwidth is unavailable then it needs to be throttled down because BitTorrent is a very abusive protocol.
Huh? Have you ever even set up a firewall? Assume you do a real one where the firewall system sits in the middle of all connections. There's various ways to handle the blocking of ports. One way is to outright block the port. Another way is to send something like an ICMP service unavailable (in response to UDP) or a TCP reset (in response to TCP). Either way, the firewall basically must forge the source address of the packet.
When I set up a firewall I often outright drop anything coming in from the internet destined for windows file sharing ports (135, 137, 138, 139, and 445 among others). The traffic simply never passes the firewall and just goes into a black hole. However, if the traffic came from the network I am firewalling (the "inside" so to speak) then I'll usually configure the firewall to respond with a TCP RST. Why? Because if you respond with a TCP RST then the Windows client will immediately recognize that it can't connect rather than waiting for 60 seconds or longer. If I accidently mistype an IP of some machine I really don't want to have to wait 60 seconds while Windows Explorer completely HANGS because there is basically no way to cancel a request.
By your logic, I should now be brought up on charges because I forged a TCP RST.
Now, in this case their firewalls aren't in the middle but are merely snooping on traffic. When they want to drop a TCP connection they simply send a RST to both ends which does the job nicely without having to have the firewall pass all traffic. If it drops a packet, it's not that big of a deal. If it goes down there's simply no longer a firewall.
What most people seem to be mad about is that Comcast is using a firewall on their traffic. But ask yourself what would you do if you were in Comcast's position. There is no way in hell they could afford to provide the full advertised downstream and upstream bandwidth 24/7. That's why your cable modem costs a whole lot less than a bandwidth-guaranteed T1. And it's not just for consumers. Businesses who just want an internet connection are now able to get cable modems as well and it's a huge money saver over a T1 because it means you get to burst at much faster speeds and aren't paying for the full bandwidth all the way to an internet backbone which you aren't even using anyway.
BitTorrent is by design a very greedy protocol. It is fully intended to suck up every last drop of available bandwidth. Comcast has a number of customers to serve with its limited uplink bandwidth. What it does have is pretty amazing but it's still nowhere near capable of saturating every subscriber's line simultaneously. When you got your cable modem service you agreed to this. That's what the whole "speeds may vary" footnote that accompanies cable and DSL advertisements is for.
Comcast is not in fact outright blocking BitTorrent traffic. It seems instead that they send a RST to both ends of BitTorrent TCP connections to force them to close. BitTorrent will turn around and make another connection with different peers. My guess is that they aren't killing all connections, just a random subset of them. This has the effect of throttling BitTorrent down without actually preventing anyone from using BitTorrent, just preventing BitTorrent from taking up all available network bandwidth.
What would you suggest that Comcast do? Not throttle anything? They'd have to increase their uplink bandwidth considerably. Do you suggest the government force them not to firewall anything? Now what.. who do you think is going to pay the added cost? It sure as hell isn't going to be Comcast, they'd sooner exit the business entirely, as would any other sensible business person.
The bottom line is that it really makes no difference what BitTorrent is being used for. Even if you're using it only to download the latest ISO of your favorite Linux distribution it still costs Comcast a lot of bandwidth. A lot more than if you were to just find a fast mirror with the ISO you want. I am pretty
If those sites are what you've been reading then it's no wonder you're worried about the U.S. declining. If find the anti-Bush site particularly interesting. There's a lot of good sound bites in there and there's a grain of truth in every one of them but the author is insinuating a number of cause-effect relationships where there is only correlation. Please, let's not forget about reason. Correlation does not prove causation. It's not just something you use when doing science, it's a foundation of any sound reasoning.
I'm not going to go through everything you posted and rebut each one but I can at least cherry pick a few as examples. For instance, "I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period." Or how about, "I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market. " The government does not control the stock market last I checked although they do regulate it. Let's also not forget that when Bush took office we had a highly inflated stock market due to several investors speculating on companies with no serious business plan. But I'm not going to turn around and blame Clinton for that even though that occurred on his watch. Anyone who puts his money into a company with no sound plan is taking a huge risk. Sometimes it pays off. I find it odd that anyone would hold the government responsible for this at all.
Sayers discussed this quite a bit in her excellent book The Mind of the Maker. Why is it that people look to politicians to solve their problems? That is simply not their job. Their job is to keep the government running as in protect the country from invasion and to allow the people in the country to live their lives with as little interference as possible. That's it. If you haven't read The Mind of the Maker you should. It unfortunately gets shoehorned into the theology category so you may find it over in that section of your local bookstore. You can also find various copies of it online since the copyright has long expired. The online copies all have varied levels of transcription errors.
Anyway, getting back to the point, some of the criticisms of Bush are valid. For instance, "I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security " Yeah, he did do that, and I'm not particularly happy about it although I'm not sure that what existed before with various government agencies fulfilling overlapping niches was necessarily better.
Then there's the Olbermann piece. Frankly, I find Olbermann to be as much of a journalist as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. He's an opinion maker and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that except for that he tries to pass off his opinion pieces as hard news which in my book makes him a hack.
NBC regularly puts Olbermann on the Nightly News identifying him as a reporter. Every segment he does is absolutely loaded with opinion. Again, there's nothing wrong with being an opinionated journalist but please don't pass it off as hard news reporting. It would be like FNC putting O'Reilly or Hannity on the Fox Report. Not that the Fox Report is unbiased but it is intended to be a hard news pure reporting program, not an opinion/entertainment program. I'm very wary of anyone claiming to do a hard news program. It's impossible for any normal human not to have some level of bias. Better to disclose your bias than to try to keep it in the closet. Sooner or later anyone with half a brain can clearly see what's going on.
Well, your earlier post said that you were socially more in tune with the Democrats, but supported the financial platform of the Republicans. If they aren't doing the one thing you supported them for, shouldn't you then throw your support behind the guys who you do support 50%, rather than the ones you support 0%?
Basically you are using the political compass here with its two axis, social and economic issues. I'm socially libertarian and economically right. The Democrats are socially libertarian and economically left. The Republicans are socially authoritarian and claim to be economically right but are really economically more centrist or even somewhat leftist if not just as leftist as the Democrats. Therefore, it's better for me to vote for Democrats because at least we're both socially libertarian and there is no one in politics who's truly economically right anymore.
At least that's how I read your analysis. I could be wrong and I apologize if I am because that would basically make the above a strawman. The thing is, that is how I read your comment and I disagree with the analysis.
On the social side of things you suppose that Democrats are towards the libertarian side and Republicans are toward the authoritarian side. The problem is, how do you measure this? The political compass website does this for some notable politicians and historical figures by looking at their actions. But this is a problem because some actions that you consider authoritarian don't strike me as being so.
Take for instance the NSA wiretap program. Recall that the Bush administration actually admitted to eavesdropping on any phone calls where one or both endpoints were foreign. To you, I am sure this in and of itself strikes you as extremely authoritarian and thus anybody supporting it must therefore be authoritarian. Yet I don't see it that way. Looking back just a little bit we can see that letters going in and out of the country during WWII were intercepted. Was that authoritarian? Looking back further we'll realize that there is quite a long history of intercepting as much as possible coming in and out of the country. Is that authoritarian, or is it just good sense?
Now, some people claim that the NSA actually uses the equipment to spy on purely domestic calls as well. I do not forget the story of the guy in San Francisco who blew the whistle on the equipment being installed capable of doing this. But you know what? I'm not sure even something like that is necessarily authoritarian. Is data transmitted over lines that neither endpoint owns that travels through public right of ways and is switched in third-party (i.e. the phone company) buildings really private? Any third party (not just the government) can tap a phone line without anyone knowing about it. It really goes back to the old saying: don't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times.
Perhaps then by liberal standards I am an authoritarian. But the problem is that by liberal standards anything short of looking the other way every time is authoritarian. But is that line of thought really valid? I don't disagree that ideally I'd like to be able to talk with someone at distance without the fear of a man in the middle but I'm also keenly aware that the physics of it are that anyone with the right know-how and equipment can eavesdrop at any point between me and the other party. So it's therefore prudent not to say anything I wouldn't want other people to know. If I'm really serious I can always use something like encrypted VOIP. Of course, that doesn't stop the other party from disclosing what I said. And even worse, if a key exchange is required to set up the encryption line then I've now actually proven that I said those things because I had to use a digital signature to get encryption. So again we go back to not saying anything over a telephone line that you wouldn't want disclosed.
That's just one example but it highlights an inher
No, I haven't. So now what? I'm left with a choice between someone who's telling me he's going to increase government spending and who I'm sure will follow through on his promise and someone who's telling me he's going to decrease government spending but will most likely increase it some.
Either way I'm basically fucked. What am I going to do? Not vote? I'd rather go and pick the best of 2 or 3 bad options than not go and let a man win because I failed to let him know I disagreed with him. And in some ways I guess I'd rather pick the guy whose ideals, even though compromised, match mine rather than pick the guy whose ideals do not match mine at all.
If you have a better idea I am extremely open to hearing it.
Let's also not forget that Democrats and Republicans each have special interests and increase government spending in different ways. Democrats tend to want to socialize everything. Every program they socialize not only screws me once in my pocketbook by having to pay for everyone to have the same level of service but also screws me again when I desire a better level of service because in order to do that I have to continue to pay for the shitty service I don't use and fully pay for the better service I want. See public education for an example of that one. If my locality isn't providing good public education I can either move to one that is or I can put my kids (future kids as the case is) in a private school. But if I do the latter I still have to pay for them to be in public school even though they are not.
And what of socialized medicine? If the plans I'm hearing from Democrats ever get passed It's going to be the same situation where I will be forced to pay for the standard level of service but if I want anything above that I pay a private party entirely out of my own pocket and I don't get a single dime back from the government because I had the audacity to go outside of the single-payer system.
The biggest bitch Republicans have is the defense industry and other large businesses. But don't kid yourself, Democrats are beholden to them about as much as Republicans are. I guarantee you that even if we wind up with a democratically controlled congress and presidency we won't see defense spending cut for the giant contractors. They'll still get their piece of the action regardless of who's in office since they are shrewdly paying everyone off.
I'd like to go ahead and admit that I'm one of these people. Unfortunately, the Republicans now are starting not to follow through on the fiscal conservatism which is a problem. All of the bullshit restrictions on personal behavior are just that, bullshit. You can have all the laws in the world about not performing certain sex acts but none of them really matter. Consenting adults having sex in private can basically do whatever they wish because even if what they are doing is against the law such a case can never be prosecuted for lack of evidence.
Therefore, I can allow a politician to pander to some group of sexually-suppressed idiots knowing that he'll have no power to actually follow through on his empty promises. If he's otherwise good and is willing to reduce the size of government and keep government power (including his own power) at a smaller more manageable level then he's got my vote. That millions of idiots voted for him solely because he waxed eloquent about the virtues of family values does not affect me in the least.
This is where the Republican party got it right and the Democrats have failed miserably. The Democrat party pushes a platform of people being free to do what they want but at the same time pushes a platform of increased government which can only eventually lead to people not being free to do what they want. The Republican party pushes a platform of personal responsibility and sometimes panders to people wishing to restrict the freedom of others but at the same time pushes decreased government which will actually lead to people being responsible for themselves.
Therefore, my vote goes to the guy who's going to remove his own power to restrict other's freedoms. Again, sadly not all Republicans are for this so it pays to pay close attention to their underlying principles and ignore whatever bullshit they say about gays and defending marriage and so on.
Well, wxWidgets is actually licensed under the wxWindows license, not BSD nor X11. The wxWindows license is a modified LGPL which allows for static linking. So long as the endusers to whom they distributed their work (application, library, whatever) are aware that wxWidgets was used (via including the license with the distribution) and can request and receive the particular wxWidgets codebase that was used then there is no legal harm.
Without knowing what the changes were it's hard to know whether it's even worth it to pursue. Several companies do their own changes and give them back to the wxWidgets project and several others hire wxWidgets developers to do changes and give them back to the project. A few people with a bad attitude aren't going to hurt the project in any way because there is already plenty of code flying back and forth.
Most of the time, users of wxWidgets find it easier to get code into the official codebase rather than attempt to maintain a custom tree. Most of the developers of wxWidgets are doing paid consulting work or are working for companies using wxWidgets in one way or another. I don't think anyone has any real desire to pursue users of wxWidgets who have failed their obligations to the license simply because either their changes are likely stupid little hacks which are useless anyway or they made no changes in which case it doesn't do anyone any good to force them to maintain a way for their customers to receive the specific wxWidgets version that was used since any normal person can download it straight from the wxWidgets project.
I should also take a bit of time and mention the issue with static linking. A few years ago I carefully read the LGPL and discovered that it does not like most people assume prevent static linking. A user of an LGPL library may choose to statically link the library with other non-LGPL code so long as the end-user is able to relink with a modified library. One way of accomplishing this for static linking is to simply distribute an archive (.a) of the object (.o) files that were linked together with the static LGPL library. That alone satisfies the requirement that the user be able to relink with a modified copy of the LGPL library. Of course, no such thing is needed with the wxWidgets license because we explicitly allow for static linking.
I don't think we have any rabid pro-GPLers in the project anymore since they tend to be the same sort of person who likes to start flame-fests on the mailing list and therefore they don't tend to last very long. That is not to say that I am encouraging anyone to break the wxWidgets license. I'm just pointing out that it's in a user's best interest to contribute back to the project and foster good will with the community.
Theo is bringing up two independent points in his message. The first point is that choosing to use the code under the GPL license does not mean you are allowed to remove the notice that it may be used under the BSD license. The second point is that while you are allowed to license modifications under a different license you are encouraged to license them under the BSD license. The points are somewhat intertwined which is why he makes them together.
As for the first point, his argument is simply that the BSD license requires that it not be removed from the source file. It is a modified BSD so it no longer requires acknowledgement when advertising a product using the code which is the specific part that made it incompatible with the GPL. It does still require that the notice remain with the code. You will note if you look at a project such as Apple's xnu that the BSD copyright notice and license remain intact on BSD source files with the APSL added to it. Likewise, the Mach copyright notice and license remain intact on files that came from Mach. Similarly, I moved the region code from X11 into wxWidgets and you can clearly see in the source code (src/generic/regiong.cpp) that the X11 license remains intact. Did I have to do this? For X11 no because X11 only requires that the copyright stay in the source file and the license be part of the program's supporting documentation. Had it been BSD licensed I would have been forced to keep the BSD license in the source code. Regardless, I did it anyway as a gesture of good faith.
This brings us to the second point, that of giving back to the commons you took from. As you point out, the BSD license does not require it! Yet somehow, the BSD codebase continues to grow with contributions not only from individuals but also from companies. The reason for this is that people feel obligated to give back useful portions of their work to the commons despite not being legally obligated to do so. Theo's observation here is simply that many companies are contributing back to BSD but that individuals wanting to use the code for GPL projects are taking a hard-line stance that because BSD does not require it, they will not do it. He's also pointing out that it's gotten worse than that because it has become so prevalent to insert BSD code into a GPL program and license the modifications under only the GPL that several individuals now feel they can remove the BSD license and copyright notices as well.
In other words, modifying the BSD code and licensing the modifications under a different license is allowed by the license and therefore technically legal but considered wrong. Removing the BSD license is against the license and therefore illegal.
I watch NBC quite a bit, but not for any of the shows mentioned in this story. Last season I purchased a USB tuner stick and a copy of EyeTV. Forget watching low-res iTunes versions of the shows. I recorded them and watched them in full HD quality. Granted, each show after trimming out commercials to bring it down to about 44 minutes will barely fit on one single-layer DVD but my god they look gorgeous on a cinema display.
If I happened to miss recording one I could always either wait for it to rerun or simply grab it from a torrent site. For Studio 60 most of the torrent rips seemed to be from Canada, presumably because the show aired on Sunday rather than on Monday. Quality was not quite the original MPEG-2 1080i but the re-encoding (Xvid I think?) was not that bad and the whole thing still looked far better than what NBC sold on iTunes.
I really don't get why NBC is so concerned about DRM though. Their shows are already broadcast and recordable (quite legally) by anybody and distributing them over the internet is at best a gray area. In other words, the content is already quite readily available so the best thing for NBC to do is realize this and convince someone like myself that for say $2 I can avoid doing the recording myself and just buy the show whenever I feel like it.
All the legislation in the world will never change the fact that I'm already able to record the shows using the hardware I've already purchased. The "broadcast flag" is never going to happen no matter how hard they push for it. Even if they get such a dogpile passed it won't change anything since boxes will be modifiable. In the case of the USB tuner sticks the MPEG-2 stream goes directly in through the USB port. It's entirely up to the software program to enforce any restrictions that may be flagged in the MPEG transport stream.
I have a feeling though that rightly or wrongly, NBC isn't targeting people like me since we're already aware that the shows can be recorded in full over the air. NBC is clearly trying to convince people who aren't aware that you can receive and record their programming for free. It still amazes people when I tell them I get HD programming for free. Hell, depending on where you're at you don't even need a spectacularly good antenna. I've got a $20 indoor VHF/UHF model I bought at Wal-Mart. I set my parent's bedroom TV up with a short piece of coax with a 75/300 balun screwed onto the opposite end. The little leads on that balun are enough to receive HD!
Another friend of mine has a DirectTV DVR box. Those boxes have ATSC/NTSC inputs and after a bit of prodding I convinced him to just do what I did and pick up a cheap antenna. He swore it would never work due to all the interference from Norfolk Naval Station. Guess what? It works. And because it's hooked into his DVR he's able to record from it as if it were a satellite signal. Perhaps that's why DirectTV isn't so interested in running local HD signals over their bandwidth. It's basically unnecessary since most people can pick up HD TV directly from their antenna with a very clear signal.
How is asking for recovery CDs to be included as part of the computer purchase making an ass of oneself? Seems like it's just good old-fashioned haggling. Assume I don't know anything about computers but the salesman tells me I absolutely need to have recovery CDs in case anything goes wrong with the computer and informs me that I must pay an additional amount for these CDs and I cannot make them myself. I would simply inform him that he has no sale at all then because if the CDs are required and I'm unable to make them myself then they ought to be included as part of the computer.
This puts the salesman in a bad position. If he's truly unaware that the discs can be burned by the purchaser then he now either has to kill the sale or give up some profit. If he is and was aware that the discs can be burned by the purchaser then admitting it at this point means he was lying earlier. Or he could (pretend to) go ask someone else (like a tech) and find out that indeed the discs can be burned later by the purchaser, but if he does that he now looks ignorant of what he's selling.
Personally, I'd love to discuss the mindset of people who go, oh gee, only an additional $40 to be able to recover my computer, that seems okay!
You're welcome. I usually make a habit of reading macosxhints.com so I can keep up on the latest tips and tricks. Even if I don't use them myself I can always recommend to others.
Also, I should mention that I believe if your mini is one of the older Intel minis (one with a Core Solo/Duo rather than the new Core 2 Duo) that didn't come with Wifi or bluetooth you can still add the features as the mini-PCIe slots still exist in the mainboard. One guy even decided that 802.11g that he already had wasn't enough and so came up with a guide for installing 802.11n on an Intel Mini including installation of a second antenna needed for 802.11n to reach n speeds. Of course, it's probably way cheaper to do external devices but if you want to keep the aesthetic of the self-contained unit then it's possible to upgrade this way.
As for the mouse accelleration, I dunno, it has just never bothered me and I didn't even notice the change back when Panther (10.3) was released that a lot of Mac users complained about. Then again, I'm now running 1920x1200 on a 23" ACD and also 1920x1200 on a new MacBook Pro 17" with the displays side by side. With that kind of real-estate I like the accelleration curves the way they are since I'm able to do precision movements if I move at a reasonable pace and fast movements if I move fast. I thought there was supposedly some auto-adjust mechanism in OS X so that it changes accelleration curves based on how big your display is which is why it's not a user-selectable thing, it's supposed to be full-auto.
Don't forget also that Apple's accelleration curves are designed for Apple displays and Apple mice. If you're using something like a Microsoft or Kensington or Logitech mouse then you can try MouseFixIt that I mentioned or apparently most of the vendor-specific mouse drivers have accelleration adjustments. Though word is that Microsoft's software is not so great (I can attest to this for the older versions at least) but Kensington's is pretty decent and will work with every brand of mouse except for Apple.
Not entirely. As others have pointed out, if you have really bad credit or if you enter 999-99-9999 as your social security number when activating you can choose the GoPhone pay-as-you-go plan.
But this does bring up an interesting point. Why is it that AT&T really wants you locked into a 2-year contract when they haven't paid a dime for your phone? And maybe more importantly, assume other carriers didn't subsidize the phones, why would they still want you in a contract?
The underlying reason for contracts is that by putting you into a contract you have signed effectively an IOU to AT&T saying that you will pay them $x/mo for at least the next 24 months. That enables them to book $24x of revenue IMMEDIATELY which looks awfully good on their balance sheet because they have yet to book the expenses of providing you with that service.
It's not purely an accounting trick though. In order to continue to provide better service they are constantly upgrading their network. That takes money. It's a lot easier to get money (e.g. a loan) when you can show you are clearly able to pay it back. Even if you don't wind up taking out an external loan, it still looks better to your own accountants when they already know that you have a 2 year revenue stream coming in to pay for your expenses.
Yeah, it is a rather odd thing that basically they are then wealthy only on paper, but those IOUs are as good as gold as far as accountants are concerned.
Nah. A Saturn is a totally reasonable choice of car. Relatively economical, good build quality. A Lexus on the other hand is a clear mark of someone wasting their money since they could've just bought a Toyota Camry or an Avalon or a Highlander for less money.
I believe the original poster specifically compared a ricer to a BMW. Sure, you can get both cars to perform well but the ricer looks and sounds like shit and is generally not a well-balanced vehicle while even a low-end BMW looks good, sounds good, and handles exceptionally well. You can even buy a used BMW for a reasonable price and still have a better car (IMO anyway) than the ricer.
I'll try to address these 1 by 1 and see if I can come up with some solutions for you.
1. I have some cheap usb hardware (wireless network dongle, bluetooth, etc). No drivers for mac. (I've spent hours searching mailing lists)
Unfortunately, you are pretty well screwed on USB unless the peripheral is of some standard device class that Apple supports (e.g. keyboard, mouse, hard drive, most cameras) or Apple has provided support for it. As far as I know, most Bluetooth adapters do work, particularly the Dlink ones. Look for an OS X logo on it, although what Mac did you buy recently that didn't have bluetooth built in? The networking situation is similar where most of the time the built-in gigabit and 802.11 support is sufficient for 99% of people. If you really need more network ports it's like any other system really, buy supported hardware.
2. I want to adjust mouse acceleration. I can't figure out how without buying an expensive 3rd party app.
There's a few different solutions. A google search for OS X mouse accelleration will get you to a couple of different macosxhints.com articles, one of which mentions MouseFix. Another article mentions a rebuilt HID driver although I would do that at your own risk. Or you can pay the measly $20 for SteerMouse.
I might also make a suggestion that you may simply be using your mouse incorrectly or using a bad mouse. Apple's mice are designed very lightweight and are extremely easy to pick up when doing long drags. If you're just trying to flick across the screen quickly I don't have any trouble doing that by moving the mouse a mere inch or so to get it from one side of a 1920x1200 screen to the other although admittedly you have to do it extremely rapidly for it to work.
3. I want to be able to launch my apps with one or two-key keyboard shortcuts. I can't figure this one out either.
Most people who want this use QuickSilver .
4. My scrollbar in firefox doesn't work right. Is this normal?
I have no idea. I am not very enthralled with Firefox on Mac. If you just want the Mozilla rendering engine you could try the sister project Camino. If you just want a browser then of course Safari is already there. Granted not all websites work with Safari but if it's something like a banking site I'll go use Camino or Firefox and then simply complain to the site that it should work in Safari. Did that to Verizon Wireless and what do you know, they fixed it.
5. Many open source apps that I love don't have standard maintained OS X distributions (gvim, pidgin, etc). I could try compiling myself, or I've found older versions that other people have built for them, but that's rather a step backwards instead of forwards.
There are basically two ways to get this. One way is to get Fink which is okay but I'm less than thrilled with the way they manage their port tree. Generally, Fink won't work with new OS X releases until a few weeks to a month after official release. The upside of Fink is that they have precompiled packages and use dpkg/apt plus some custom code (Python or PERL, can't remember which) to manage all of it.
The other way is to get MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts). If on Tiger then download the Tiger binary dmg. If on Leopard, grab the source tarball then do the usual configure/make/make install. Either way will stick everything in a new /opt/local hierarchy. From there run sudo port -v selfupdate to make sure you are up to date and then if you want gvim the port is vim and you want either the athena variant or the gtk2 or gtk1 variant. The athena variant is obviously the most lightweight gvim you can build and if you can live with ugly menus and dialogs then I recommend it. Otherwise I'd suggest the gtk2 ve
This looks quite similar to Novell's iFolder but with you running the server yourselves instead of having your users set up an iFolder server. Last I used iFolder was in the 1.x or 2.x days and it frankly wasn't anywhere near the polished product you have here. Now it seems that iFolder 3.x is open source and looks a lot more polished.
Still, I think you surely have a great service market here even though the polished front-end app seems to now be done open source. Best of luck to you on your new venture!
It used to be this way on the big classic rock station around here but they've since decided to silence the shit part of bullshit which totally screws up the rythmic/lyric combination going on at that point in the song.
As for Steve Miller, it turned into "funky kicks goin' down in the city." which isn't quite as bad.
I don't think that if you bought Dark Side of the Moon at Wal-Mart it would be censored though. Just like Dave Matthews' Before These Crowded Streets is not censored, or at least wasn't when I bought it there, despite the fact that it quite clearly contains the word "fucking" in one song. On the other hand, Matthews didn't use it as an expletive but to refer to the act of copulation. The line being "Tell me are you satisfied with fucking?"
If Wal-Mart's concern is degenerate music then they should simply not sell it. It's one thing to throw an expletive or two in a song but when it turns into a 5 minute talk about killin' dose niggas and beatin' dose hoes it has degenerated into hate speech. To sell it at all is a tacit admission that they find the music acceptable enough to contribute to the artist's riches and allow a bunch of white-collar record executives to make a lot of money feeding hate into the minds of people.
Has anyone considered using something like Squid as a web proxy with special properties for ad-serving domains? I am thinking something like using the normal timeout for normal sites but limiting the timeout to like 3 seconds on an ad-serving site. If it doesn't load in 3 seconds, just have the proxy return its standard timeout page.
That would allow most ads to pass, which I feel is a good thing because I don't want to penalize those who are doing the right thing. But for ad servers that can't keep up, it would just timeout and close the connection.
I hate to admit it, but a few years ago I did an update on a Fedora box which renamed protocol 50 from ipv6-crypt to esp or something of the sort. Due to this, the firewall rules failed to load at startup which left the outside portion of the network completely unfirewalled instead of nearly completely firewalled.
Now ordinarily this wouldn't be a huge problem as one should reasonably hope that even an unfirewalled system is secure. And indeed, the Windows 2000 webserver we had was reasonably secure. It was up to date with all the patches and running great. The ultimate attack vector had nothing to do with lack of patches but rather an ultra-weak password. You see, someone else had an account in the administrators group with a password of 121212. With the firewall being down this account could be used to log in to the SMB shares and thus execute anything with that account's privileges.
Fortunately, the webserver had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the network which was behind a second firewall with a totally different authentication/directory system and a different set of usernames and passwords. So the attacker was able to get access to a webserver with nothing of any interest on it. It is at that point when I began to research how the hell he got in and realized that the firewall was not firewalling anything. Later on, we decided the 121212 password on an Administrators group account was the ultimate culprit.
This just goes to show you that a break-in can happen to anybody. Granted, in this story's case, taking down a firewall on purpose to transfer some data was probably not a good idea and could/should have been avoided. But that's a mistake, not an invitation to burn the perpetrator at the stake.
Ultimately, a security failure should result in a procedural change. In our case, checking that the firewall rules installed correctly at boot became part of the checklist of things to do when upgrading that server. We also changed the passwords on the webserver and implemented several new policies. Prior to the attack, the webserver passwords were a combination of knowable information like birthdate, hire date, and part of SSN. Their purpose was to secure read-only access to a site with company policy information so it wasn't thought they needed to be highly secure. Unfortunately, all of the users were full Windows users so for all we know it might not have been the weak password on the admin account but instead an disgruntled (ex-)employee coupled with a possible privilege elevation bug. Due to this, we changed all of the user's passwords to be random and moved all of the users out of the Users group and into a group that only allowed logins to the website and not on the console.
All that for a measily webserver with some simple read-only access to data that doesn't have to be all that secure. Now consider having a web application with critical data like patient reecords and several thousand users all from different hopsitals. That's basically an accident waiting to happen. If I were a company doing that, I'd be sure to have a huge insurance policy to cover the liabilities and/or make damn sure the contracts with customers indemnified the company against lawsuits for accidental breaches.