The arguments this turkey made wouldn't fool a 3 year old. He clearly has self-esteem issues if the best job he thinks he can get is prostituting himself for Microsoft and making a fool of himself in the process.
It just goes to show you that when money talks it's usually speaking bullshit.
Unlike so many here I don't hate Microsoft. My hatred is contingent upon their ability to cause problems, which is quickly dimminishing. Their goose is pretty much cooked. If this is the best their zillion dollar FUD machine can muster then I almost feel sorry for them.
There is a very specific reason why I use KDE, because I can customize it to behave exactly the way I want it to. As a result my default desktop is very usable. I don't have the preferences of the developers shoved up my nose. Gnome on the other hand is nowhere near as configurable. Not only that, but the default config (at least on Redhat/Fedora) is just plain funky. The developers have clearly spent WAY too much time using macs, to the point that they seem to assume that EVERYONE is either a mac user or wishes they were one. I'm responsible for setting up and configuring Linux systems where I work. I have customization scripts that I run after the initial install the do various things. One of those things is to make KDE the default desktop and to install a default configuration for KDE into/etc/skel that mimics the Windows user interface. The plastik theme in the recent versions of KDE looks and works better than windows itself IMHO. I've never had anyone complain about their system being configured in this way.
I'm shocked that any distribution would actually push Gnome over KDE. I've always thought it was silly of Redhat to do it. Not that I noticed really since all of KDE is also included when you do a complete install, which is what I almost always do. The only reason I can think of to push Gnome is that dumbing things down and limiting the ability of users to customize the interface limits Redhat's support costs. Both Redhat and Novell are basing their business model off of selling support for the OS. The fewer support calls they get, the more money they make in the end.
If the Gnome guys would learn a thing or two from KDE and make it equally configurable then I quite frankly wouldn't have a preference. But until Gnome gets fixed I'll stick to KDE.
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. Therefore there are three questions that must be asked:
1) Which senators and congressmen submitted this bill for consideration?
2) When are they up for reelection?
3) Where do I send a check to support their opponents?
Bitching and moaning about Hollywood trying to pull crap like this is all fine and good, but unless we PUNISH their accomplices in government, this kind of crap will just keep going and going.
So the next time these turkeys are up for election, start sending their opponents money. When you send them the money, make sure you include a little note explaining exactly WHY you're sending them money. While you're at it, send the turkey a note as well telling him that you've just sent his opponent money and why.
This isn't limited to just the people from the districts in question. I live in Arizona, but there is nothing to stop me from making a contribution to a candidate in another state. I can't take part in the official election, but I can sure as hell vote with my money. Imagine if one of the turkeys who tried to pull this crap got tens of thousands of letters from accross the country that all said the same thing: "I gave your opponent X dollars because you supported the Analog Hole bill" Meanwhile their opponents get tens of thousands of letters saying "I'm giving you X dollars because your opponent supported the Analog Hole bill, don't make the mistake he did."
Freedom is precious and fragile. It is also one of the few things in this world outside of family worth dying for. You can either fight for your freedom, or you can sit by idly and hope that things don't get any worse. Hope that someone else will pick up the tab for your liberty. Hope that the ever-present forces that seek to deny you your freedom will go away. Well guess what, they won't. If you're not fighting against them then you're actively helping them. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and it is a price that we all must pay each and every day. If you're not fighting for your freedom then you've already forfeited it.
I'm not surprised that the circulation of most newspapers is going down. What is happening is that there are too many liberal reporters and editors chasing after too few liberal readers. It isn't that anyone is intentionally "punishing" these papers, rather this is simply supply and demand. The invisible hand strikes again. There is less demand for liberal news and more demand for conservative news. Case in point, the circulation boom currently being enjoyed by the Washington Times:
Another example is Fox news, which currently pulls more viewers than CNN and MSNBC put together. If this were a technology issue created by the internet, you wouldn't be seeing a shift from liberal television outlets to a conservative one, instead you'd see an overall shift AWAY from television as a news source.
The premiere liberal radio network, Air America, is also doing badly. In Washington DC its listener share is actually so low that it can't even be detected according to the Arbitron rating service:
The issue here is not one of technology, but ideology. This country is, day by day, moving further and further away from the left and closer to the right. A conservative person is not going to choose news presented with a liberal bent to it when the same information is available with a conservative bent. The liberal media is basically selling the ideological equivalent of buggy whips. Each year there are fewer and fewer customers to sell their wares to. As a consequence the entire liberal media industry is suffering as a whole. The plight of the liberal newspaper business is just one aspect of this.
I understand all too well. This is just another pissing contest between the pinheads on the religious right and the dipshits on the athiest left. Science and education have nothing to do with it except to the degree to which they serve as their battleground. Evolution is the best explanation we have at this point for how and why life developed as it did. When evolution and intelligent design are presented side by side as alternate explanations, intelligent design more or less falls flat on its face. Any sane person with half a brain, when presented with the raw evidence, will naturally conclude that evolution is the better explanation. But even if they don't, so what? Does it matter whether a future insurance salesman from Wichita understands biology? He or she can believe that the teenage mutant ninja turtles created everything and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference because an insurance salesman from Wichita doesn't do scientific research and is not listened to by anyone who does. It would be nice if this person's understanding of things was in line with the facts, but at the end of the day it just doesn't matter. Such a person is likely to believe all sorts of bullshit regardless of what they are taught. The intelligent design crowd is of course made up of a bunch of pinheaded religious extremists who've learned that they can't sell the public on biblical creationism. So they've pulled this bullshit out of their arses. It doesn't matter though because our future scientists are quite frankly not going to fall for it. The truth here is that the left and the right would both love to be able to brainwash our children with their particular brand of bullshit. Your religious republicans would cum in their pants if they could enforce a curriculum where homosexuals were villified, sex itself was presented as something shameful, and the universe was created in 7 days. The communist democrats would likewise pop their cookies if they could enforce a curriculum where america itself was vilified, the UN was presented as the ultimate authority in a worldwide nanny state, and religion was nothing more than false consciousness. The evolution/ID conflict is nothing more than a minor skirmish between two larger groups who are equally despicable. What's sad is that so may people buy into the bullshit from one side or the other and therefore fail to see the conflict for what it is.
If I recall correctly, what Kansas is doing is presenting evolution and intelligent design side by side. There would be cause for concern if they were throwing evolution out and teaching creationism-lite in its stead. But that is not what they are doing. Are you really so afraid that someone might actually believe in something other than evolution that you'd get into a tizzy over schoolchildren hearing about it? The reason why the extremists are throwing such tantrums over this is because it moderates the debate. It prevents the extremists from making it an all or nothing, us vs them issue. Both sides want you to choose their side. They want to remove the middle ground in between. When neither side is chosen, which is the most probable outcome here, both sides lose. Both sides know this and so both are screaming like banshees over it. I personally think it is a very good thing that kids be exposed to both ideas, not because intelligent design is a particularly good theory, but because it might just help them realize that the truth isn't something that you recieve from some authority on high, but rather something that must be personally searched for. If kids were presented with more examples of questions with no clear answers and then told to make up their own minds then maybe more of them would actually think for themselves when it came to questions that actually matter instead of simply believing what they are told.
I personally believe that Joe Pesci is the supreme being and creator of all we see. I share this belief with George Carlin who preys to our lord Pesci on a regular basis. Contrary to fundamentalis
This entire pseudo-debate is getting rather tiresome. What is even more tiresome is the credence people place in it. The issue here isn't one of evolution vs intelligent design, or even evolution vs creationism. The issue is atheism vs christianity, a debate that has about as much relevance to the real world as the question of how many angels will fit on the head of a pin, or whether a falling tree makes a sound when no one is there to hear it. You've got atheists pretending to be advocates of science and christians pretending not to be motivated by religious faith. Both sides know exactly what they other is doing, but they don't dare say so because to do so would shift the debate into an area that the public is not interested in. A debate between two religious faiths, atheism and christianity, isn't going to attract much interest or attention from anyone who isn't already emotionally invested in one side or the other. Not only that, but the entire debate is largely pointless since the position held by both sides is founded upon faith in unprovable ideas. Do the theological aspects of the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland matter to anyone else? No, only the fact that they're killing each other over them. The rest of the world doesn't give a rat's ass about the religious basis for this conflict. The only thing the rest of the world cares about is the fact that people are getting shot, stabbed, bombed, run down in the street, and otherwise maimed and murdered over it. The assholes on both sides use violence to attract attention to a conflict that would never recieve any attention otherwise. This debate is no different. By attempting to interfere with what our children are taught, these assholes have made their own private little war everyone's problem.
So I hereby officially declare shenanigans on this whole sad affair. The athiests and christians have been very dishonest by coaching their squabbles in terms the public would be snookered into taking sides in. By making our schools into a forum for their petty bickering they've undermined the integrity of our educational system and wasted everyone's time. I propose that evolution, intelligent design, creationism, and the belief that the flying spaghetti monster should all be taught side by side along with an in depth discussion on just how full of shit the people trying to peddle each point of view are. Not only will this allow our young scholars to reach their own conclusions about this issue, but it will also provide them with a crucial lesson in just how much they're being lied to from all sides, which is a lesson that some people sadly never learn.
This is nothing but a stupid pissing contest between one group with strong religious beliefs, namely athiests, and another group with equally strong yet contradictory religous beliefs, namely christians. Being a christian does not make someone "anti-science" any more than being an athiest makes someone "pro-science." Both sides are playing word games. The christians say "intelligent design" when they're really arguing for the existence of God, and the athiests say "evolution" when they really mean athiesm. The reason why neither side is being honest when presenting their position is because they know that no one else gives a damn. The entire argument is pointless to anyone with half a brain since anyone with half a brain knows that the question of whether God exists or not quite simply cannot be answered conclusively at this point and may never be answered.
So this is a war of bullshit. Both sides are desperate to convince everyone else that their own bullshit isn't bullshit, and that the bullshit of the other side is even bigger bullshit than it already is. Its just really sad that anyone takes either side seriously. This is like two crazy people arguing about the conversations each has with the voices in their head. There is no right side to take in that kind of a debate. The proper response is to tell both nutjobs to get the hell away from you and leave you alone. Sooner or later that is what the American public will do as well.
Microsoft is saying that because X is true, Y must be false. Well that only works when the two are mutually exclusive. When the two are not then the logic breaks down. In situations like this one, where the two issues are only tangentially related at best, the logic breaks down before it even gets started.
Aquiring the expertise to know how to use computers is a necessary prerequisite to being able to benefit from computers and the software that they run, regardless of whether that software is free or proprietary. Microsoft is correct in stating that these people would not be able to benefit from free software at this point, but then they're no better equipped to be able to benefit from anything Microsoft has to offer either.
Listening to Microsoft when it comes to computer software is like asking Ford or GM what brand of car you should buy.
You want criminals to be able to vote? Let me guess...you're a convicted felon aren't you?
You do realize that felons can petition to have their civil rights restored? At least in the US they can. Whether they can where you live isn't something I have a way of knowing. Someone who did something stupid when they were young and has been a good citizen for the past decade or more shouldn't be excluded from taking part in the political process. Career criminals and those guilty of especially heinous crimes on the other hand most definitely should be excluded.
I really think you've got a very naive understanding of the world. You can't have a democratic institution when it is comprised of entities for whom democracy is anathema. Not only that, but democracy is based upon individuals, not governments. An institution that is structured like a democracy but which is comprised of governments would never be a democracy or even democracy-like. You'd end up with a bureaucracy, in this case one primarily made up of cleptocracies and dictatorships. Giving control of the most powerful tool for freedom since the invention of firearms over to groups that want to stifle freedom is insanity.
The US isn't perfect, but our track record when it comes to human rights is second to none. Ideas like freedom and human rights aren't just far off dreams of a possible future to us, they are a cherished reality that we work each day to protect. The internet is free because it was created by a free people and is maintained by the same. Ensuring that it continues to be free means making sure that criminal dictatorships like North Korea don't have equal say in how it is run.
If other counties set up their own DNS root servers, it would only be for the purpose of censoring what their victims (aka citizens) have access to. By doing so they would be excluding themselves from the rest of the world and ensuring their own future irrelevance.
The only reason why the UN is wanting control of the internet is because the UN is comprised of criminal regimes whose power is being threatened by the freedom that the internet represents. These regimes want the benefits that they believe the internet will bring to them but they don't want the benefits it will bring to their society, namely an increased yearning for freedom and possibly the willingness to fight for it.
This talk of putting the UN in charge didn't start up until after governments like China's started taking steps to censor what their people had access to online. This is nothing more than a ploy on the part of criminal governments to try and put the genie back in the bottle. Well sorry Charlie, but that just isn't going to happen as long as American institutions are in control of it.
My advice to Joe and Dennis is the same advice I would give to anyone looking to spend a significant sum of money on anything: DO RESEARCH BEFOREHAND!!!
Had these two spent a little bit of time researching their options they would have learned which laptops work well with Linux and which wireless cards do as well. Going off half cocked and (even worse) taking advice from clueless sales people is an excellent plan... if you're looking to get a migrane. If, on the other hand, you're hoping to be happy with something that you've purchased, then doing research beforehand is the most effective way of ensuring that you will be.
Who are these masses you speak of, and why are they unwashed? I think that bad personal hygiene is a much bigger problem to an unwashed person than what operating system their computer is running (at least it is to everyone who is downwind of them). I'd recommend they look into getting some soap, shampoo, and deodorant and worry about computers after they've had a shower.
I'll be sure to ask Terpstra for an explanation the next he and I play golf.
Terpstra's articles are nothing more than propaganda based upon exaggeration and half-truths. I couldn't even read the entire set. I gave up about halfway through part two when I came accross the following: "If companies really seek to attract the largest number of potential consumers, why are their practices so restrictive? What commercial arrangements have been made behind closed doors so as to keep Linux out of the public eye?"
Companies aren't looking to attract the largest number of potential customers, they're looking to attract the largest number of PROFITABLE customers. Customers cost money, plain and simple. Therefore it is wise to seek out customers that are going to give a return on the company's investment. There just aren't enough people looking to buy systems with Linux pre-installed right now to justify the opportunity cost associated with catering to them.
There are other problems with this article as well. A non-technical person reading it would assume that there were massive incompatibility problems with Linux, whereas in truth the problems are few and generally very minor. His first example points out that one of the users in his story had a hard time getting various wireless interfaces working. If someone didn't know any better, they might assume that this was indicative of a much larger pattern of difficulty with computers and components in general. The truth is that support for wireless cards is the biggest compatability hurdle right now, but it is an anomaly. No other catagory of device is anywhere near as plagued with problems. Laptops are also more difficult to grapple with than desktop systems. My job is to support Linux and unix for the college of engineering at the 5th largest university in the country. I do Linux installs day in and day out, and I can tell you that I'm not often faced with hardware support problems on desktop systems. Laptops can be more tricky, but even then it is usually the wireless interface and/or the video that represents the sole difficulty. In both cases there is a lot of documentation online that details how to get both working for most systems. There have been a few cases where I couldn't get Linux working, but they are very few and far between.
If I were to read these articles on a message board, I would assume that he was a troll due to the way in which he abuses language. He likes to use the term "compatible" in places where "supported" would be much more appropriate. There are not very many vendors who actually officially support Linux with their devices, but that doesn't mean those devices are necessarily incompatible with Linux. In fact I would argue that of all the myriad hardware devices that Linux supports, virtually none are officially "supported" under Linux by the vendor. I neither care nor worry about whether a device is officially "supported." The only thing that matters to me is whether it will work or not. If the drivers are there and they work then that is all the matters to me, and I support Linux for a living.
In general vendors are very willing to work with the Linux community, at least as far as the creation of drivers are concerned. Providing info on a device to someone who wants to create a driver costs these vendors nothing and may even increase their sales. Official support costs money, which is why it is so uncommon, at least on desktop systems. In the server arena things are much different. Most major server vendors both sell systems with Linux pre-installed, and support Linux on these systems. It is only a matter of time before this trickles down onto the desktop.
In all he paints a very distorted picture of where Linux is on the desktop and utilizes 'tin foil hat' logic to do it. There is no vast conspiracy. I do believe that Microsoft does work to try and prevent Linux from succeeding as a desktop OS, but Microsoft alone does not a conspiracy make.
One thing that I don't think he probably mentions is the fact that Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's all s
Windows is a closed source system. Yet crackers are still able to create malware which lodges itself in the deepest depths of the system. I'm not aware of the cracker community having signed an NDA with Microsoft. If the crackers can create rootkits using publicly available information and the fruits of their own research, then companies like Symantec and NAI, both of which almost definitely have privileged access to the Windows source code, should be more than capable of defending against these attacks. The number one reason why we see so many attacks on windows systems is that there are so many of them out there. Very few are properly secured or run by someone who knows the first thing about how to avoid getting hacked. Most windows systems are run by people for whom computer technology is indistinguishable from magic. Windows therefore represents a cornucopia of low hanging fruit for crackers, ripe for the picking. It would be shockingly amazing if Windows WASN'T the primary focus of their attacks.
Pointing out the popularity of Windows with crackers as further "proof" of closed source software being inherently broken only makes the open source community look bad. Open source has a lot going for it. There is no need to make claims such as this one which are highly questionable on the surface and do not stand up to deeper scrutiny.
Someone's been reading Daily Kos. If you think the left-wing abandoned the democratic party in 1988 then I'd hate to EVER meet the kind of people you're basing your definition of "left wing" off of. I might be forced to practice medicine without a license by performing a retro-active abortion. Luckily I don't think I'll ever be forced into such a position since I avoid Berkeley and there aren't any mental hospitals near where I live.
When exactly is Kos going to get around to launching his plan to destroy the DLC anyway? When is he going to stick it to all those DINO's? All those evil republican wannabe's have sold out the workers and the proletariat and are now working against the coming revolution! They're pandering to the ruling class and perpetuating the false consciousness of bourgeois society! Some, like Howard Dean, have publicly embraced the evils of the christian religion! They shall be slaughtered like the capitalist pigs they are!!! Hey have not heeded the call: Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains![/sarcasm]
Just because there are "Democrats" who are unjustly accused of being communists does not mean that there aren't "Democrats" who most certainly ARE socialists/communists. For every Joe Leiberman there are 4 or 5 Howard Deans and Hillary Clintons. In fact that is the precise reason why the Democratic party has become so anemic, it's been overrun with ignorant loony-left whackjobs whose perception of reality is heavily distorted by the dead-end idiocy that makes up the closest thing they have to a political philosophy.
You are right that most Americans have never really seen a real-life example of european socialists/communists. We have to rely on historical accounts of people like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, etc. If we were to actually come face to face with such a person, I do agree that our reaction would be very negative. I don't think our heads would explode though. I think it is much more likely that the communist's head would explode as a result of shot with a high-powered rifle.
The problem is that as flawed and faulty as the right can be, the left is monumentally worse. Given free reign, the left would soon run this country into the ground. We'd either be a socialist welfare state, or a communist dictatorship. Neither outcome is in any way attractive. The reason why the left represents such a terrible choice is because they keep trying to sell and even force upon the american people the same old policies and agendas that have failed every single time they've ever been tried anywhere. About the only good thing you can say about the policies of the left is that they don't ALWAYS lead to a murderous police state. Sometimes they just lead to economic stagnation and a culture based upon apathy. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. By this metric the left can definitely be labed as insane. The cause of this insanity is adherence and subscription of an ideology whose fundamental flaws are as deep as they are numerous. Any time a set of ideas replaces objective reality as your basis for evaluating the world, you're fucked.
Bush may not be the perfect president, but which president ever was perfect? At the end of the day he's an honest man with relatively good intentions whose outlook on things is based upon common sense rather than brain-dead ideology. Could he be a better president? Sure he could, but just remember that no one bats 1000.
I'm afraid you've been sold an intellectual bill of goods by the left. I'm not telling you this because I'm trying to make you feel wrong. I'm telling you this because it's the truth. I'm not an ideologue. I have no allegiances to any political party or ideology. My only allegiance is to the truth, and the truth is that as bad and as corrupt as the right can be, at the end of the day they're still sane. Their level of corruption has a hard limit on it because they're still rational and are still driven by rational self interest. The left on the other hand is not rational and therefore their destructive potential is far, far greater.
I suspect that you're most likely and educated person whose political consciousness has been shaped by what you learned in college. Well you should know that academia is a bastion of not just the left, but the far left. You've only gotten half the story, if that. If you truly are an intellectually honest person, you'd do well to seek out other points of view, even from people you fundamentally disagree with and may even despise. The reason I'm so aware of the folly of the left is because I've examined their beliefs and found them wanting. The right has its own share of BS as well, but nothing like what the left is addled with.
I don't know where you studied history, but the literacy rate in colonial America was the envy of Europe. Franklin didn't print his almanac, and Samuel Adams didn't distribute his vitriolic firebrand political pamphlets for people who couldn't READ.
You are right that our forefathers did believe in God. America is a christian nation founded upon christian principles. This is a hard fact that leaves the neo-bolshevik nimrods that comprise the modern left in fits (which are regrettably not fatal). The left hates christianity precisely because it is the cornerstone of what they call bourgeois society, the destruction of which is an absolute prerequisite for the introduction of the socialist dystopia they have planned for our future. Care to take a guess at why I would shed not a single solitary tear were all of them to meet a most gruesome end, despite the fact that I myself am not a Christian? I'm not a fan of organized religion, but I'll take it any day of the week over a political and economic pseudo-philosophy that is as clear a proof of the existence of evil in this world as anything I've ever seen.
Don't let the contingent of moonbats here get you down. History will remember them as fools. It is easy to hate them, but pity is a more appropriate attitude. But for the saving grace of common sense and the capacity for logical and critical thought go all of us.
This is like Hasbro or Fisher Price teaming up with Nambla, Ebony magazine teaming up with the KKK, or Oscar Meyer teaming up with PETA.
The people at MySQL-AB must all be suffering from a severe case of asperger's syndrome that is preventing them from understanding how everyone else will view this move.
I'm not sure what MySQL is going to get out of this deal, but whatever it is, it isn't worth the REALLY BAD pr and public ill will that is going to be created.
SCO is boil on the asshole of humanity. There is no excuse for doing business with them. You can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.
It is most definitely NOT illegal to discriminate against someone based upon their qualifications for a particular job. If you, as the employer, determine that possessing a certification in fact makes a candidate less qualified, then you are perfectly within your rights to discard them as a potential hire.
People seem to think that just because discriminating based upon sex, age, color, creed, or religion, are illegal (unless of course the discrimination can be dressed up as "affirmative action"), that all discrimination is somehow forbidden. The only form of discrimination that is actually illegal is discriminating against someone based upon aspects of that person's identity that are not related to their ability to perform the job. So while you can't legally refuse to hire someone because they're bald, you can sure as hell refuse to hire them if they're not qualified. What it means to be qualified can be defined any which way an employer wants as long as they are consistent in the application of this standard. And in fact an employer doesn't even have to be consistent as long as the inconsistency is not due to discrimination based upon race, sex, religion, etc.
I do agree that having a cert tells you that someone wants to be in IT, but so what? I don't give a rat's ass where someone wants to be. I care about whether they have the talent and knowledge it takes to be there, and a certification is a piss poor measurement of both.
Now this doesn't mean I'd refuse to hire someone who has a cert if I were an employer. Certs are, in and of themselves, irrelvant. But I would be very interested to see how much importance the person I was interviewing placed upon them. If someone comes in and emphasizes the fact that they have certs instead of putting the emphasis on what they know and what they can do, then that person's not going to be working for me.
Certs are good for impressing people for whom technology is already sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. For those of us who actually know which way is up techology wise, they're nothing more than resume padding.
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The arguments this turkey made wouldn't fool a 3 year old. He clearly has self-esteem issues if the best job he thinks he can get is prostituting himself for Microsoft and making a fool of himself in the process.
It just goes to show you that when money talks it's usually speaking bullshit.
Unlike so many here I don't hate Microsoft. My hatred is contingent upon their ability to cause problems, which is quickly dimminishing. Their goose is pretty much cooked. If this is the best their zillion dollar FUD machine can muster then I almost feel sorry for them.
Lee
Usability?
/etc/skel that mimics the Windows user interface. The plastik theme in the recent versions of KDE looks and works better than windows itself IMHO. I've never had anyone complain about their system being configured in this way.
There is a very specific reason why I use KDE, because I can customize it to behave exactly the way I want it to. As a result my default desktop is very usable. I don't have the preferences of the developers shoved up my nose. Gnome on the other hand is nowhere near as configurable. Not only that, but the default config (at least on Redhat/Fedora) is just plain funky. The developers have clearly spent WAY too much time using macs, to the point that they seem to assume that EVERYONE is either a mac user or wishes they were one. I'm responsible for setting up and configuring Linux systems where I work. I have customization scripts that I run after the initial install the do various things. One of those things is to make KDE the default desktop and to install a default configuration for KDE into
I'm shocked that any distribution would actually push Gnome over KDE. I've always thought it was silly of Redhat to do it. Not that I noticed really since all of KDE is also included when you do a complete install, which is what I almost always do. The only reason I can think of to push Gnome is that dumbing things down and limiting the ability of users to customize the interface limits Redhat's support costs. Both Redhat and Novell are basing their business model off of selling support for the OS. The fewer support calls they get, the more money they make in the end.
If the Gnome guys would learn a thing or two from KDE and make it equally configurable then I quite frankly wouldn't have a preference. But until Gnome gets fixed I'll stick to KDE.
Lee
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. Therefore there are three questions that must be asked:
1) Which senators and congressmen submitted this bill for consideration?
2) When are they up for reelection?
3) Where do I send a check to support their opponents?
Bitching and moaning about Hollywood trying to pull crap like this is all fine and good, but unless we PUNISH their accomplices in government, this kind of crap will just keep going and going.
So the next time these turkeys are up for election, start sending their opponents money. When you send them the money, make sure you include a little note explaining exactly WHY you're sending them money. While you're at it, send the turkey a note as well telling him that you've just sent his opponent money and why.
This isn't limited to just the people from the districts in question. I live in Arizona, but there is nothing to stop me from making a contribution to a candidate in another state. I can't take part in the official election, but I can sure as hell vote with my money. Imagine if one of the turkeys who tried to pull this crap got tens of thousands of letters from accross the country that all said the same thing: "I gave your opponent X dollars because you supported the Analog Hole bill" Meanwhile their opponents get tens of thousands of letters saying "I'm giving you X dollars because your opponent supported the Analog Hole bill, don't make the mistake he did."
Freedom is precious and fragile. It is also one of the few things in this world outside of family worth dying for. You can either fight for your freedom, or you can sit by idly and hope that things don't get any worse. Hope that someone else will pick up the tab for your liberty. Hope that the ever-present forces that seek to deny you your freedom will go away. Well guess what, they won't. If you're not fighting against them then you're actively helping them. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and it is a price that we all must pay each and every day. If you're not fighting for your freedom then you've already forfeited it.
Lee
If you say so.
The fact that we have "liberal" newspapers to appeal to ideological masses is not a good thing, either for democracy or journalism in general.
Turnabout is fair play.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I'm not surprised that the circulation of most newspapers is going down. What is happening is that there are too many liberal reporters and editors chasing after too few liberal readers. It isn't that anyone is intentionally "punishing" these papers, rather this is simply supply and demand. The invisible hand strikes again. There is less demand for liberal news and more demand for conservative news. Case in point, the circulation boom currently being enjoyed by the Washington Times:
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0 04-07-25-media-mix_x.htm5 .aspI CLE_ID=43120
I CLE_ID=46954
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20050518-120247
Another example is Fox news, which currently pulls more viewers than CNN and MSNBC put together. If this were a technology issue created by the internet, you wouldn't be seeing a shift from liberal television outlets to a conservative one, instead you'd see an overall shift AWAY from television as a news source.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2
http://www.jsonline.com/enter/tvradio/apr03/13329
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART
The premiere liberal radio network, Air America, is also doing badly. In Washington DC its listener share is actually so low that it can't even be detected according to the Arbitron rating service:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART
The issue here is not one of technology, but ideology. This country is, day by day, moving further and further away from the left and closer to the right. A conservative person is not going to choose news presented with a liberal bent to it when the same information is available with a conservative bent. The liberal media is basically selling the ideological equivalent of buggy whips. Each year there are fewer and fewer customers to sell their wares to. As a consequence the entire liberal media industry is suffering as a whole. The plight of the liberal newspaper business is just one aspect of this.
Lee
I understand all too well. This is just another pissing contest between the pinheads on the religious right and the dipshits on the athiest left. Science and education have nothing to do with it except to the degree to which they serve as their battleground. Evolution is the best explanation we have at this point for how and why life developed as it did. When evolution and intelligent design are presented side by side as alternate explanations, intelligent design more or less falls flat on its face. Any sane person with half a brain, when presented with the raw evidence, will naturally conclude that evolution is the better explanation. But even if they don't, so what? Does it matter whether a future insurance salesman from Wichita understands biology? He or she can believe that the teenage mutant ninja turtles created everything and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference because an insurance salesman from Wichita doesn't do scientific research and is not listened to by anyone who does. It would be nice if this person's understanding of things was in line with the facts, but at the end of the day it just doesn't matter. Such a person is likely to believe all sorts of bullshit regardless of what they are taught. The intelligent design crowd is of course made up of a bunch of pinheaded religious extremists who've learned that they can't sell the public on biblical creationism. So they've pulled this bullshit out of their arses. It doesn't matter though because our future scientists are quite frankly not going to fall for it. The truth here is that the left and the right would both love to be able to brainwash our children with their particular brand of bullshit. Your religious republicans would cum in their pants if they could enforce a curriculum where homosexuals were villified, sex itself was presented as something shameful, and the universe was created in 7 days. The communist democrats would likewise pop their cookies if they could enforce a curriculum where america itself was vilified, the UN was presented as the ultimate authority in a worldwide nanny state, and religion was nothing more than false consciousness. The evolution/ID conflict is nothing more than a minor skirmish between two larger groups who are equally despicable. What's sad is that so may people buy into the bullshit from one side or the other and therefore fail to see the conflict for what it is.
If I recall correctly, what Kansas is doing is presenting evolution and intelligent design side by side. There would be cause for concern if they were throwing evolution out and teaching creationism-lite in its stead. But that is not what they are doing. Are you really so afraid that someone might actually believe in something other than evolution that you'd get into a tizzy over schoolchildren hearing about it? The reason why the extremists are throwing such tantrums over this is because it moderates the debate. It prevents the extremists from making it an all or nothing, us vs them issue. Both sides want you to choose their side. They want to remove the middle ground in between. When neither side is chosen, which is the most probable outcome here, both sides lose. Both sides know this and so both are screaming like banshees over it. I personally think it is a very good thing that kids be exposed to both ideas, not because intelligent design is a particularly good theory, but because it might just help them realize that the truth isn't something that you recieve from some authority on high, but rather something that must be personally searched for. If kids were presented with more examples of questions with no clear answers and then told to make up their own minds then maybe more of them would actually think for themselves when it came to questions that actually matter instead of simply believing what they are told.
I personally believe that Joe Pesci is the supreme being and creator of all we see. I share this belief with George Carlin who preys to our lord Pesci on a regular basis. Contrary to fundamentalis
This entire pseudo-debate is getting rather tiresome. What is even more tiresome is the credence people place in it. The issue here isn't one of evolution vs intelligent design, or even evolution vs creationism. The issue is atheism vs christianity, a debate that has about as much relevance to the real world as the question of how many angels will fit on the head of a pin, or whether a falling tree makes a sound when no one is there to hear it. You've got atheists pretending to be advocates of science and christians pretending not to be motivated by religious faith. Both sides know exactly what they other is doing, but they don't dare say so because to do so would shift the debate into an area that the public is not interested in. A debate between two religious faiths, atheism and christianity, isn't going to attract much interest or attention from anyone who isn't already emotionally invested in one side or the other. Not only that, but the entire debate is largely pointless since the position held by both sides is founded upon faith in unprovable ideas. Do the theological aspects of the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland matter to anyone else? No, only the fact that they're killing each other over them. The rest of the world doesn't give a rat's ass about the religious basis for this conflict. The only thing the rest of the world cares about is the fact that people are getting shot, stabbed, bombed, run down in the street, and otherwise maimed and murdered over it. The assholes on both sides use violence to attract attention to a conflict that would never recieve any attention otherwise. This debate is no different. By attempting to interfere with what our children are taught, these assholes have made their own private little war everyone's problem.
So I hereby officially declare shenanigans on this whole sad affair. The athiests and christians have been very dishonest by coaching their squabbles in terms the public would be snookered into taking sides in. By making our schools into a forum for their petty bickering they've undermined the integrity of our educational system and wasted everyone's time. I propose that evolution, intelligent design, creationism, and the belief that the flying spaghetti monster should all be taught side by side along with an in depth discussion on just how full of shit the people trying to peddle each point of view are. Not only will this allow our young scholars to reach their own conclusions about this issue, but it will also provide them with a crucial lesson in just how much they're being lied to from all sides, which is a lesson that some people sadly never learn.
Lee
This is nothing but a stupid pissing contest between one group with strong religious beliefs, namely athiests, and another group with equally strong yet contradictory religous beliefs, namely christians. Being a christian does not make someone "anti-science" any more than being an athiest makes someone "pro-science." Both sides are playing word games. The christians say "intelligent design" when they're really arguing for the existence of God, and the athiests say "evolution" when they really mean athiesm. The reason why neither side is being honest when presenting their position is because they know that no one else gives a damn. The entire argument is pointless to anyone with half a brain since anyone with half a brain knows that the question of whether God exists or not quite simply cannot be answered conclusively at this point and may never be answered.
So this is a war of bullshit. Both sides are desperate to convince everyone else that their own bullshit isn't bullshit, and that the bullshit of the other side is even bigger bullshit than it already is. Its just really sad that anyone takes either side seriously. This is like two crazy people arguing about the conversations each has with the voices in their head. There is no right side to take in that kind of a debate. The proper response is to tell both nutjobs to get the hell away from you and leave you alone. Sooner or later that is what the American public will do as well.
Lee
Microsoft is saying that because X is true, Y must be false. Well that only works when the two are mutually exclusive. When the two are not then the logic breaks down. In situations like this one, where the two issues are only tangentially related at best, the logic breaks down before it even gets started.
Aquiring the expertise to know how to use computers is a necessary prerequisite to being able to benefit from computers and the software that they run, regardless of whether that software is free or proprietary. Microsoft is correct in stating that these people would not be able to benefit from free software at this point, but then they're no better equipped to be able to benefit from anything Microsoft has to offer either.
Listening to Microsoft when it comes to computer software is like asking Ford or GM what brand of car you should buy.
Lee
You want criminals to be able to vote? Let me guess...you're a convicted felon aren't you?
You do realize that felons can petition to have their civil rights restored? At least in the US they can. Whether they can where you live isn't something I have a way of knowing. Someone who did something stupid when they were young and has been a good citizen for the past decade or more shouldn't be excluded from taking part in the political process. Career criminals and those guilty of especially heinous crimes on the other hand most definitely should be excluded.
I really think you've got a very naive understanding of the world. You can't have a democratic institution when it is comprised of entities for whom democracy is anathema. Not only that, but democracy is based upon individuals, not governments. An institution that is structured like a democracy but which is comprised of governments would never be a democracy or even democracy-like. You'd end up with a bureaucracy, in this case one primarily made up of cleptocracies and dictatorships. Giving control of the most powerful tool for freedom since the invention of firearms over to groups that want to stifle freedom is insanity.
The US isn't perfect, but our track record when it comes to human rights is second to none. Ideas like freedom and human rights aren't just far off dreams of a possible future to us, they are a cherished reality that we work each day to protect. The internet is free because it was created by a free people and is maintained by the same. Ensuring that it continues to be free means making sure that criminal dictatorships like North Korea don't have equal say in how it is run.
If other counties set up their own DNS root servers, it would only be for the purpose of censoring what their victims (aka citizens) have access to. By doing so they would be excluding themselves from the rest of the world and ensuring their own future irrelevance.
The only reason why the UN is wanting control of the internet is because the UN is comprised of criminal regimes whose power is being threatened by the freedom that the internet represents. These regimes want the benefits that they believe the internet will bring to them but they don't want the benefits it will bring to their society, namely an increased yearning for freedom and possibly the willingness to fight for it.
This talk of putting the UN in charge didn't start up until after governments like China's started taking steps to censor what their people had access to online. This is nothing more than a ploy on the part of criminal governments to try and put the genie back in the bottle. Well sorry Charlie, but that just isn't going to happen as long as American institutions are in control of it.
Lee
My advice to Joe and Dennis is the same advice I would give to anyone looking to spend a significant sum of money on anything: DO RESEARCH BEFOREHAND!!!
Had these two spent a little bit of time researching their options they would have learned which laptops work well with Linux and which wireless cards do as well. Going off half cocked and (even worse) taking advice from clueless sales people is an excellent plan... if you're looking to get a migrane. If, on the other hand, you're hoping to be happy with something that you've purchased, then doing research beforehand is the most effective way of ensuring that you will be.
Who are these masses you speak of, and why are they unwashed? I think that bad personal hygiene is a much bigger problem to an unwashed person than what operating system their computer is running (at least it is to everyone who is downwind of them). I'd recommend they look into getting some soap, shampoo, and deodorant and worry about computers after they've had a shower.
I'll be sure to ask Terpstra for an explanation the next he and I play golf.
Lee
Terpstra's articles are nothing more than propaganda based upon exaggeration and half-truths. I couldn't even read the entire set. I gave up about halfway through part two when I came accross the following:
"If companies really seek to attract the largest number of potential consumers, why are their practices so restrictive? What commercial arrangements have been made behind closed doors so as to keep Linux out of the public eye?"
Companies aren't looking to attract the largest number of potential customers, they're looking to attract the largest number of PROFITABLE customers. Customers cost money, plain and simple. Therefore it is wise to seek out customers that are going to give a return on the company's investment. There just aren't enough people looking to buy systems with Linux pre-installed right now to justify the opportunity cost associated with catering to them.
There are other problems with this article as well. A non-technical person reading it would assume that there were massive incompatibility problems with Linux, whereas in truth the problems are few and generally very minor. His first example points out that one of the users in his story had a hard time getting various wireless interfaces working. If someone didn't know any better, they might assume that this was indicative of a much larger pattern of difficulty with computers and components in general. The truth is that support for wireless cards is the biggest compatability hurdle right now, but it is an anomaly. No other catagory of device is anywhere near as plagued with problems. Laptops are also more difficult to grapple with than desktop systems. My job is to support Linux and unix for the college of engineering at the 5th largest university in the country. I do Linux installs day in and day out, and I can tell you that I'm not often faced with hardware support problems on desktop systems. Laptops can be more tricky, but even then it is usually the wireless interface and/or the video that represents the sole difficulty. In both cases there is a lot of documentation online that details how to get both working for most systems. There have been a few cases where I couldn't get Linux working, but they are very few and far between.
If I were to read these articles on a message board, I would assume that he was a troll due to the way in which he abuses language. He likes to use the term "compatible" in places where "supported" would be much more appropriate. There are not very many vendors who actually officially support Linux with their devices, but that doesn't mean those devices are necessarily incompatible with Linux. In fact I would argue that of all the myriad hardware devices that Linux supports, virtually none are officially "supported" under Linux by the vendor. I neither care nor worry about whether a device is officially "supported." The only thing that matters to me is whether it will work or not. If the drivers are there and they work then that is all the matters to me, and I support Linux for a living.
In general vendors are very willing to work with the Linux community, at least as far as the creation of drivers are concerned. Providing info on a device to someone who wants to create a driver costs these vendors nothing and may even increase their sales. Official support costs money, which is why it is so uncommon, at least on desktop systems. In the server arena things are much different. Most major server vendors both sell systems with Linux pre-installed, and support Linux on these systems. It is only a matter of time before this trickles down onto the desktop.
In all he paints a very distorted picture of where Linux is on the desktop and utilizes 'tin foil hat' logic to do it. There is no vast conspiracy. I do believe that Microsoft does work to try and prevent Linux from succeeding as a desktop OS, but Microsoft alone does not a conspiracy make.
One thing that I don't think he probably mentions is the fact that Best Buy, Circuit City, and Fry's all s
I'll settle for that....
This post is the newest addition to the '$ProductName is dying!!' series.
Collect all ++Quantity!!!
Well my goal is to make babies with Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Alicia Witt, and of course Natalie Portman.
How hard will I have to work do you think? Or will this goal remain just a dream; american, wet, or otherwise?
Windows is a closed source system. Yet crackers are still able to create malware which lodges itself in the deepest depths of the system. I'm not aware of the cracker community having signed an NDA with Microsoft. If the crackers can create rootkits using publicly available information and the fruits of their own research, then companies like Symantec and NAI, both of which almost definitely have privileged access to the Windows source code, should be more than capable of defending against these attacks. The number one reason why we see so many attacks on windows systems is that there are so many of them out there. Very few are properly secured or run by someone who knows the first thing about how to avoid getting hacked. Most windows systems are run by people for whom computer technology is indistinguishable from magic. Windows therefore represents a cornucopia of low hanging fruit for crackers, ripe for the picking. It would be shockingly amazing if Windows WASN'T the primary focus of their attacks.
Pointing out the popularity of Windows with crackers as further "proof" of closed source software being inherently broken only makes the open source community look bad. Open source has a lot going for it. There is no need to make claims such as this one which are highly questionable on the surface and do not stand up to deeper scrutiny.
Lee
Someone's been reading Daily Kos. If you think the left-wing abandoned the democratic party in 1988 then I'd hate to EVER meet the kind of people you're basing your definition of "left wing" off of. I might be forced to practice medicine without a license by performing a retro-active abortion. Luckily I don't think I'll ever be forced into such a position since I avoid Berkeley and there aren't any mental hospitals near where I live.
When exactly is Kos going to get around to launching his plan to destroy the DLC anyway? When is he going to stick it to all those DINO's? All those evil republican wannabe's have sold out the workers and the proletariat and are now working against the coming revolution! They're pandering to the ruling class and perpetuating the false consciousness of bourgeois society! Some, like Howard Dean, have publicly embraced the evils of the christian religion! They shall be slaughtered like the capitalist pigs they are!!! Hey have not heeded the call: Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains![/sarcasm]
Just because there are "Democrats" who are unjustly accused of being communists does not mean that there aren't "Democrats" who most certainly ARE socialists/communists. For every Joe Leiberman there are 4 or 5 Howard Deans and Hillary Clintons. In fact that is the precise reason why the Democratic party has become so anemic, it's been overrun with ignorant loony-left whackjobs whose perception of reality is heavily distorted by the dead-end idiocy that makes up the closest thing they have to a political philosophy.
You are right that most Americans have never really seen a real-life example of european socialists/communists. We have to rely on historical accounts of people like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, etc. If we were to actually come face to face with such a person, I do agree that our reaction would be very negative. I don't think our heads would explode though. I think it is much more likely that the communist's head would explode as a result of shot with a high-powered rifle.
Lee
The problem is that as flawed and faulty as the right can be, the left is monumentally worse. Given free reign, the left would soon run this country into the ground. We'd either be a socialist welfare state, or a communist dictatorship. Neither outcome is in any way attractive. The reason why the left represents such a terrible choice is because they keep trying to sell and even force upon the american people the same old policies and agendas that have failed every single time they've ever been tried anywhere. About the only good thing you can say about the policies of the left is that they don't ALWAYS lead to a murderous police state. Sometimes they just lead to economic stagnation and a culture based upon apathy. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. By this metric the left can definitely be labed as insane. The cause of this insanity is adherence and subscription of an ideology whose fundamental flaws are as deep as they are numerous. Any time a set of ideas replaces objective reality as your basis for evaluating the world, you're fucked.
Bush may not be the perfect president, but which president ever was perfect? At the end of the day he's an honest man with relatively good intentions whose outlook on things is based upon common sense rather than brain-dead ideology. Could he be a better president? Sure he could, but just remember that no one bats 1000.
I'm afraid you've been sold an intellectual bill of goods by the left. I'm not telling you this because I'm trying to make you feel wrong. I'm telling you this because it's the truth. I'm not an ideologue. I have no allegiances to any political party or ideology. My only allegiance is to the truth, and the truth is that as bad and as corrupt as the right can be, at the end of the day they're still sane. Their level of corruption has a hard limit on it because they're still rational and are still driven by rational self interest. The left on the other hand is not rational and therefore their destructive potential is far, far greater.
I suspect that you're most likely and educated person whose political consciousness has been shaped by what you learned in college. Well you should know that academia is a bastion of not just the left, but the far left. You've only gotten half the story, if that. If you truly are an intellectually honest person, you'd do well to seek out other points of view, even from people you fundamentally disagree with and may even despise. The reason I'm so aware of the folly of the left is because I've examined their beliefs and found them wanting. The right has its own share of BS as well, but nothing like what the left is addled with.
Lee
Too bad EuroPeon slave traders were the middlemen in that transaction.
I don't know where you studied history, but the literacy rate in colonial America was the envy of Europe. Franklin didn't print his almanac, and Samuel Adams didn't distribute his vitriolic firebrand political pamphlets for people who couldn't READ.
You are right that our forefathers did believe in God. America is a christian nation founded upon christian principles. This is a hard fact that leaves the neo-bolshevik nimrods that comprise the modern left in fits (which are regrettably not fatal). The left hates christianity precisely because it is the cornerstone of what they call bourgeois society, the destruction of which is an absolute prerequisite for the introduction of the socialist dystopia they have planned for our future. Care to take a guess at why I would shed not a single solitary tear were all of them to meet a most gruesome end, despite the fact that I myself am not a Christian? I'm not a fan of organized religion, but I'll take it any day of the week over a political and economic pseudo-philosophy that is as clear a proof of the existence of evil in this world as anything I've ever seen.
Don't let the contingent of moonbats here get you down. History will remember them as fools. It is easy to hate them, but pity is a more appropriate attitude. But for the saving grace of common sense and the capacity for logical and critical thought go all of us.
Lee
This is like Hasbro or Fisher Price teaming up with Nambla, Ebony magazine teaming up with the KKK, or Oscar Meyer teaming up with PETA.
The people at MySQL-AB must all be suffering from a severe case of asperger's syndrome that is preventing them from understanding how everyone else will view this move.
I'm not sure what MySQL is going to get out of this deal, but whatever it is, it isn't worth the REALLY BAD pr and public ill will that is going to be created.
SCO is boil on the asshole of humanity. There is no excuse for doing business with them. You can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.
Lee
Uhhhhh...what kind of crack are you smoking?
It is most definitely NOT illegal to discriminate against someone based upon their qualifications for a particular job. If you, as the employer, determine that possessing a certification in fact makes a candidate less qualified, then you are perfectly within your rights to discard them as a potential hire.
People seem to think that just because discriminating based upon sex, age, color, creed, or religion, are illegal (unless of course the discrimination can be dressed up as "affirmative action"), that all discrimination is somehow forbidden. The only form of discrimination that is actually illegal is discriminating against someone based upon aspects of that person's identity that are not related to their ability to perform the job. So while you can't legally refuse to hire someone because they're bald, you can sure as hell refuse to hire them if they're not qualified. What it means to be qualified can be defined any which way an employer wants as long as they are consistent in the application of this standard. And in fact an employer doesn't even have to be consistent as long as the inconsistency is not due to discrimination based upon race, sex, religion, etc.
I do agree that having a cert tells you that someone wants to be in IT, but so what? I don't give a rat's ass where someone wants to be. I care about whether they have the talent and knowledge it takes to be there, and a certification is a piss poor measurement of both.
Now this doesn't mean I'd refuse to hire someone who has a cert if I were an employer. Certs are, in and of themselves, irrelvant. But I would be very interested to see how much importance the person I was interviewing placed upon them. If someone comes in and emphasizes the fact that they have certs instead of putting the emphasis on what they know and what they can do, then that person's not going to be working for me.
Certs are good for impressing people for whom technology is already sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. For those of us who actually know which way is up techology wise, they're nothing more than resume padding.
How about we just bring the patent system a little closer to SANITY instead?
We don't need lawyers to solve this problem, we need psychiatrists.