Unlike cars, computer software doesn't require high-level physical universe engineering and contrsuction methods. If you wanted to clone a car, you'd end up spending more money doing so than it would cost to buy 1000 other cars just like it. I don't know about you, but I don't have the metallurgical skills to cast an engine block, then machine it out to the correct tolerances. I also could't weld the frame together. Don't forget all the plastic parts that cars use, you'd have to mix the plastics, the mold them and I don't have the machinery to do that either. I might be able to stitch together a car seat cover, but that won't do me much good by itself. Source code on the other hand, can be used by anyone who knows how to write code. All you need are some development tools such as an editor, a compiler, and a debugger. The skills to use them can be easily learned by anyone with a triple digit IQ. Making commercial software open source is about like giving your competitors keys to your development labs. I'm personally sick of all these guys who don't run companies, and who in truth probably aren't out of school yet, preaching the gospel of how everything should be open source. When you make something open-source, you're doing more than publishing code. You're publishing the ideas behind your code. Those ideas are what software companies really want to protect, not the copyright on some file. In Microsoft's case, I think the motives are far more sinister. They want to create and maintain an advantage over other developers who write code for windows. They do more than keep the implementation secret, they keep portions of the api itself secret. This is what happens when one company (or group, or person) has too much power. Everyone acts in their own best interest, or in the best interest of their community. When there are lots of companies which are actively competing with each other, it is in each companies' best interest to cater to the needs of their customers as much as possible. But when there is less competition it becomes more profitable for companies to exploit their customers. Competitors are treated as cancers which must be stomped out of existence. This is what has happened with Microsoft. Lee
The windows registry is Microsoft's way of obscuring the way windows is configured. They don't want people to be able to go in and change things.
This is how MS was able to sell two different versions of NT, server and workstation, with the vital differences being changes to the registry. Had the registry been a collection of simple ascii files this never would have worked.
The registy is just another way for MS to make us bend over.
The market accepts the registry and regedit because MS is a monopoly, not because it ever had any choice. If Microsoft isn't a monopoly then they must have had Forrest Gump heading up their legal team because they sure didn't demonstrate that in court.
I'm a computer professional and I much prefer a CLI over a GUI for most things.
GUI's are good for applications where they create a consistent visual structure to the program. Modern word processors wouldn't exist without GUI's. But having a GUI doesn't mean it has to be crippled by being soley mouse based, or heavily favor use of the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts which allow the user to do things without having to take their hands off the keyboard are wonderful. Using the keyboard is much faster and doesn't require as much hand-eye coordination. A keyboard shortcut which becomes a trained response uses less brain power than controlling the location of a pointer on a screen, it is also faster.
GUI based systems are easier to learn, but they are not easier to use in the long run. In the long run they are more cumbersome.
The place where CLI's really shine are in system administration. I can do things far more quickly using bash or a DOS prompt than I can fiddling with a mouse under KDE, gnome, or windows explorer. Not to mention how much simpler it is to edit a config file than try to argue with some configuration utility. Config files require that the person editing them learn what they control and what values they can contain. Anyone who isn't willing to do that can't be called a "computer professional." Now having a clueless user config utility that can edit the files for you is fine by me. Not everyone wants to edit a file and there is no reason why people should be forced to do so. But don't try to tell me that using such a program is easier for people who know how to edit the file directly.
This is what happens when religious ideology runs amok.
Why anyone would have a problem distributing free-beer software, when that software helps to improve the user base of your product, is beyond me.
I'm in favor of software being open source. I think that in many cases it is the best thing for all parties involved. But that doesn't make the open source model the only viable method for the creation of software or that all software should be open source. The people who create software can do what they want with it. The rest of us have no special rights to what they have created. It is theirs to do with as they please. Debian's attitude is that software is somehow special and belongs to everyone, regardless of who created it. I'm sorry but that just isn't true.
Their attitude is only going to be self destructive. It will decrease the number of new users who start out with debian and likely encourage current users to move to something else.
In the end debian will corner the market on linux users who care more about ideology than they do about real world concerns, like having the software you need to get your job done.
But it won't matter. If debian won't respond to market pressure, there are dozens of other companies and groups creating distributions who will.
The Debian project may be a non-profit organization, but they expect and hope that people will use their product. If they didn't they wouldn't be putting the effort into creating it. They can either give their customer's what they want, or go off and play some other game of their own that no one else cares about but them. Which one they do will be what determines their long term viability.
Had all this happened someplace else, like say DC, Chicago, or San Diego, then nothing would have happened to this kid. He might have been taken aside and given a talking to, or his father might have been asked to do it. But the police would never have gotten involved, and he wouldn't have spent several days in jail. But because he had the misfortune of living in mormon country, redneck mormon country at that, he gets thrown in jail for it.
Anytime you have too much power in the hands of too few, you've got problems such as this.
Abuses due to government corruption and abuses due to corporate greed are equally destructive.
Lee
Not sure what you're talking about...
on
Too Old To Code?
·
· Score: 1
What you're seeing is probably due more to the number of people in your age group who are into computers, than it is to any actual discrimination. For every 40-something coder, there have to be at least fifteen 20-somethings. I can't imagine that someone with 15 or 20 years of experience programming computers would have much of a problem getting a job, unless of course you're talking about a job doing something that they've never done, such as web "programming" or maybe Java. That wasn't what the older guys cut their teeth on, so you won't see too many of them doing it. But that doesn't mean they don't still have jobs doing what they did cut their teeth on. I'm 27 and I've been working on computers, both hardware and software, since I was seven years old. I was already an accomplished technician and programmer by the time I got my first job in high school building and fixing systems. That was almost 13 years ago now. I'm mentioning this because someone made a comment about techs over 40 being clueless. I learned from people who are at least that old now, and the ones I knew were far from clueless. How many techs nowadays know how to do component level repairs rather than just swap boards? Not that you can do much of that nowadays with everything being surface mount and cheap as dirt to boot.
If this is something you got for free along with a magazine I wouldn't be complaining about the licensing terms too much, unless of course this is the ONLY way you can get it.
This is just Microsoft scrambling to do anything to deflect the coming storm. They lost in court and here rather soon they are either going to be broken up, or face heavy sanctions.
If they were to actually release the code in some way, it would be nothing more than a trap. Old scratch may be the craftiest devil of all, but the imps at Microsoft sure give him a run for his money.
At this point in the game I wouldn't do anything other than ignore this. They've been intentionally leaking rumors about opening up the source code for windows for a long time now. Anything they say to the media is soley to manipulate public opinion.
Here you have a guy who studied jounalism in college and landed a job writing about computers. He knows enough about a computer to turn one on and maybe surf the web or use MS-office. But when it comes to true understanding of the technology and issues behind computers, he doesn't have a clue. They need to can this guy and hire people who studied computer science or EE in college. A lack of writing skills is a much easier problem to solve than a lack of understanding about what they are writing about. From the picture of this guy he can't be more than 25. Most people that age, even hackers (hacker != cracker) don't have much in the way of historical perspective. They don't remember the days of DOS or C64's or Apple II's, let alone CP/M. (I'm something of an exception as I began hacking computers from the womb.) They need to get someone about 45-55 who has been working with computers since Bill Gate's was in high school. Someone who has obviously kept up on the latest happenings though.
Don't forget the third reason which is they don't give a rat's ass if it is wrong. Morality is a concept that is rarely given more than lip service by most people. As for "getting caught," what exactly do you think Metallica's lawyers are going to be able to do to 350,000 individuals? I'll tell you what, a legalistic rendition of "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!!" I'm sorry, but I'm just not afraid of lawyers. Metallica is trying to scare people but in the end it just won't work. They might find a few dozen people to make examples out of, people who run napster from a high bandwith connection and are ALWAYS online. But for 99.999% of the people listed in the lawsuit, nothing will happen at all. This is what makes this suit more humorous than anything else.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, anything but that! I'd rather see Kato Kaelin dressed up as a kid than see Jake play Ender. Or Mcauly Culkin (who's what, 19 now?)
Get the kid from the Sixth sense. Jake Lloyd can't act any better than Mark Hammil. I'm sure Jake is a nice kid, but hey you've got to have some talent, just being nice won't cut it.
The fact that he wants to play Ender scares me and puts serious doubts into my mind as to how good the movie could ever be. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Jake, I just don't think he can act. Maybe, just maybe he can learn, in which case if he can do the part let him have it. But if he can't learn then give the part to someone who can.
Yeah baby!! I only hope they do it right. Sadly they probably won't. Get ready for a replay of Phantom Menace with a kid at the joystick saving the universe. What I'd do if I could make it into a movie would be to tell the story the way Card did in his book. Not dumbing down for mindless ticket buyers, no trying to sell it as a kids movie for the merchandising profits. I'm not exactly sure how I'd make the movie, but it wouldn't be a mindless action flick, thats for sure.
Flamebait? I guess someone out there has a distaste for democracy.
All the moderation system here does is encourage people to post popular opinions, to toe the line like good little germans. It doesn't discourage anyone from posting trolls or spam or otherwise goofing off. The people who like doing those things don't give a rat's ass about their karma level, just like the P-Killers on Ultima Online. Instead the system creates a situation where people are more likely to post what they think other people will like hearing instead of what they themselves truly believe. This kind of behaviour, when taken just a little farther, starts to resemble that of a cult. I don't think slashdot is a cult and I certainly don't want to see it become one.
If someone doesn't agree with me, why can't they post something to refute what I said instead of marking my post as if it were a troll? A genuine response would be welcomed. But instead some coward marks my post as flamebait because he or she can't refute what I've said.
So what are you, an OSA agent? You certainly sound like someone working for the cult to me. No the best thing slashdot can do is give the cult the finger. That is the very best thing anyone can do because it forces the cult to spend time and money attacking you. If everyone gave them the finger they simply wouldn't have the resources to mount a sustained attack, they would collapse.
In case you're not an OSA agent and don't know what one is, OSA stands for Office of Special Affairs. It is the intelligence and legal terrorism division of the "church." OSA used to be called the GO, or Guardian's Office. But that was before the division got busted in the late 70's for spying on various government agencies. Many people, including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison over that business.
I'm VERY pro gun. The reasons why aren't important to this discussion however. Obviously I have no problem with children visiting sites for gun makers or the NRA.
But even so I have a real problem with AOL, or anyone else for that matter, hiding the other side of the story. I might not agree with the anti-gun groups, but that doesn't mean they should be silenced. Only through open discussion of all points of view can the best approximation of the truth be found. Censorship ammounts to one thing, preventing young people from thinking for themselves. If you control a person's access to information, you literally control the kinds of things they think about and therefore what they think. In most contexts this is simply called brainwashing. But when children are the subjects our society uses a cute euphemism and calls the process "raising" them. What is truly sad is that the adults of today do the same thing to their children that was done to them. When I think about these things I can get pretty depressed. Luckily there are sites like this one or peacefire.org or allaboutsex.org that help restore my faith in humanity.
How much crime there is in an area has more to do with how well people protect themselves than it does with how many police are roaming around.
Police are armed historians. They do a very good job of coming in after the crime has been committed and making detailed reports of exactly what happened. Depending on the situation they may even arrest someone. But arresting someone after the fact is hardly a way to stop crime.
Crime stops when people defend themselves and their property from criminals. There are states like Massachusetts(sp?) where if someone breaks into your home and you kill the bastard, you'll rot in prison. What does that give the criminals? A license to break into your house and rob your or do violence to you because they know you won't defend yourself.
I'm lucky that I live in Arizona where nonsense like that gets thrown out of the state legislature with prejudice. Here you can carry a gun in public as long as it is not concealed. Getting a concealed carry permit isn't difficult either. Other than the hot weather, this is a great place to live if you believe in freedom and the right of people to defend themselves and their liberty.
I don't usually rant like this, but the very idea that police prevent crime is ludicrous to me. They can be very effective in finding the criminal after the fact and collecting evidence to lead to his or her eventual incarceration. Criminals don't do what they do with the idea the'll get caught. They do it and plan on getting away. If you don't think you'll get caught, the cops aren't exactly a deterrant. A deterrant is a would-be victim unwilling to take any crap and with no reservations about putting holes in the criminal.
Anti-defense nuts can just move on, nothing you say in response is going to change my mind. I've heard it all before and yes, I did listen. I think things like gun control are bad because I've been around long enough to understand human nature. Gun control is people control because as George Washington said, "Guns are the people's liberty's teeth."
Used a PC, I build them and I develop software on them. I've been using PCs since Reagan was in his first term.
Major system instability due to device drivers? Have YOU ever used a PC? If you've got some new fangled device that just came out last month, then you might have driver problems, which get solved as updated drivers get released. Only people who buy bleeding edge stuff get bit by this though. Macs are the same way. You don't see as many problems because few people buy 3rd party components or cards for their mac systems, but when they do the driver issues are there just as much as they are with PC's, not that they are that much of a problem anyway.
I've used both Macs and PC's and I have to tell you that neither one is any more stable than the other. The macs where I am crash just as often as the PC's.
The higher the air pressure, the higher the temperature at which water boils. The lower the air pressure, the lower the temperature at which it boils. Therefore the relationship is directly proportional, not inversely.
I can't begin to describe how much that article irritated me with its lack of insight. Linux isn't unix. Unix fragmented largely because it stopped being open source. Also vendors customized it for their hardware. Linux is open source and it is not tied to any particular hardware. Thus any changes that one group or company makes to the kernel is available to anyone. Changes to the kernel aren't really the issue however. Where the potential problems lie is in differences in the istallations. Where they keep config files, what libraries they have and what version these are. These are the things that can lead to binary incompatibilities. This is something of a problem, but it is not a true fork. Right now redhat is the dominant distribution according to market share. So you are more likely to see a product come out for redhat first than for other distributions. Where this will go in the future is hard to predict, but I'll try anyway. I think that the number of distributions will shrink in the future, or at least the number that anyone actually uses. Those distributions that are remaining in common use will be the ones that vendors will have to address when writing software. If you've got 2-4 distributions that make up 90% of the market, well "porting" to each of these and making a separate binary available for each is not a big deal. Then of course it is possible that some kind of standard that companies like redhat are actually willing to adhere to gets developed, making most of the incompatibilities disappear. I think the first scenario is far more likely.
As for the article, I one of the least insightful things in it was the comment by one "consultant" who said that if unix hadn't been fragmented, windows might never have gained dominance on the desktop. Unix has trickled down from minicomputers and mainframes to microcomputers. Windows on the other hand is trying to move up from microcomputers to servers and other mid-range systems. Windows started out on the desktop, it was developed there, and it is cheap. It is designed to do the things that home and business users need a desktop computer to do. Unix on the other hand is not cheap. At least not commercial versions which were the only ones available when windows first appeared. Why would the average user be willing to pay several hundred dollars for a copy of SCO when he or she can just use dos or windows and get the job done for less? It wasn't incompatibility between versions of unix for different hardware platforms that led to Window's dominance. It was the fact that unix wasn't even a competitor to windows in the first place. It makes me wonder where the hell these people went to school.
I don't know what they were thinking when they made this movie. The thing that irritated me the most is how it was a collection of one emergency after another. Not to mention the fact that one crew of astronauts chose to stand and watch as a tornado began forming right in front of them. One even asked "are you getting all this?" That crew was clearly an evolutionary dead end because their survival instincts didn't include important skills like RUNNING THE F*#K AWAY! Then of course there was the scene where the astronauts are trying to get out of their ship and commandeer an orbiting satellite. I won't go into the several severe flaws in the physics behind what they were doing, I'm sure others have already covered that. But I will bitch about how I had to watch this woman's overacted reaction to her husband dying. I will mention that in space, liquid doesn't turn to ice, it evaporates. The temperature at which water boils is directly proportional to air pressure. No air pressure means that water boils at very low temperatures. The same would go for any liquid. Also the human body tends to explode rather gruesomely when exposed to a vacuuum, it doesn't turn into an ice-cicle.
Did anyone catch the make-up that Gary Sinise was wearing? He looked like a New Orleans drag queen.
The movie _could_ have been good if it had a better basis for its story and it had been better written. I swear, I could make a movie that's ten times better than that thing with a hangover.
The movie ammounts to a bad remake of 2001 with way too much drama thrown in. The one-after-another emergencies were there to stretch 120 minutes of a plot that couldn't realistically fill up the screen for more than half an hour.
"pornography -> sex. You see, the degradation of moral character is the CAUSE of these problems"
Porn does lead to sex, that much is true. But why sex is supposed to be a problem... I just can't grasp. Sex is good. Sex is healthy. Sex is... well, ordinary. A problem, especially a social problem, it is not.
As for it leading to a character problem, I covered that in my earlier post.
"This severely addicted group -- which Cooper dubbed the Cybersex Compulsives --is characterized by both spending more than 11 hours a week on sex sites and scoring highly on a standard psychological scale of sexually compulsive behavior."
I have a hard time believing that people are made into sex fiends by online porn or cybersex. Instead I think that some people have a problem, or perhaps a tendency to develop a problem, and that the online sexual material is simply how that problem has manifested itself.
Some people have an addictive personality. Whether it be gambling, drugs, alcohol, or what have you, they latch on to it and unless they get help, it destroys them. This is sad, but a true fact of life. Luckily, most people don't have this tendency.
I'm not a big fan of porn. I love the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and think that Victoria's secret could probably make more money if they dropped the clothes and just sold their catalog. But real hard core porn I find distasteful. What was interesting and exciting when I was 8 or 9 seems reall rather pointless now that I'm 27. I've spent some time on IRC in sex channels and in chat rooms and so forth. I've had a few phone sex encounters in my time. But these aren't things I even do anymore. I'd rather go out and spend time with a woman in real life than fool around with someone I'll never meet online. I'm bringing all this up to make the point that online (and offline) porn hasn't warped my mind or made me into a sex fiend. Do I have some kind of special strength of character or psychological makeup that renders me immune to the effects? I doubt it. Instead I think it is more a case of there being no effects to resist.
If you're going to complain about the problems you feel are associated with pornography or cybersex, make sure you are truly identifying what the true cause is, and what is merely a symptom.
I have a quote for you:
"The times are bad, children don't obey their parents and everyone is writing a book."
That could be a very interesting reflection on our current culture. It would be if it weren't for the fact that was said by Cicero before the birth of christ.
Our society isn't having any problems that didn't exist in every other society that ever existed. Human nature hasn't changed significantly in at least ten thousand years. Take the time to read Decline and fall of the Roman empire by Edward Gibbon. It's eerie how many of our so called "modern problems" were also faced by the Romans. But its like they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
As for correllations between things, are you aware that there is a strong relationship between ice cream sales, and the incidence of rape? Well there is. Of course ice cream doesn't cause rape. There is no cause and effect relationship between those two things. When it is warm outside and people are out and about doing things, places like Baskin Robins are going to sell more ice cream. Roughly 50% of these people who are out doing things are going to be women. So of course there is an increased likelyhood that some of them might get raped. You don't hear people blaming Baskin Robins when a girl gets attacked though.
You say that our families are breaking down. Well maybe you're right. In fact I think you are. But the reason this is happening has nothing to do with pornography or its acceptance, and everything to do with women's lib. Now I'm not bashing women's lib, women are at least equal to men. The fact that I'm male doesn't make me sexist. I'm merely pointing out that women aren't slaves to their husbands any longer. If they aren't happy being married, they aren't stuck in the situation. They make their own money and can support themselves most of the time. In the past a woman was dependent on her husband and so divorce was simply not an option unless the situation were truly desperate. People stayed married even though they weren't happy together. This is no longer the case. So yes, families are being split up and this makes things harder for many kids growing up today. But the cause has nothing to do with erotic material and everything to do with the emancipation of the fairer sex. But some religious leaders dislike erotic material for reasons they can't sell to most people, and so they try to make it out as the cause of other problems that it has nothing to do with. But that's ok because all they can do is preach to the choir, no one else is listening anymore.
They won't make it in the long run because they don't represent true religion, they represent its perversion.
It's like Frank Herbert said, "Much that has been called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility towards life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All humans must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known."
I doubt that sex isn't pleasing to the eye of God. If it were, we never would have been made the sexual being we are.
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to "take the power back from the Sun's" etc. is to write better code than they do.
They are perfectly within their rights to do what they please with they code they have created, including not show it to anyone.
Don't like it? Create something better than what they are selling. If you can't then you're nothing but a free rider.
The free software movement will founder the moment it begins preaching instead of programming.
Lee
Unlike cars, computer software doesn't require high-level physical universe engineering and contrsuction methods. If you wanted to clone a car, you'd end up spending more money doing so than it would cost to buy 1000 other cars just like it. I don't know about you, but I don't have the metallurgical skills to cast an engine block, then machine it out to the correct tolerances. I also could't weld the frame together. Don't forget all the plastic parts that cars use, you'd have to mix the plastics, the mold them and I don't have the machinery to do that either. I might be able to stitch together a car seat cover, but that won't do me much good by itself. Source code on the other hand, can be used by anyone who knows how to write code. All you need are some development tools such as an editor, a compiler, and a debugger. The skills to use them can be easily learned by anyone with a triple digit IQ. Making commercial software open source is about like giving your competitors keys to your development labs. I'm personally sick of all these guys who don't run companies, and who in truth probably aren't out of school yet, preaching the gospel of how everything should be open source. When you make something open-source, you're doing more than publishing code. You're publishing the ideas behind your code. Those ideas are what software companies really want to protect, not the copyright on some file. In Microsoft's case, I think the motives are far more sinister. They want to create and maintain an advantage over other developers who write code for windows. They do more than keep the implementation secret, they keep portions of the api itself secret. This is what happens when one company (or group, or person) has too much power. Everyone acts in their own best interest, or in the best interest of their community. When there are lots of companies which are actively competing with each other, it is in each companies' best interest to cater to the needs of their customers as much as possible. But when there is less competition it becomes more profitable for companies to exploit their customers. Competitors are treated as cancers which must be stomped out of existence. This is what has happened with Microsoft. Lee
The windows registry is Microsoft's way of obscuring the way windows is configured. They don't want people to be able to go in and change things.
This is how MS was able to sell two different versions of NT, server and workstation, with the vital differences being changes to the registry. Had the registry been a collection of simple ascii files this never would have worked.
The registy is just another way for MS to make us bend over.
The market accepts the registry and regedit because MS is a monopoly, not because it ever had any choice. If Microsoft isn't a monopoly then they must have had Forrest Gump heading up their legal team because they sure didn't demonstrate that in court.
Lee
I'm a computer professional and I much prefer a CLI over a GUI for most things.
GUI's are good for applications where they create a consistent visual structure to the program. Modern word processors wouldn't exist without GUI's. But having a GUI doesn't mean it has to be crippled by being soley mouse based, or heavily favor use of the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts which allow the user to do things without having to take their hands off the keyboard are wonderful. Using the keyboard is much faster and doesn't require as much hand-eye coordination. A keyboard shortcut which becomes a trained response uses less brain power than controlling the location of a pointer on a screen, it is also faster.
GUI based systems are easier to learn, but they are not easier to use in the long run. In the long run they are more cumbersome.
The place where CLI's really shine are in system administration. I can do things far more quickly using bash or a DOS prompt than I can fiddling with a mouse under KDE, gnome, or windows explorer. Not to mention how much simpler it is to edit a config file than try to argue with some configuration utility. Config files require that the person editing them learn what they control and what values they can contain. Anyone who isn't willing to do that can't be called a "computer professional." Now having a clueless user config utility that can edit the files for you is fine by me. Not everyone wants to edit a file and there is no reason why people should be forced to do so. But don't try to tell me that using such a program is easier for people who know how to edit the file directly.
Lee
This is what happens when religious ideology runs amok.
Why anyone would have a problem distributing free-beer software, when that software helps to improve the user base of your product, is beyond me.
I'm in favor of software being open source. I think that in many cases it is the best thing for all parties involved. But that doesn't make the open source model the only viable method for the creation of software or that all software should be open source. The people who create software can do what they want with it. The rest of us have no special rights to what they have created. It is theirs to do with as they please. Debian's attitude is that software is somehow special and belongs to everyone, regardless of who created it. I'm sorry but that just isn't true.
Their attitude is only going to be self destructive. It will decrease the number of new users who start out with debian and likely encourage current users to move to something else.
In the end debian will corner the market on linux users who care more about ideology than they do about real world concerns, like having the software you need to get your job done.
But it won't matter. If debian won't respond to market pressure, there are dozens of other companies and groups creating distributions who will.
The Debian project may be a non-profit organization, but they expect and hope that people will use their product. If they didn't they wouldn't be putting the effort into creating it. They can either give their customer's what they want, or go off and play some other game of their own that no one else cares about but them. Which one they do will be what determines their long term viability.
Lee
Had all this happened someplace else, like say DC, Chicago, or San Diego, then nothing would have happened to this kid. He might have been taken aside and given a talking to, or his father might have been asked to do it. But the police would never have gotten involved, and he wouldn't have spent several days in jail. But because he had the misfortune of living in mormon country, redneck mormon country at that, he gets thrown in jail for it.
Anytime you have too much power in the hands of too few, you've got problems such as this.
Abuses due to government corruption and abuses due to corporate greed are equally destructive.
Lee
What you're seeing is probably due more to the number of people in your age group who are into computers, than it is to any actual discrimination. For every 40-something coder, there have to be at least fifteen 20-somethings. I can't imagine that someone with 15 or 20 years of experience programming computers would have much of a problem getting a job, unless of course you're talking about a job doing something that they've never done, such as web "programming" or maybe Java. That wasn't what the older guys cut their teeth on, so you won't see too many of them doing it. But that doesn't mean they don't still have jobs doing what they did cut their teeth on. I'm 27 and I've been working on computers, both hardware and software, since I was seven years old. I was already an accomplished technician and programmer by the time I got my first job in high school building and fixing systems. That was almost 13 years ago now. I'm mentioning this because someone made a comment about techs over 40 being clueless. I learned from people who are at least that old now, and the ones I knew were far from clueless. How many techs nowadays know how to do component level repairs rather than just swap boards? Not that you can do much of that nowadays with everything being surface mount and cheap as dirt to boot.
If this is something you got for free along with a magazine I wouldn't be complaining about the licensing terms too much, unless of course this is the ONLY way you can get it.
This is just Microsoft scrambling to do anything to deflect the coming storm. They lost in court and here rather soon they are either going to be broken up, or face heavy sanctions.
If they were to actually release the code in some way, it would be nothing more than a trap. Old scratch may be the craftiest devil of all, but the imps at Microsoft sure give him a run for his money.
At this point in the game I wouldn't do anything other than ignore this. They've been intentionally leaking rumors about opening up the source code for windows for a long time now. Anything they say to the media is soley to manipulate public opinion.
Lee
Here you have a guy who studied jounalism in college and landed a job writing about computers. He knows enough about a computer to turn one on and maybe surf the web or use MS-office. But when it comes to true understanding of the technology and issues behind computers, he doesn't have a clue. They need to can this guy and hire people who studied computer science or EE in college. A lack of writing skills is a much easier problem to solve than a lack of understanding about what they are writing about. From the picture of this guy he can't be more than 25. Most people that age, even hackers (hacker != cracker) don't have much in the way of historical perspective. They don't remember the days of DOS or C64's or Apple II's, let alone CP/M. (I'm something of an exception as I began hacking computers from the womb.) They need to get someone about 45-55 who has been working with computers since Bill Gate's was in high school. Someone who has obviously kept up on the latest happenings though.
Don't forget the third reason which is they don't give a rat's ass if it is wrong. Morality is a concept that is rarely given more than lip service by most people. As for "getting caught," what exactly do you think Metallica's lawyers are going to be able to do to 350,000 individuals? I'll tell you what, a legalistic rendition of "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!!" I'm sorry, but I'm just not afraid of lawyers. Metallica is trying to scare people but in the end it just won't work. They might find a few dozen people to make examples out of, people who run napster from a high bandwith connection and are ALWAYS online. But for 99.999% of the people listed in the lawsuit, nothing will happen at all. This is what makes this suit more humorous than anything else.
Jake Lloyd?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, anything but that! I'd rather see Kato Kaelin dressed up as a kid than see Jake play Ender. Or Mcauly Culkin (who's what, 19 now?)
Get the kid from the Sixth sense. Jake Lloyd can't act any better than Mark Hammil. I'm sure Jake is a nice kid, but hey you've got to have some talent, just being nice won't cut it.
The fact that he wants to play Ender scares me and puts serious doubts into my mind as to how good the movie could ever be. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Jake, I just don't think he can act. Maybe, just maybe he can learn, in which case if he can do the part let him have it. But if he can't learn then give the part to someone who can.
Whoa!!!!!!!
They're making a movie!!!
Yeah baby!! I only hope they do it right. Sadly they probably won't. Get ready for a replay of Phantom Menace with a kid at the joystick saving the universe. What I'd do if I could make it into a movie would be to tell the story the way Card did in his book. Not dumbing down for mindless ticket buyers, no trying to sell it as a kids movie for the merchandising profits. I'm not exactly sure how I'd make the movie, but it wouldn't be a mindless action flick, thats for sure.
Flamebait? I guess someone out there has a distaste for democracy.
All the moderation system here does is encourage people to post popular opinions, to toe the line like good little germans. It doesn't discourage anyone from posting trolls or spam or otherwise goofing off. The people who like doing those things don't give a rat's ass about their karma level, just like the P-Killers on Ultima Online. Instead the system creates a situation where people are more likely to post what they think other people will like hearing instead of what they themselves truly believe. This kind of behaviour, when taken just a little farther, starts to resemble that of a cult. I don't think slashdot is a cult and I certainly don't want to see it become one.
If someone doesn't agree with me, why can't they post something to refute what I said instead of marking my post as if it were a troll? A genuine response would be welcomed. But instead some coward marks my post as flamebait because he or she can't refute what I've said.
So what are you, an OSA agent? You certainly sound like someone working for the cult to me. No the best thing slashdot can do is give the cult the finger. That is the very best thing anyone can do because it forces the cult to spend time and money attacking you. If everyone gave them the finger they simply wouldn't have the resources to mount a sustained attack, they would collapse.
In case you're not an OSA agent and don't know what one is, OSA stands for Office of Special Affairs. It is the intelligence and legal terrorism division of the "church." OSA used to be called the GO, or Guardian's Office. But that was before the division got busted in the late 70's for spying on various government agencies. Many people, including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison over that business.
If you are OSA, say hi to Heber for me.
I'm VERY pro gun. The reasons why aren't important to this discussion however. Obviously I have no problem with children visiting sites for gun makers or the NRA.
But even so I have a real problem with AOL, or anyone else for that matter, hiding the other side of the story. I might not agree with the anti-gun groups, but that doesn't mean they should be silenced. Only through open discussion of all points of view can the best approximation of the truth be found. Censorship ammounts to one thing, preventing young people from thinking for themselves. If you control a person's access to information, you literally control the kinds of things they think about and therefore what they think. In most contexts this is simply called brainwashing. But when children are the subjects our society uses a cute euphemism and calls the process "raising" them. What is truly sad is that the adults of today do the same thing to their children that was done to them. When I think about these things I can get pretty depressed. Luckily there are sites like this one or peacefire.org or allaboutsex.org that help restore my faith in humanity.
(No, I'm 27 and quite educated)
How much crime there is in an area has more to do with how well people protect themselves than it does with how many police are roaming around.
Police are armed historians. They do a very good job of coming in after the crime has been committed and making detailed reports of exactly what happened. Depending on the situation they may even arrest someone. But arresting someone after the fact is hardly a way to stop crime.
Crime stops when people defend themselves and their property from criminals. There are states like Massachusetts(sp?) where if someone breaks into your home and you kill the bastard, you'll rot in prison. What does that give the criminals? A license to break into your house and rob your or do violence to you because they know you won't defend yourself.
I'm lucky that I live in Arizona where nonsense like that gets thrown out of the state legislature with prejudice. Here you can carry a gun in public as long as it is not concealed. Getting a concealed carry permit isn't difficult either. Other than the hot weather, this is a great place to live if you believe in freedom and the right of people to defend themselves and their liberty.
I don't usually rant like this, but the very idea that police prevent crime is ludicrous to me. They can be very effective in finding the criminal after the fact and collecting evidence to lead to his or her eventual incarceration. Criminals don't do what they do with the idea the'll get caught. They do it and plan on getting away. If you don't think you'll get caught, the cops aren't exactly a deterrant. A deterrant is a would-be victim unwilling to take any crap and with no reservations about putting holes in the criminal.
Anti-defense nuts can just move on, nothing you say in response is going to change my mind. I've heard it all before and yes, I did listen. I think things like gun control are bad because I've been around long enough to understand human nature. Gun control is people control because as George Washington said, "Guns are the people's liberty's teeth."
Lee
Well I don't see a combo package for the Mac that is 1/10th the cost of office. Is there one that you just didn't tell us about?
Used a PC, I build them and I develop software on them. I've been using PCs since Reagan was in his first term.
Major system instability due to device drivers? Have YOU ever used a PC? If you've got some new fangled device that just came out last month, then you might have driver problems, which get solved as updated drivers get released. Only people who buy bleeding edge stuff get bit by this though. Macs are the same way. You don't see as many problems because few people buy 3rd party components or cards for their mac systems, but when they do the driver issues are there just as much as they are with PC's, not that they are that much of a problem anyway.
I've used both Macs and PC's and I have to tell you that neither one is any more stable than the other. The macs where I am crash just as often as the PC's.
The higher the air pressure, the higher the temperature at which water boils. The lower the air pressure, the lower the temperature at which it boils. Therefore the relationship is directly proportional, not inversely.
Lee
I can't begin to describe how much that article irritated me with its lack of insight. Linux isn't unix. Unix fragmented largely because it stopped being open source. Also vendors customized it for their hardware. Linux is open source and it is not tied to any particular hardware. Thus any changes that one group or company makes to the kernel is available to anyone. Changes to the kernel aren't really the issue however. Where the potential problems lie is in differences in the istallations. Where they keep config files, what libraries they have and what version these are. These are the things that can lead to binary incompatibilities. This is something of a problem, but it is not a true fork. Right now redhat is the dominant distribution according to market share. So you are more likely to see a product come out for redhat first than for other distributions. Where this will go in the future is hard to predict, but I'll try anyway. I think that the number of distributions will shrink in the future, or at least the number that anyone actually uses. Those distributions that are remaining in common use will be the ones that vendors will have to address when writing software. If you've got 2-4 distributions that make up 90% of the market, well "porting" to each of these and making a separate binary available for each is not a big deal. Then of course it is possible that some kind of standard that companies like redhat are actually willing to adhere to gets developed, making most of the incompatibilities disappear. I think the first scenario is far more likely.
As for the article, I one of the least insightful things in it was the comment by one "consultant" who said that if unix hadn't been fragmented, windows might never have gained dominance on the desktop. Unix has trickled down from minicomputers and mainframes to microcomputers. Windows on the other hand is trying to move up from microcomputers to servers and other mid-range systems. Windows started out on the desktop, it was developed there, and it is cheap. It is designed to do the things that home and business users need a desktop computer to do. Unix on the other hand is not cheap. At least not commercial versions which were the only ones available when windows first appeared. Why would the average user be willing to pay several hundred dollars for a copy of SCO when he or she can just use dos or windows and get the job done for less? It wasn't incompatibility between versions of unix for different hardware platforms that led to Window's dominance. It was the fact that unix wasn't even a competitor to windows in the first place. It makes me wonder where the hell these people went to school.
I don't know what they were thinking when they made this movie. The thing that irritated me the most is how it was a collection of one emergency after another. Not to mention the fact that one crew of astronauts chose to stand and watch as a tornado began forming right in front of them. One even asked "are you getting all this?" That crew was clearly an evolutionary dead end because their survival instincts didn't include important skills like RUNNING THE F*#K AWAY! Then of course there was the scene where the astronauts are trying to get out of their ship and commandeer an orbiting satellite. I won't go into the several severe flaws in the physics behind what they were doing, I'm sure others have already covered that. But I will bitch about how I had to watch this woman's overacted reaction to her husband dying. I will mention that in space, liquid doesn't turn to ice, it evaporates. The temperature at which water boils is directly proportional to air pressure. No air pressure means that water boils at very low temperatures. The same would go for any liquid. Also the human body tends to explode rather gruesomely when exposed to a vacuuum, it doesn't turn into an ice-cicle.
Did anyone catch the make-up that Gary Sinise was wearing? He looked like a New Orleans drag queen.
The movie _could_ have been good if it had a better basis for its story and it had been better written. I swear, I could make a movie that's ten times better than that thing with a hangover.
The movie ammounts to a bad remake of 2001 with way too much drama thrown in. The one-after-another emergencies were there to stretch 120 minutes of a plot that couldn't realistically fill up the screen for more than half an hour.
"pornography -> sex. You see, the degradation of moral character is the CAUSE of these problems"
Porn does lead to sex, that much is true. But why sex is supposed to be a problem... I just can't grasp. Sex is good. Sex is healthy. Sex is... well, ordinary. A problem, especially a social problem, it is not.
As for it leading to a character problem, I covered that in my earlier post.
Which is the cause and which is the effect?
"This severely addicted group -- which Cooper dubbed the Cybersex Compulsives --is characterized by both spending more than 11 hours a week on sex sites and scoring highly on a standard psychological scale of sexually compulsive behavior."
I have a hard time believing that people are made into sex fiends by online porn or cybersex. Instead I think that some people have a problem, or perhaps a tendency to develop a problem, and that the online sexual material is simply how that problem has manifested itself.
Some people have an addictive personality. Whether it be gambling, drugs, alcohol, or what have you, they latch on to it and unless they get help, it destroys them. This is sad, but a true fact of life. Luckily, most people don't have this tendency.
I'm not a big fan of porn. I love the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and think that Victoria's secret could probably make more money if they dropped the clothes and just sold their catalog. But real hard core porn I find distasteful. What was interesting and exciting when I was 8 or 9 seems reall rather pointless now that I'm 27. I've spent some time on IRC in sex channels and in chat rooms and so forth. I've had a few phone sex encounters in my time. But these aren't things I even do anymore. I'd rather go out and spend time with a woman in real life than fool around with someone I'll never meet online. I'm bringing all this up to make the point that online (and offline) porn hasn't warped my mind or made me into a sex fiend. Do I have some kind of special strength of character or psychological makeup that renders me immune to the effects? I doubt it. Instead I think it is more a case of there being no effects to resist.
If you're going to complain about the problems you feel are associated with pornography or cybersex, make sure you are truly identifying what the true cause is, and what is merely a symptom.
I have a quote for you:
"The times are bad, children don't obey their parents and everyone is writing a book."
That could be a very interesting reflection on our current culture. It would be if it weren't for the fact that was said by Cicero before the birth of christ.
Our society isn't having any problems that didn't exist in every other society that ever existed. Human nature hasn't changed significantly in at least ten thousand years. Take the time to read Decline and fall of the Roman empire by Edward Gibbon. It's eerie how many of our so called "modern problems" were also faced by the Romans. But its like they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
As for correllations between things, are you aware that there is a strong relationship between ice cream sales, and the incidence of rape? Well there is. Of course ice cream doesn't cause rape. There is no cause and effect relationship between those two things. When it is warm outside and people are out and about doing things, places like Baskin Robins are going to sell more ice cream. Roughly 50% of these people who are out doing things are going to be women. So of course there is an increased likelyhood that some of them might get raped. You don't hear people blaming Baskin Robins when a girl gets attacked though.
You say that our families are breaking down. Well maybe you're right. In fact I think you are. But the reason this is happening has nothing to do with pornography or its acceptance, and everything to do with women's lib. Now I'm not bashing women's lib, women are at least equal to men. The fact that I'm male doesn't make me sexist. I'm merely pointing out that women aren't slaves to their husbands any longer. If they aren't happy being married, they aren't stuck in the situation. They make their own money and can support themselves most of the time. In the past a woman was dependent on her husband and so divorce was simply not an option unless the situation were truly desperate. People stayed married even though they weren't happy together. This is no longer the case. So yes, families are being split up and this makes things harder for many kids growing up today. But the cause has nothing to do with erotic material and everything to do with the emancipation of the fairer sex. But some religious leaders dislike erotic material for reasons they can't sell to most people, and so they try to make it out as the cause of other problems that it has nothing to do with. But that's ok because all they can do is preach to the choir, no one else is listening anymore.
They won't make it in the long run because they don't represent true religion, they represent its perversion.
It's like Frank Herbert said, "Much that has been called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility towards life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All humans must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known."
I doubt that sex isn't pleasing to the eye of God. If it were, we never would have been made the sexual being we are.