"...every bomb short of a nuke would be perfectly legal to shoot into a mass of afghan civilians), and the commander giving that order would go completely free under international law."
Um...no. The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) (internationally recognized and codified in US statutes) states that those making the attack must take into consideration proportionality. A commander who orders an attack that kills 50 civilians just to get one terrorist will be punished for failure to adhere to the LOAC.
I've joked about this a few times at work when the (military) instructors I work with discuss the latest in command directed PC nuttiness. They can't use the term cockpit, it's a flight deck. Neither can they say white board or black board. Those are now officially marker boards and chalk boards. I used to joke that we can't use master/slave anymore due to a NAACP lawsuit against the computer industry. Guess it ain't a joke anymore.
Being a child of the 80s, my pick has to be from my formative years. Less Than Zero. Nowhere near the same storyline as the book, but a fine film in its own right.
So let the unenlightened masses run out and buy new 64-bit whiz bang systems. There'll still be a market for those "old" 32-bit systems. Ever wanted to have a Beowolf cluster but just couldn't scrape up the money for the hardware? If what you predict is true, we'll be able to put together are nice collection of "slow" and "outdated" 1GHz boxes for next to nothing.
So I say, let the stampede begin. I'll gladly take the cast offs..
I saw Nemesis last night. I purposely stayed away from any reviews and discussions of it until I had seen it just so I could give it an objective eye.
And the bottom line is: I was pleased with it because it was...entertaining.
ST has never been the height of story telling. One of the other posts got it right: it's like junk food. I've never watched ST in any interation to gleen some insight into myself, humanity or the dog for that matter. I've watched it because I wanted to be entertained. I like the fights, the ships, the special effects, the characters, et al.
Like anything else, it's been a mixed bag. Occasionally the writers would hit on all cylinders and I would come away thinking, "Shit, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout." Yesterdays Enterprise and First Contact come to mind. There have been times I have thought "Jesus, Joseph and Mary! What the hell were those clowns thinking?" This would sum up most of the first season of TNG. But most times ST fell into the "That was pretty good. What's on now?" category. Even so, most of ST's average episodes are better than 95% of the stuff on TV anyway.
With that said, I'd give Nemesis a 3.75 out of 5. It's above Insurrection and Generations but not quite up to First Contact. I think Logan did a damn good job with what he had to work with (15 years of continuity can be a bit constraining) and acheived a good balance between the action and the character developement. The little tips of the hat to previous Treks in all forms were nice too (Tholian and Dominion War references, USS Archer listed on stellar map, Janeway character making a cameo). However, they should have killed Data outright (saw the "We better have a replacement in case there is a ST-11" plot turn coming two sectors away) and they could have revealed a bit less of the Shinzan's plot so early in the movie.
I recommend going to see it...if you want to be entertained. If you want hard sci-fi, probing questions and insight into what makes the world spin, go see an arthouse flick or read a book. Better yet quit yer bitching, get off your lazy ass and write one yourself.
Of course with my luck, it'll be pre-empted by some sporting event.
Someone else has this problem too? And I thought it was just the hayseeds running this chickenshit UPN station here in Charleston that was doing it. I'm not alone!!!!
Billingsley (and pretty much everyone here) is right, Enterprise needs some changes. It's a good show with potential, but some serious tweaking needs to be done. But for all of that, some of the folks here are missing the big picture here.
Back when TNG was winding down, I read a lot of the same stuff. Sniping and nitpicking about how bad the series had gotten, how the endings seemed rushed, etc. To a point, some of it was true. Remember that episode where almost everyone devolved? Unfortunately, I do. Now I read posts holding TNG up as the standard for the others in the franchise. I have to disagree.
TNG was just like any other Trek spin-off. It started out crappy, found its legs then ran its course and ended just shy of wearing out its welcome. The first season reeked. Remember the male crew members in skirts in the background? How about the rehashes of old original series plots? TNG didn't get truly good until the third season. Same goes for DS9 and to a lesser extent Voyager.
As for the continuity, anyone read the "Nitpickers Guide To...." series? Those books showed that every one of the series have had more holes in them than Bonnie and Clydes death car. Plot holes, continuity errors, production screwups, etc. I dare say Babylon 5, Farscape, et al have the same problems; no one has taken the time to catalog them fully yet. No series is perfect, Trek or otherwise. But even at it's worst, Trek is still entertaining.
Maybe it's time for the franchise to call it quits. Who knows? Personally, I'd just fire Berman and Braga and hire the folks who write the novels to do the show. Regardless, I'm going to continue to watch, let my opionions be known over at StarTrek.com and not worry about it much.
A friend of mine has been wanting to jump into Linux but, being a Windows trained type, has been hunting a distro that would flatten the learning curve somewhat. All this lead me to installing Lycoris on a Dell GX240. Couple of problems were encounterd:
- The standard install would not give me a Next button after asking about my video card settings. Had to run the Safe install.
- Once it was up and running, only got 8-bit color. The included X version is 4.0 and the Rage Pro Ultra in the Dell is not supported. Had to manually upgrade to 4.2.
- Found a typo in one of their config files. First time I have ever run into that!
So although it my flatten the learning curve, it still has some issues that need to be resolved. It's got promise, let's hope they can make it happen.
I've bought a couple of versions in the past, mainly because I don't have a gawd-awful fast internet connection and I am kind of anal about having the source CD around just in case.
So if Sun sells Star Office with a decent manual AND they can sell it for less than $100 AND I get both Linux and Winblows versions for the bucks, I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'll be switching over to OpenOffice.
I find it interesting that USA Today printed an anti-M$ letter in today's edition. Granted, the user evidently hasn't got much of a clue about how viruses work, but the disgruntled chord is still there.
The Dell comparison is not a product versus product comparison. It's an allusion to the business end of selling to the Linux community which, as you have demonstrated, is a hard sell.
In the past I too have bought prebuilt systems and within 2 minutes of powering up began reinstalling the OS to my liking. But the majority of computer users in the world are not like us. The majority falls into two groups. One buys the more-awful-than-Dell $499 E-Machines at Best Buy and does nothing but install games, surf the internet and spend way too much time in the AOL dwarf tossing chat room. The other (usually made up of the same people) schlep their way to work everyday where they use a way-behind-the-bleeding-edge workstation covered in pictures of pets and spilt cola. These are the groups that Dell was after with their prebuilt Linux boxes that sold like Yugos.
What it all boils down to is support from us. When they finally replace your Commodore PC 10 (now there's a reference) at work, tell them to buy you a Linux workstation. And when you get it, load up Netscape 6.1, Star Office 5.2 and all the other good Linux apps, most of which you actually paid for. When the rest of the unenlightened masses see that Linux ain't so bad, point them to the nearest retailer and wave the green flag. Simply vote for choice and change with your wallet.
I may be echoing the sentiment of a lot of you but some of these posts have really pissed me off. I've bought several Loki games in the past and been very happy with them. The key word here is bought! I see time and again the posts of those pining for apps that will help Linux compete against M$ apps. Where's the office suite? The money managers? Well, here we have a company that is trying to fill the gaming void and what happens? Hardly anyone buys the products!
Come on people. If we want Linux to truly dethrone M$, we're going to actually have to spend some money! Why is Dell halting Linux installs on their consumer desktops? Because no one bought them. What's the point of forking out $1700 for a computer from Dell with RH7 preinstallted when you can rebuild that 2 year old one and throw your downloaded copy on it? Face it, Dell can't continue throwing money, people and time into products that no one is buying. That's Business Management 101, braniac. Why is Loki going under? Same reason. They invest resources into products that only a few buy and the masses copy!
So get off your penny pinching asses, take some of that cash you saved by using a "free" OS and support the revolution by actually buying Linux-based apps.
Fans of open source should be rejoicing at this news, not picking nits about it. Let me tell you why.
I worked for USSTRATCOM ( http://www.stratcom.mil ) until November 2000. Their standard for office automation on their top-secret level Solaris-based intranet is Applix 4.x. We lovingly referred to it as Crapplix because that is what is was. A tremendous resource hog whose administration was a nightmare and reliabilty was just south of atrocious. But it was the DoD standard so we used it. I tried to get Star Office accepted but because it was not the standard, the head-shed would not even consider it.
Because Applix was so bad, the 1,000+ users of the network banded together and force the IT managers order the purchase 100 Intel-based workstations (with plans for up to 300 more) with NT4.0 for no other reason than to use MS Office. Your tax dollars at work, folks. USSTRATCOM has a contract with Sun for the servers and workstations that includes upgrades and now they shell out over $1K per Wintel box just so everyone can use an office suite that works.
The coming of Star Office on DoD *nix platforms is a blessing. It's going to save money, give the users an office suite that actually works and extend the life of *nix in the DoD realm. And maybe, it will show folks there is another office suite out there.
As someone who has experienced the other end of this, DISA does have much to say about what applications are used by the DoD. I was DISA's input into the standards base that got us Applix (which we lovingly referred to as Crapplix).
As someone who used to work in a sys admin shop that had to support Applix on the Solaris-based USSTRATCOM top-secret intranet, Star Office is going to be a blessing!
Re:lack of realism in tv shows
on
C.S.I.
·
· Score: 1
Finally! Someone with a clue!
CSI is an entertaining show that at it's worst is better than 90% of the baboon excrement out there. The key here is entertaining. I don't watch it for the reality of it. That is why I have Discovery, TLC, et al. I watch it because it entertains me and makes me forget about the 40-odd losers I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis at work.
Oh, and about The Lone Gunmen. It's about time they got their own show. It was a damn good premiere but it was predictable and had errors in it too(why would someone wipe a hard drive then defrag it?). Plus it is nowhere near reality. But it was great fun to watch.
So everone knocking CSI, step back a second and ask yourself why you're watching the One Eyed Monster. If it's for expansion of your mind, you really should turn it off and go read a book.
Let's see.
Caldera OL 2.4: Good, stable system but a bitch to install. RH5: another stable distro that I kept around until V6.0. Good distro. RH6.2: 6.2 pissed me off because all of my kernel compiles would fail the make modules step. Mandrake 7.1: Solved my kernel compilation problems and I was fairly well satisified with it. Mandrake 7.2: Mistake! KDE 1.99 sucked butt. Got the updated GNOME and KDE packages (along with the big laundry list of other rpms) from Mandrake and tried them out. They worked fine except the the damn MenuDrake won't actually change my menus! Ugh! And what's with / needing to be 1GB? And the infamous make module problem is back...
Stability has never been an issue with any of my distros. Compiling has. I prefer to use RPM for the distro specific stuff and compile third party apps like Samba, etc. RPM is nice but there needs to be alot more coordination in the building of packages.
Overall, the best distro for me has been Mandrake 7.1 has has been up and running for about 37 days now.
This is indeed true. Visit http://www.battlestargalactica.com for the full story (it's owned by Richard Hatch, who did the trailer). Also, John Colicos appeared in the trailer. This was not too long before he died.
As of now, the trailer can't be shown because of the copyright problems. All I have heard of it say it was spectacular. The website I mentioned above does have some screen shots, though.
Slashdot Mirror
"...every bomb short of a nuke would be perfectly legal to shoot into a mass of afghan civilians), and the commander giving that order would go completely free under international law."
Um...no. The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) (internationally recognized and codified in US statutes) states that those making the attack must take into consideration proportionality. A commander who orders an attack that kills 50 civilians just to get one terrorist will be punished for failure to adhere to the LOAC.
You do if you you use 9/10 of your page for foisting ads on your readers! I understand ads pay bills but this was beyond absurd!
I've joked about this a few times at work when the (military) instructors I work with discuss the latest in command directed PC nuttiness. They can't use the term cockpit, it's a flight deck. Neither can they say white board or black board. Those are now officially marker boards and chalk boards. I used to joke that we can't use master/slave anymore due to a NAACP lawsuit against the computer industry. Guess it ain't a joke anymore.
Being a child of the 80s, my pick has to be from my formative years. Less Than Zero. Nowhere near the same storyline as the book, but a fine film in its own right.
So I say, let the stampede begin. I'll gladly take the cast offs..
And the bottom line is: I was pleased with it because it was...entertaining.
ST has never been the height of story telling. One of the other posts got it right: it's like junk food. I've never watched ST in any interation to gleen some insight into myself, humanity or the dog for that matter. I've watched it because I wanted to be entertained. I like the fights, the ships, the special effects, the characters, et al.
Like anything else, it's been a mixed bag. Occasionally the writers would hit on all cylinders and I would come away thinking, "Shit, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout." Yesterdays Enterprise and First Contact come to mind. There have been times I have thought "Jesus, Joseph and Mary! What the hell were those clowns thinking?" This would sum up most of the first season of TNG. But most times ST fell into the "That was pretty good. What's on now?" category. Even so, most of ST's average episodes are better than 95% of the stuff on TV anyway.
With that said, I'd give Nemesis a 3.75 out of 5. It's above Insurrection and Generations but not quite up to First Contact. I think Logan did a damn good job with what he had to work with (15 years of continuity can be a bit constraining) and acheived a good balance between the action and the character developement. The little tips of the hat to previous Treks in all forms were nice too (Tholian and Dominion War references, USS Archer listed on stellar map, Janeway character making a cameo). However, they should have killed Data outright (saw the "We better have a replacement in case there is a ST-11" plot turn coming two sectors away) and they could have revealed a bit less of the Shinzan's plot so early in the movie.
I recommend going to see it...if you want to be entertained. If you want hard sci-fi, probing questions and insight into what makes the world spin, go see an arthouse flick or read a book. Better yet quit yer bitching, get off your lazy ass and write one yourself.
Someone else has this problem too? And I thought it was just the hayseeds running this chickenshit UPN station here in Charleston that was doing it. I'm not alone!!!!
Back when TNG was winding down, I read a lot of the same stuff. Sniping and nitpicking about how bad the series had gotten, how the endings seemed rushed, etc. To a point, some of it was true. Remember that episode where almost everyone devolved? Unfortunately, I do. Now I read posts holding TNG up as the standard for the others in the franchise. I have to disagree.
TNG was just like any other Trek spin-off. It started out crappy, found its legs then ran its course and ended just shy of wearing out its welcome. The first season reeked. Remember the male crew members in skirts in the background? How about the rehashes of old original series plots? TNG didn't get truly good until the third season. Same goes for DS9 and to a lesser extent Voyager.
As for the continuity, anyone read the "Nitpickers Guide To
Maybe it's time for the franchise to call it quits. Who knows? Personally, I'd just fire Berman and Braga and hire the folks who write the novels to do the show. Regardless, I'm going to continue to watch, let my opionions be known over at StarTrek.com and not worry about it much.
You and me both. Old tables maybe?
With the new X installed, works like a champ. Looks good too. Wonder if they fixed the typo though...
A friend of mine has been wanting to jump into Linux but, being a Windows trained type, has been hunting a distro that would flatten the learning curve somewhat. All this lead me to installing Lycoris on a Dell GX240. Couple of problems were encounterd:
- The standard install would not give me a Next button after asking about my video card settings. Had to run the Safe install.
- Once it was up and running, only got 8-bit color. The included X version is 4.0 and the Rage Pro Ultra in the Dell is not supported. Had to manually upgrade to 4.2.
- Found a typo in one of their config files. First time I have ever run into that!
So although it my flatten the learning curve, it still has some issues that need to be resolved. It's got promise, let's hope they can make it happen.
So if Sun sells Star Office with a decent manual AND they can sell it for less than $100 AND I get both Linux and Winblows versions for the bucks, I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'll be switching over to OpenOffice.
Hope some of the Sun folks are reading this...
I find it interesting that USA Today printed an anti-M$ letter in today's edition. Granted, the user evidently hasn't got much of a clue about how viruses work, but the disgruntled chord is still there.
In the past I too have bought prebuilt systems and within 2 minutes of powering up began reinstalling the OS to my liking. But the majority of computer users in the world are not like us. The majority falls into two groups. One buys the more-awful-than-Dell $499 E-Machines at Best Buy and does nothing but install games, surf the internet and spend way too much time in the AOL dwarf tossing chat room. The other (usually made up of the same people) schlep their way to work everyday where they use a way-behind-the-bleeding-edge workstation covered in pictures of pets and spilt cola. These are the groups that Dell was after with their prebuilt Linux boxes that sold like Yugos.
What it all boils down to is support from us. When they finally replace your Commodore PC 10 (now there's a reference) at work, tell them to buy you a Linux workstation. And when you get it, load up Netscape 6.1, Star Office 5.2 and all the other good Linux apps, most of which you actually paid for. When the rest of the unenlightened masses see that Linux ain't so bad, point them to the nearest retailer and wave the green flag. Simply vote for choice and change with your wallet.
Come on people. If we want Linux to truly dethrone M$, we're going to actually have to spend some money! Why is Dell halting Linux installs on their consumer desktops? Because no one bought them. What's the point of forking out $1700 for a computer from Dell with RH7 preinstallted when you can rebuild that 2 year old one and throw your downloaded copy on it? Face it, Dell can't continue throwing money, people and time into products that no one is buying. That's Business Management 101, braniac. Why is Loki going under? Same reason. They invest resources into products that only a few buy and the masses copy!
So get off your penny pinching asses, take some of that cash you saved by using a "free" OS and support the revolution by actually buying Linux-based apps.
I worked for USSTRATCOM ( http://www.stratcom.mil ) until November 2000. Their standard for office automation on their top-secret level Solaris-based intranet is Applix 4.x. We lovingly referred to it as Crapplix because that is what is was. A tremendous resource hog whose administration was a nightmare and reliabilty was just south of atrocious. But it was the DoD standard so we used it. I tried to get Star Office accepted but because it was not the standard, the head-shed would not even consider it.
Because Applix was so bad, the 1,000+ users of the network banded together and force the IT managers order the purchase 100 Intel-based workstations (with plans for up to 300 more) with NT4.0 for no other reason than to use MS Office. Your tax dollars at work, folks. USSTRATCOM has a contract with Sun for the servers and workstations that includes upgrades and now they shell out over $1K per Wintel box just so everyone can use an office suite that works.
The coming of Star Office on DoD *nix platforms is a blessing. It's going to save money, give the users an office suite that actually works and extend the life of *nix in the DoD realm. And maybe, it will show folks there is another office suite out there.
Let me mod myself here. Change "I was DISA's input..." to "It was DISA's input..."
As someone who used to work in a sys admin shop that had to support Applix on the Solaris-based USSTRATCOM top-secret intranet, Star Office is going to be a blessing!
CSI is an entertaining show that at it's worst is better than 90% of the baboon excrement out there. The key here is entertaining. I don't watch it for the reality of it. That is why I have Discovery, TLC, et al. I watch it because it entertains me and makes me forget about the 40-odd losers I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis at work.
Oh, and about The Lone Gunmen. It's about time they got their own show. It was a damn good premiere but it was predictable and had errors in it too(why would someone wipe a hard drive then defrag it?). Plus it is nowhere near reality. But it was great fun to watch.
So everone knocking CSI, step back a second and ask yourself why you're watching the One Eyed Monster. If it's for expansion of your mind, you really should turn it off and go read a book.
Let's see. Caldera OL 2.4: Good, stable system but a bitch to install. RH5: another stable distro that I kept around until V6.0. Good distro. RH6.2: 6.2 pissed me off because all of my kernel compiles would fail the make modules step. Mandrake 7.1: Solved my kernel compilation problems and I was fairly well satisified with it. Mandrake 7.2: Mistake! KDE 1.99 sucked butt. Got the updated GNOME and KDE packages (along with the big laundry list of other rpms) from Mandrake and tried them out. They worked fine except the the damn MenuDrake won't actually change my menus! Ugh! And what's with / needing to be 1GB? And the infamous make module problem is back... Stability has never been an issue with any of my distros. Compiling has. I prefer to use RPM for the distro specific stuff and compile third party apps like Samba, etc. RPM is nice but there needs to be alot more coordination in the building of packages. Overall, the best distro for me has been Mandrake 7.1 has has been up and running for about 37 days now.
This is indeed true. Visit http://www.battlestargalactica.com for the full story (it's owned by Richard Hatch, who did the trailer). Also, John Colicos appeared in the trailer. This was not too long before he died. As of now, the trailer can't be shown because of the copyright problems. All I have heard of it say it was spectacular. The website I mentioned above does have some screen shots, though.