Ron Paul supports opposing immigration with force which is morally unacceptable.
How so? Illegal immigrants are trespassers onto our property and therefor we may legitimately use force to oppose them, just as we can legitimately use force against burglars.
Illegal 'immigration' is trespassing, pure and simple.
I think your 'infinitely more readable' statement really applies to those unused to Lisp. Your pseudo-code is infinitely less readable than plain English, and yet that's not really a strike against it, is it? If one wants to write computer programs, one does need to learn a bit.
As for prefix notation, you're happy to use prefix notation in your for statement and with your push function; as a user of a mainstream programming language, you in fact use prefix notation almost constantly; function(a, b, c, d) and (function a b c d) are equivalent. A Lisp macro could use (for x in '(1 2 3) do (push (+ 2 x) z)); in fact, with the addition of 'loop' before the for, that is valid Lisp...
Second, some of the least readable and understandable code I've seen out there is map statements. They simply cannot be parsed in any linguistically easy way and can't be read quickly by any person who hasn't spent a long time using map.
Huh? I always thought that map was pretty clear: return the result of running FUNCTION on all elements in LIST, e.g.:
apt can install a package if you know its name. Yum can install a local package, and get its dependencies.
I believe that apt was the package manager which originated dependency retrieval; it certainly predated yum. In fact, once upon a time there was an apt-get port for Fedora...
It can also install a package based on its name, a virtual capability, an actual capability (library name or executable), or a file provided by the package (by path).
I did not know that--how cool! I'm a Fedora user, so I'll have to try that out...
Lamarckian evolution was proved false long ago; just because a group of people isn't educated and therefore doesn't make use of their intelligence does not mean that their children will be stupid.
You're right to a point, however there is a genetic component to intelligence (intelligence is not learnt, although education does affect it). Back in the old days, intelligence was spread throughout the classes, and the classes all reproduced more-or-less at the same rate, and so intelligence (and the lack thereof) was pretty evenly distributed.
Our modern meritocracy has done a pretty good job of elevating the intelligent but low-class (not a great job in absolute terms, but a better job than any other civilisation until this point). On its own, that would mean that the upper classes would get more intelligent (as they are seeded by intelligent former lower-class folks) and the lower classes less intelligent (as the intelligent ones move up, and perhaps some upper class ones fall down).
Here's the terrible problem: the intelligent upper classes aren't reproducing much, and the less-intelligent lower classes are. The relative reproduction rates vastly favor the stupid. So while the average IQ is 100 today, it may be 99 in a century, 95 in two centuries, 85 in three and still less in four.
What I'm saying is, it's nothing a little education couldn't cure, and even if nothing is done about it, intelligent people will never die out, they'll just rise up from 'unintelligent' sources.
Repeat after me: there is a genetic component to intelligence. Yes, there are mutations to consider. Yes, over millennia stupid populations can become more intelligent. But intelligence is to a great extent hereditary, and for the first time in human history we're selecting for stupidity.
If when I search for the term "London Bridge" I have to go through articles on every work of literature, popular culture reference, or inside joke between a group of nerds with Wikipedia access to the London Bridge before I finally find the article on the bridge that I wanted, well that just wasted a lot of my time.
Is this really a problem? Simply have 'London Bridge' indicate the famous bridge, with a link to a disambiguation page. If there were a megaband call 'London Bridge,' it would merit a Wikipedia article, no? Why not if it's a popular regional band? Why not if it's a popular webcomic?
I don't really expect presidential candidates to have a vast wealth of knowledge on the particulars of science, beyond the basics you'd get from a solid liberal arts education. Whether or not Hillary or Giuliani can explain Ohm's Law isn't something I care about. What I really care about is what role the candidate sees science playing in society, and what role the candidate sees the government playing in promoting science education and science research.
I agree with you so far. We're not electing a Chief Scientist; we're electing a Chief Executive.
Federal support for basic research, in the form of the NSF (National Science Foundation), NIH (National Institutes of Health) and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has helped (along with private industry, which capitalizes on these advances) to make the United States the world leader in scientific research, and I would argue that this has been critical to the economic and military strength of the U.S. over the past fifty years.
This is where I start to disagree with you. We were at war for those fifty years; necessarily it was vital for our survival to fund research during that time. Indeed, much of that research (e.g. into attack-resistant communications) had civilian uses (e.g. the Internet).
I do not agree that we need a continued federal role; I'm unconvinced that even a large state role is necessary. If something is truly necessary, then it will be funded by industry or non-profits; if it is truly interesting, then it will be funded by wealthy individuals or non-profits.
The current administration has cut the budgets for the NSF and NIH and pushed DARPA away from its basic research mission, even as they spend tens of billions on foolish schemes like missile defense and invading Iraq.
The D in DARPA stands for Defense (as in, Department of); missile defense is a vital war-related area of research. I also think that it's the opposite of foolish; foolish is to refuse to investigate it.
Invading Iraq made sense given the state of our information in 2003 (although personally, I'd simply have assassinated Hussein: cheaper and cleaner). Now that we broke it, we've got to fix it. Hopefully the world has learnt that regime change is a stupid, stupid reason to invade a state.
I think the next president has to realize that basic research is an investment in the future of our country.
If it's an investment, then industry would invest in it. That industry doesn't do it indicates that it's a boondoggle. And then there's the phenomenon of industry lobbying the State to fund research for it: we all get to pay (via our taxes) for research to make some corporation rich. That makes a whole lot of sense...
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
In other words, such a regional association is blatantly unconstitutional unless Congress permits it.
I know, the Constitution isn't perfect--but it's a damned sight better than what we have now.
An authorisation to use force is not a declaration of war. It should have been, but the US Congress hasn't declared war since 1941. They have not been doing their job.
As for ignoring Congress, I was talking about the war; I was talking about how US presidents behave as elected kings or prime ministers, not as the executives of the republic. When running for election they promise all manner of things that aren't in their power; when elected they pursue all manner of initiatives which aren't in their power.
The president's job is to approve, veto & execute the laws, negotiate treaties and a few other items (all neatly listed in the Constitution). It's not to lead the country. The country doesn't need to be led: the people send their representatives; the states send their senators (whoops, not since the asinine Seventeenth Amendment); the people appoint a president to execute the law.
The Constitution isn't perfect, but it's better than what we have now.
Actually, I imagine Ron Paul could be made to stay in Iraq: if Congress declared war, then he (as the executive) would have to fight it.
Unlike other presidents, I can't imagine him just ignoring Congress. On the contrary, I expect that he'd prefer for Congress to do its job and legislate, leaving the work of executing the legislature's will to the executive. Crazy thought, I know.
Increasing federal spending on research and development
Research & development are pretty clearly not a federal issue; they're really not an issue for any State. Yes, the Internet was a result of federal research; but one wonders if it mightn't have existed anyway: networks are useful, and if something is useful someone will figure out how to make it.
Allowing more highly educated foreign workers into the country
Well, securing the borders is a federal responsibility. It seems to me that the President can't have a programme, though: all he can do is approve or deny the laws Congress passes (and they can of course over-rule him). As for how smart it is to increase H1-Bs, I'm uncertain. I've worked with some very intelligent visa workers for certain. On the other hand, I've seen a lot of very intelligent citizens let go. We keep on reading about a tech jobs shortage; why then is everyone in IT so desperately afraid of losing his job? I wonder if the agitation for more H1-Bs is not simply a way to keep wages down.
Widening the availability of high-speed Internet service
Please explain how this is a federal responsibility; please indicate which clause of the Constitution gives the President or the Congress that authority. I'll admit that interstate networks are naturally federal--but we already have some nifty interstate networks. The issue is not those, but the 'last mile,' which is quite clearly not federal in scope. It is local, though: just as roads, water, telephones and electricity are either public or very closely supervised by the states, so too should networks be.
Improving the state of U.S. math and science education
That's not a federal responsibility. The Department of Education is unconstitutional, and should be eliminated. As for education, we know how to educate: it's easy. What we're not willing to do is actually do it. Read the Underground History of American Education for more about how American schools don't accidentally fail: they're designed to produce poor results and bad citizens. If you really want education to be a federal responsibility, change the Constitution; the amendment process is there for a reason.
That's a pretty rough criticism of a man who wrote a story that would humble Tolkien himself.
Tolkien would be humbled by the Wheel of Time? Tolkien would be humbled by the Wheel of Time?!? Tolkien would be humbled by the Wheel of Time!?!?!?
You have got to be kidding (or on some extremely high-quality intoxicants). If Tolkien had the patience to finish TWoT, humility wouldn't be the emotion he'd feel. Annoyance, probably. Disgust, possibly. Pity, very likely. Here's a comparison of the two writers:
Tolkien
invented roughly two dozen different languages, with free borrowings from one another and a historical development of language and dialects over time
invented the history of a world on a grand scale from its very beginning
wrote some detailed stories covering very small periods within the above
finished each individual story
could write
Jordan
wrote three or four good books
kept on putting huge amounts of words on paper ('writing' is hardly the term) long after his fans had decided he was insane and would never finish
never finished
I too enjoyed the first several Jordan books. I was in grade school when they came out. I'm nearly thirty now.
I will grant that Tolkien was actually humble despite his great talents and that Jordan was proud despite rather limited ones.
No, Libraries of Congress or British Libraries would both be standard-style measures, just with different reference points. The French ('metric') standard measure of data would be the number of Esperanto words printable in 10-point Comic Sans Bold with 1 litre of soy ink at standard temperature and pressure, named after some obscure frog (e.g. Sartre). It'd be ridiculously small, and thus everyone would always work at least with gigasartres (gigasarters in some countries); meanwhile picosartres and centisartes would be well-nigh useless.
Fans of French units would point out how easy it is to scale all the units. Sane people would point out that all we want is a single scale: number of libraries of some size. French-unit fans would point out that rational unit conversion is a great advantage. Sane people would point out that the French haven't won a war since the Middle Ages, and have variously had their hats handed to them by the English, the Algerians, the Vietnamese and that fearsome military powerhouse, the Italians. French-unit fans would point out that the entire rest of the world uses sartres to measure data. Sane people would ask if the rest of the world jumped off a bridge, would the French-unit fans.
Then a corrupt politician would get a law passed mandating sartres be used for all measures and fining the use of libraries, bytes, gigabytes and so forth.
In the article he says he launched the GNU OS in 1984 and seven years later a kid from Finland blows right past him. What was Stallman doing during those seven years?
Ummm..Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel, that's all. GNU created a compilter, a programmer's text editor, file utilities like mv, cp, ls and friends; shell utilities; bin utilities, games &c.
When I saw this yesterday, I actually experienced a few seconds of excitement that there might someday be a good X11 mail client.
Grab emacs 22; it includes a copy of gnus, an mail/news/RSS reader. Instructions on setting up email can be found in the info page (in emacs, C-h i m gnus m getting mail) or in the online documentation.
GNU emacs runs in a console, but it also runs in X11. It is capable of displaying inline images, of coloured/styled/font-ed text and of providing menus and toolbars if those float your boat. It's the best text editor out there, the best IDE and the best mail reader.
I keep waiting for some French-unit (i.e. 'metric') loon to come up with a decimal tuning, never mind that music just ain't decimal. Neither's the rest of life, which is why French units simply don't make sense.
Fortunately, there are some great RPGs out there. If you're a big D&D fan, HackMaster will be right up your alley; it's 1st & 2nd edition AD&D revised, expanded and with a sense of humour. Their license to WotC material expires this month, so order your books while you can.
GURPS is, of course, an excellent system complete with more different worlds than you can shake a stick at. High fantasy? Low fantasy? Sci-fi? Spy? Historical? Alternate history? GURPS has it all. Heck, if you want to run a campaign with Jedi Knights running around Discworld, you can.
Then there are things like the Traveller reprints, worth getting not just for historical value but because Traveller was a damn fun system. Ditto for the Space:1889 reprints--if you can't see the fun of playing a subaltern in the British Army on Mars, I don't think RPGs are right for you...
And of course there are a lot of other systems out there. We live in a great time for RPGs, if you know where to look. It's not at the local game shop; it's not D20; it's online.
We've already dealt with a huge upsurge in bandwidth use. Remember way back when, back in the days when the 'the net' meant 'a modem talking to a Unix host'? Network communication was very slow, even for pure text. Then folks started wanting to download images (which may not be worth a thousand words, but cost a thousand words or more to transmit), and suddenly modems were no longer really viable. So ISPs switched to broadband communications between one another (imagine trying to support four users each downloading images when one's upstream link was a single 14.4 modem...), and eventually users switched to broadband links to their ISPs. Who paid for all this? In the long run, the users did. Did any ISPs make silly threats to servers on the other side of the world? Not that I know of. Did any use rate limiting? Certainly--that's perfectly fair.
The thing is, ISPs have been making a living for far too long by overselling their bandwidth. If they'd quit that, this wouldn't really be a problem. If they'd have tiered service plans, this wouldn't really be a problem.
Any civilization sufficiently advanced to come here in force from another star has solved the energy, food and mortality puzzles, which leaves conquest unlikely as a goal I should think. Why take the trouble to scrap it up with a pestilent life form at the bottom of a steep gravity well when mass and energy are abundant in the oort cloud and asteroid belt free for the taking?
Well, I think that for much of human history folks would have agreed that conquest is its own reward, e.g. the quote popularly attributed to Genghis Khan, 'the greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.' Especially if an advanced race saw a lesser one as we see animals, it's very likely that it might destroy it for sport, much like people used to torture cats (publicly, I mean--obv. some disturbed people still do that sort of thing). It'd be much the same impulse that causes a six year old boy to knock over an ant mound...
I don't know that your premise, that they would have solved energy, food & mortality to get here, necessarily holds either. To get here requires a fair amount of energy, yes, but there's an awful lot of energy locked up in radioactive elements. Food can be grown; if one doesn't care about taste or fertiliser source one could just use microorganisms to digest the dead into some food source. It's still a net energy-loser, but with enough energy injected from the engines it'd do fine (the Earth would be an energy-loser were it not for the Sun...). Mortality doesn't really matter: as long as you can create children, you can travel any distance you want.
Heck, we could get to Proxima Centauri now, if we wanted to and were willing to take the amoral measures necessary to do so. We could even arm a generation ship with enough weapons to render any planet we encountered fairly uninhabitable. We wouldn't do so, but who's to say some alien race might not?
Me, I figure the reason that extraterrestrials don't contact us is either that they simply don't exist, or that when a civilisation gets large enough technology enables one or a few madmen to destroy the entire thing. We can see this beginning to happen now: five hundred years ago a single man could only wield power by influencing other men; two hundred years ago he could snipe a leader with some degree of success; a hundred years ago he could reliably kill a leader and those around him; now he can destroy a city block; in a hundred years technology will almost certainly have progressed to the point that he can release enough energy to destroy a city.
In a thousand years, one mentally ill/evil individual will be able to detonate the planet; there will be millions or billions of mentally ill or evil individuals by that point; ergo even at a ridiculously small probability it is certain that one will succeed.
Not practical, of course, if others need to edit your documents.
I don't see why not. If someone wants to edit a.tex document, all he has to do is fire up emacs, or vi, or Notepad or any other text editor in the world--on any system which is capable of understanding ASCII.
Now, teaching him to know what he's looking at when he opens up a.tex is another thing entirely *grin*
Their reasoning is that if they released all of their stuff under GPL then Red Hat would just scoop it up and serve it in place of the very inferior management tools bundled into RHEL5.
Yeah, we certainly wouldn't want users to have a better experience.
Free software is about the users; proprietary software is about the programmers.
I think I only own three DVDs, bought back when I was still in VCR-mode. But with Netflix (or whatever comparable service you prefer), why do I need to buy DVDs at all? You make exactly the point: I watch a film, then don't really watch it again. If I do want to see it again, I can always toss it in my queue again, which is still cheaper than buying it.
Well, I track my mileage religiously. Back in '99-'00 I got 40 mpg a few times in college, then went down to 35-37 regularly. Last summer driving from Denver to Durango (about 375 mountain highway miles) I got 42 mpg. My last fill-up I got 40.something-or-other mpg (driving in the city). Either my odometer's reading wonky, the EPA's wrong or my car (a five-speed Tercel that the EPA thinks gets 25/32 mpg) is blessed. I dunno what the HP for the five speed is, but I beat most folks off the line (not because I can, but because they don't try--it's only a four-cylinder engine; anyone who tried would beat me easily). It doesn't have problems, except for a particular stretch of I-70 where it loses a lot of power going uphill.
It's a great car, and I'll miss it when it's gone. I'd trade horsepower for miles any day of the week...
Slashdot Mirror
Illegal 'immigration' is trespassing, pure and simple.
As for prefix notation, you're happy to use prefix notation in your for statement and with your push function; as a user of a mainstream programming language, you in fact use prefix notation almost constantly; function(a, b, c, d) and (function a b c d) are equivalent. A Lisp macro could use (for x in '(1 2 3) do (push (+ 2 x) z)); in fact, with the addition of 'loop' before the for, that is valid Lisp...
Huh? I always thought that map was pretty clear: return the result of running FUNCTION on all elements in LIST, e.g.:
Wherein is the problem?
I believe that apt was the package manager which originated dependency retrieval; it certainly predated yum. In fact, once upon a time there was an apt-get port for Fedora...
I did not know that--how cool! I'm a Fedora user, so I'll have to try that out...
Let me get this straight: you found an emacs-using, computer-science-educate, librarian?!? There's hope!
You're right to a point, however there is a genetic component to intelligence (intelligence is not learnt, although education does affect it). Back in the old days, intelligence was spread throughout the classes, and the classes all reproduced more-or-less at the same rate, and so intelligence (and the lack thereof) was pretty evenly distributed.
Our modern meritocracy has done a pretty good job of elevating the intelligent but low-class (not a great job in absolute terms, but a better job than any other civilisation until this point). On its own, that would mean that the upper classes would get more intelligent (as they are seeded by intelligent former lower-class folks) and the lower classes less intelligent (as the intelligent ones move up, and perhaps some upper class ones fall down).
Here's the terrible problem: the intelligent upper classes aren't reproducing much, and the less-intelligent lower classes are. The relative reproduction rates vastly favor the stupid. So while the average IQ is 100 today, it may be 99 in a century, 95 in two centuries, 85 in three and still less in four.
Repeat after me: there is a genetic component to intelligence. Yes, there are mutations to consider. Yes, over millennia stupid populations can become more intelligent. But intelligence is to a great extent hereditary, and for the first time in human history we're selecting for stupidity.
Is this really a problem? Simply have 'London Bridge' indicate the famous bridge, with a link to a disambiguation page. If there were a megaband call 'London Bridge,' it would merit a Wikipedia article, no? Why not if it's a popular regional band? Why not if it's a popular webcomic?
I agree with you so far. We're not electing a Chief Scientist; we're electing a Chief Executive.
This is where I start to disagree with you. We were at war for those fifty years; necessarily it was vital for our survival to fund research during that time. Indeed, much of that research (e.g. into attack-resistant communications) had civilian uses (e.g. the Internet).I do not agree that we need a continued federal role; I'm unconvinced that even a large state role is necessary. If something is truly necessary, then it will be funded by industry or non-profits; if it is truly interesting, then it will be funded by wealthy individuals or non-profits.
The D in DARPA stands for Defense (as in, Department of); missile defense is a vital war-related area of research. I also think that it's the opposite of foolish; foolish is to refuse to investigate it.Invading Iraq made sense given the state of our information in 2003 (although personally, I'd simply have assassinated Hussein: cheaper and cleaner). Now that we broke it, we've got to fix it. Hopefully the world has learnt that regime change is a stupid, stupid reason to invade a state.
If it's an investment, then industry would invest in it. That industry doesn't do it indicates that it's a boondoggle. And then there's the phenomenon of industry lobbying the State to fund research for it: we all get to pay (via our taxes) for research to make some corporation rich. That makes a whole lot of sense...
I know, the Constitution isn't perfect--but it's a damned sight better than what we have now.
As for ignoring Congress, I was talking about the war; I was talking about how US presidents behave as elected kings or prime ministers, not as the executives of the republic. When running for election they promise all manner of things that aren't in their power; when elected they pursue all manner of initiatives which aren't in their power.
The president's job is to approve, veto & execute the laws, negotiate treaties and a few other items (all neatly listed in the Constitution). It's not to lead the country. The country doesn't need to be led: the people send their representatives; the states send their senators (whoops, not since the asinine Seventeenth Amendment); the people appoint a president to execute the law.
The Constitution isn't perfect, but it's better than what we have now.
Unlike other presidents, I can't imagine him just ignoring Congress. On the contrary, I expect that he'd prefer for Congress to do its job and legislate, leaving the work of executing the legislature's will to the executive. Crazy thought, I know.
Gosh, let's look at that quick list:
Increasing federal spending on research and developmentResearch & development are pretty clearly not a federal issue; they're really not an issue for any State. Yes, the Internet was a result of federal research; but one wonders if it mightn't have existed anyway: networks are useful, and if something is useful someone will figure out how to make it.
Allowing more highly educated foreign workers into the countryWell, securing the borders is a federal responsibility. It seems to me that the President can't have a programme, though: all he can do is approve or deny the laws Congress passes (and they can of course over-rule him). As for how smart it is to increase H1-Bs, I'm uncertain. I've worked with some very intelligent visa workers for certain. On the other hand, I've seen a lot of very intelligent citizens let go. We keep on reading about a tech jobs shortage; why then is everyone in IT so desperately afraid of losing his job? I wonder if the agitation for more H1-Bs is not simply a way to keep wages down.
Widening the availability of high-speed Internet servicePlease explain how this is a federal responsibility; please indicate which clause of the Constitution gives the President or the Congress that authority. I'll admit that interstate networks are naturally federal--but we already have some nifty interstate networks. The issue is not those, but the 'last mile,' which is quite clearly not federal in scope. It is local, though: just as roads, water, telephones and electricity are either public or very closely supervised by the states, so too should networks be.
Improving the state of U.S. math and science educationThat's not a federal responsibility. The Department of Education is unconstitutional, and should be eliminated. As for education, we know how to educate: it's easy. What we're not willing to do is actually do it. Read the Underground History of American Education for more about how American schools don't accidentally fail: they're designed to produce poor results and bad citizens. If you really want education to be a federal responsibility, change the Constitution; the amendment process is there for a reason.
Tolkien would be humbled by the Wheel of Time? Tolkien would be humbled by the Wheel of Time?!? Tolkien would be humbled by the Wheel of Time!?!?!?
You have got to be kidding (or on some extremely high-quality intoxicants). If Tolkien had the patience to finish TWoT, humility wouldn't be the emotion he'd feel. Annoyance, probably. Disgust, possibly. Pity, very likely. Here's a comparison of the two writers:
Tolkien- invented roughly two dozen different languages, with free borrowings from one another and a historical development of language and dialects over time
- invented the history of a world on a grand scale from its very beginning
- wrote some detailed stories covering very small periods within the above
- finished each individual story
- could write
JordanI too enjoyed the first several Jordan books. I was in grade school when they came out. I'm nearly thirty now.
I will grant that Tolkien was actually humble despite his great talents and that Jordan was proud despite rather limited ones.
Fans of French units would point out how easy it is to scale all the units. Sane people would point out that all we want is a single scale: number of libraries of some size. French-unit fans would point out that rational unit conversion is a great advantage. Sane people would point out that the French haven't won a war since the Middle Ages, and have variously had their hats handed to them by the English, the Algerians, the Vietnamese and that fearsome military powerhouse, the Italians. French-unit fans would point out that the entire rest of the world uses sartres to measure data. Sane people would ask if the rest of the world jumped off a bridge, would the French-unit fans.
Then a corrupt politician would get a law passed mandating sartres be used for all measures and fining the use of libraries, bytes, gigabytes and so forth.
Ummm..Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel, that's all. GNU created a compilter, a programmer's text editor, file utilities like mv, cp, ls and friends; shell utilities; bin utilities, games &c.
Hurd, meanwhile, has been a massive mistake.
Grab emacs 22; it includes a copy of gnus, an mail/news/RSS reader. Instructions on setting up email can be found in the info page (in emacs, C-h i m gnus m getting mail) or in the online documentation.
GNU emacs runs in a console, but it also runs in X11. It is capable of displaying inline images, of coloured/styled/font-ed text and of providing menus and toolbars if those float your boat. It's the best text editor out there, the best IDE and the best mail reader.
I keep waiting for some French-unit (i.e. 'metric') loon to come up with a decimal tuning, never mind that music just ain't decimal. Neither's the rest of life, which is why French units simply don't make sense.
GURPS is, of course, an excellent system complete with more different worlds than you can shake a stick at. High fantasy? Low fantasy? Sci-fi? Spy? Historical? Alternate history? GURPS has it all. Heck, if you want to run a campaign with Jedi Knights running around Discworld, you can.
Then there are things like the Traveller reprints, worth getting not just for historical value but because Traveller was a damn fun system. Ditto for the Space:1889 reprints--if you can't see the fun of playing a subaltern in the British Army on Mars, I don't think RPGs are right for you...
And of course there are a lot of other systems out there. We live in a great time for RPGs, if you know where to look. It's not at the local game shop; it's not D20; it's online.
The thing is, ISPs have been making a living for far too long by overselling their bandwidth. If they'd quit that, this wouldn't really be a problem. If they'd have tiered service plans, this wouldn't really be a problem.
Well, I think that for much of human history folks would have agreed that conquest is its own reward, e.g. the quote popularly attributed to Genghis Khan, 'the greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.' Especially if an advanced race saw a lesser one as we see animals, it's very likely that it might destroy it for sport, much like people used to torture cats (publicly, I mean--obv. some disturbed people still do that sort of thing). It'd be much the same impulse that causes a six year old boy to knock over an ant mound...
I don't know that your premise, that they would have solved energy, food & mortality to get here, necessarily holds either. To get here requires a fair amount of energy, yes, but there's an awful lot of energy locked up in radioactive elements. Food can be grown; if one doesn't care about taste or fertiliser source one could just use microorganisms to digest the dead into some food source. It's still a net energy-loser, but with enough energy injected from the engines it'd do fine (the Earth would be an energy-loser were it not for the Sun...). Mortality doesn't really matter: as long as you can create children, you can travel any distance you want.
Heck, we could get to Proxima Centauri now, if we wanted to and were willing to take the amoral measures necessary to do so. We could even arm a generation ship with enough weapons to render any planet we encountered fairly uninhabitable. We wouldn't do so, but who's to say some alien race might not?
Me, I figure the reason that extraterrestrials don't contact us is either that they simply don't exist, or that when a civilisation gets large enough technology enables one or a few madmen to destroy the entire thing. We can see this beginning to happen now: five hundred years ago a single man could only wield power by influencing other men; two hundred years ago he could snipe a leader with some degree of success; a hundred years ago he could reliably kill a leader and those around him; now he can destroy a city block; in a hundred years technology will almost certainly have progressed to the point that he can release enough energy to destroy a city.
In a thousand years, one mentally ill/evil individual will be able to detonate the planet; there will be millions or billions of mentally ill or evil individuals by that point; ergo even at a ridiculously small probability it is certain that one will succeed.
I don't see why not. If someone wants to edit a .tex document, all he has to do is fire up emacs, or vi, or Notepad or any other text editor in the world--on any system which is capable of understanding ASCII.
Now, teaching him to know what he's looking at when he opens up a .tex is another thing entirely *grin*
Yeah, we certainly wouldn't want users to have a better experience.
Free software is about the users; proprietary software is about the programmers.
I think I only own three DVDs, bought back when I was still in VCR-mode. But with Netflix (or whatever comparable service you prefer), why do I need to buy DVDs at all? You make exactly the point: I watch a film, then don't really watch it again. If I do want to see it again, I can always toss it in my queue again, which is still cheaper than buying it.
It's a great car, and I'll miss it when it's gone. I'd trade horsepower for miles any day of the week...
My 1991 Toyota Tercel gets 40 miles to the gallon. If it could be done 16 years ago, why can't it be done now?