I also got a kick out of "Point/Counterpoint: Reservoir Dogs is Fucking Awesome vs. Reservoir Dogs is the Best Movie Ever", and the funny piece they did on the "Midwest peace process" between Illinois and Wisconsin. Other than that, the other replies have pretty much listed all the rest of the classics.
Long live the Onion!
Allegations of racism in Star Wars
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Well, I hope that this finally settles all of these ridiculous stories of racial motivation behind the characters in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It never ceases to amaze me how people are willing to capitalize on racial unrest to erect strawmen and then knock them down to prove a point.
Re:Religious bigotry: alive and well in the USA.
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CmdrTaco found the site to be hilarious..
Well, so did I. For crying out loud, this guy attacked 101 Dalmations for attempting to "elevate dogs" to the status of humans! That is hilarious. I don't care if it stems from some deep-seeded religious belief; it's just downright funny. It has nothing to do with Christianity per se. What if I put together a Web site proclaiming that THE GIANT PINK UNICORN IS COMING TO KILL US ALL? I'll bet you that a lot of the people that preach the obligatory "respect the views of others" would find that awfully amusing.
So in some ways, the ridicule that is being leveraged towards the CAP is not attacks on Christianity, but instead on the ridiculous views expressed by the reviewer. (And let's be honest, they are ridiculous; I would submit to you that there exist very few Christians that would condemn 101 Dalmations for the reasons given by the reviewer.)
.. and numerous other posters have taken their free pot-shots at Christianity
Yes they have, some being a little less gracious and objective than others. I won't bother expanding on some of the commentary that has been given about Christianity being a popular target because of its status as the only major Western religion, or because its main "spokespeople" are often vociferous, intolerant, and bigoted, or any of the other reasons stated.
The bottom line is that when you have Jerry Falwell saying that the third Antichrist is among us and that he's a Jew, that makes Christianity look bad. When you have Fred Phelps and his "loving Christian Web site" http://www.godhatesfags.com, that makes Christianity look bad. And the list goes on. Now, nobody is saying that this is particularly fair. But it's pretty hard to argue that these things do make Christianity look bad, regardless of how diametrically opposed they may be to the hearts and minds of mainstream Christians.
But here's the thing. You said it yourself; the "potshots" are against Christianity, not Christians (or, at least, the cogent ones are.) Mainstream Christians go out of their way to distance themselves from the fundamentalist zealots that preach hatred and intolerance. You might consider that the "attacks" on Christianity are aimed at those same zealots, and not at the Christian population as a whole.
At any rate, one thing is clear: it is not the posters on Slashdot (and other forums) that paint the religion in a very unsavory manner. The extremist minority sects and fundamentalists do a more than adequate job at that. And again, I really don't think this is fair.. but hey, it's the way things are. My advice: Take it with a grain of salt. Learn to laugh at "the dark side." South Park dishes up plenty of scathing social satire, and Christianity is by no means its only target.
The author of this article has apparently fallen into the trap that so many other people have; namely, the mindset that the larger a piece of software is, the better it must be. I base this conclusion off of the fact that he seems to correlate bloat with "nifty features" such as voice recognition and "HTML mail."
Is this the bloat you know? Because it isn't the bloat that I know.
We're seeing a trend in software, and it's not a Microsoft-only trend (although one might argue that Microsoft is perhaps the best example.) When you see version 2.0 of a product that has double the system requirements (disk space, memory, processor speed, etc.) of version 1.0, it's pretty hard to explain away the bloat as being "nifty new features" if version 2.0 only provides a few new pieces of functionality. This author would have us believe that if the system requirements of a particular package double from one version to another, then that means that the functionality/usefulness of the new version is double that of its predecessor?
Does anybody really believe that?
For a period of about eight years, I used AppleWorks to do most of my home productivity work. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with it, it was basically an integrated applications suite that contained a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a rudimentary database. The integration was pretty nice; you could insert spreadsheets into your WP documents and the database had features like the always-useful mail merge. And it fit on one side of a 5-1/4" floppy disk, which was 144K.
Now, nobody in their right mind is going to argue that AppleWorks is more powerful than Office 2000. But let's use the author's estimate that a full install of Office requires 200M of disk space (this seems a bit low to me, but what the hell.) By the author's assumption, this means that Office 2000 has 1,422 times the functionality of AppleWorks. Whee! Viva la Office!
It doesn't matter, really; he's preaching to the pew. Microsoft has a large base of loyal customers who have demonstrated time and again that they're really not interested in issues like this. And quite frankly, maybe it's because most of their customers simply don't know enough to complain. (It's hard to suggest this without sounding like an elitist bastard, I know.) In reality, maybe it's pretty tough to blame Microsoft for consistently cranking out some of the most shameless bloatware around. After all, if their customers don't care, then why should they?
The bottom line is this: if you have to "up" the processor requirements and grow your executable size by 20% to accomodate a new, sophisticated rendering engine, then that's one thing. But if you throw in a flight simulator, 600K of unused bitmaps, and a mishmash of other junk and then start complaining about "deadlines", that's something completely different. If it makes me a "whiner" or a "malcontent" to complain about the latter, then I guess I'm proud to stand among the rank-and-file of whiners and malcontents.
Sorry, Redmond; one of the reasons I don't use your stuff is because I don't want to buy a new machine every year. And guess what! Thanks to Linux, I don't have to.
Did you read what they had to say about The Phantom Menace? They started out by praising Lucas for the lack of nudity/swearing/drugs, but then went on to point out some of the movie's flaws. Here are the highlights:
In "Wantom Violence/Crime" they listed "sword fighting" and "eating of animals by animals."
In "Impudence/Hate" they listed "a small issue of a little boy's arrogance against mother's authority re: going to bed."
In "Sex/Homosexuality" they listed "statue nudity."
In "Offense To God" they listed "forseeing the future" and "levitation/psychokineses."
In "Murder/Suicide" they listed "murder by Sand People shooting racers."
Thank you, CAP, for showing the rest of the world how much of a bad influence The Phantom Menace really is! Even though they admit that "the ignominy in the movie should clearly be fantasy to the young and impressionable and should thus be easily redirected", methinks these people need some serious help.
If anything, we need more Christians "running the show" as it were. At least then there would be a little backbone and common decency.. Not to say that Christians are perfect, because I know I'm not, but at least they have a motive for trying to do more than meet their own selfish ambitions.
Oh, geez. Translation for those keeping score at home: "Christians are fundamentally better people than everybody else in the world." Those who wonder why Christianity is so oft-maligned these days would do well to examine statements such as this. If your claim is that non-Christians do nothing more than serve their own selfish ambitions, I would be happy to provide several counterexamples.
What do you all have against teaching children to focus on thoughts that are righteous and pure, and trying to protect them from what is impure?
The problem is that there is a group of people that has very definite ideas of what is "righteous and pure" and what is not, and would like very much to see these ideas imposed upon society as a whole. You said it yourself; you can't legislate morality. While it is the duty of every responsible parent to teach their children to be good and moral citizens of the planet, we can't toss around terms like "righteous" as if they have any concrete, set-in-stone meaning.
Getting back to the issue at hand, I don't think that we should be too hard on old Liddy; she is just saying the things that she thinks her base voters want to hear. However, like almost all politicians, she simply fails to understand the technical issues related to this. Filters, by and large, simply don't work very well. Keeping young children away from pornography is certainly a laudable goal, but until somebody comes up with a technically feasible way to do it without infringing on people's liberty, parents and educators are going to have to do the unthinkable and assume some responsibility for their children and students.
If the DOJ wins, it sends the clear message the US citizens have no rights, and exist only at the whim of thugs and their sycophants.
Yes, that's correct. If the government is successful in its case against a predatory company that is in obvious violation of existing anti-trust laws, we can expect to see the tanks rolling down Elm Street any day. Better throw down your guns and start waving white hankies!
Give me a break. If Microsoft broke the law, they must be held accountable. You can't picket the courthouse and scream "But I like that chatty paperclip!" and expect to get them off the hook.
TRIAL OF THE CENTURY COMING TO AN END "Screw You All," Sputters Angry, Defiant Bill Gates
WASHINGTON, DC (AP) - After a flurry of controversy, dismissed jurors, televised fiascos, and general debauchery, the "trial of the century" between Microsoft and the Justice Department appears to be coming to a close. And while it looks as if Microsoft is gearing up to lose this one, nobody is quite sure of the outcome of a trial that has had so many interesting moments.
The biggest wild card in the trial was undoubtedly Ed Muth, the explosive Microsoft expert witness who raised several questions about the software company's predatory business practices. Grilled by government attorney F. Lee Bailey, Fuhrman vowed under oath that he had never used vile and offensive language to refer to Microsoft competitors.
"Have you ever used the phrase 'Macintrash' in the past ten years, Mr. Muth?" asked Bailey dramatically, to which Muth responded "No, I have not." Bailey then asked the question differently: "So if anybody says that you have used the word 'Macintrash', that person would be lying, wouldn't they, Mr. Muth, sir?" Muth affirmed the question with a simple "Yes, that's correct."
However, it was subsequently shown that Muth was lying when the defense played audio tapes of Muth's conversations with screenwriter Laura Hart McKinney. The tapes contained vile and often explicit language, condemning anybody who would dare to attempt competition with Microsoft. "This is a bombshell!" shrieked lead government attorney Joel Cochrane. "The jury must be allowed to hear these tapes!" In the end, Judge Thomas Penfield Ito allowed the jury to hear selected excerpts from the tapes. Muth later plead the fifth and apologized to the public for his comments. "My immature rantings with a screenwriter were never meant to be heard by anybody but the two of us," said Muth ruefully. "And I am ashamed."
But perhaps the most dramatic moment in the trial came when the government had Microsoft chairman Bill Gates attempt to place a piece of shrink wrap that had been found on the grounds of Sun Microsystems on a Windows 98 box. Gates had difficulty wrapping the material around the box, and clearly mouthed to the jurors, "It doesn't fit." Microsoft attorney Bill Neukom triumphantly told the jury that this was evidence of the company's innocence. "If it doesn't fit, the product's shit!" he proclaimed. But the jury appeared to downplay any effect the episode had on the case's outcome. A juror, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press: "What a ridiculous-looking bowtie that guy has."
The trial was not without its lighthearted moments, however. For a period of three days, surfer dude and Gates house guest Brian "Kato" Kaelin was on the stand, offering testimony on Microsoft's viscious stranglehold over the Solitaire market for personal computers.
Since science admits when they are wrong. I guess I won't be hearing about Carbon dating anymore.
Other than the fact that you don't like the results that it gives, what problems do you have with carbon dating? Be specific.
I'm also glad to know that the whole layer dating issue is gone for good. Not to mention that a 2-year-old Biology book at college is still trying to show the horse/graffe argument.
Since I'm neither a geologist or a biologist, I guess I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Remember, if you keep cross breeding tomatos long enough, you'll eventually get a dog.
What scientific theories and/or disciplines make this prediction? Be specific.
There is a dinosaur fossil that has a human footprint in it too.
Oh, for crying out loud. Paluxy River, right? You might want to take some time and read through this, if you're so inclined.
One of the differences between scientists and creationists is that scientists acknowledge when their theories are wrong, and either refine or outright reject them and start looking elsewhere. As this "human footprint" evidence proves, the creationist response to being told that something is fraudulent is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout "is not!" Hint: Very few respectable creationists still try to use the Paluxy River "man tracks" as evidence that man and dinosaur co-existed.
I've got an NT workstation at work that sits alongside an NCD X terminal. The damned thing locks up approximately twice a day when I'm using Netscape Communicator 4.5. (It doesn't slow down, BSOD, or require me to kill off Netscape with the Task Manager.. it simply ceases to function and requires a cold boot to even get control back!)
The tech guys have been most helpful: "We think Communicator is buggy, so please try using IE instead." Now, if I had the time to adequately explain to them that a user application (buggy or not) should never be able to completely take down a "mission-critical" operating system, I suspect we wouldn't be using NT. However, since there are better things to do, I'll put up with a couple of reboots each day; a lot of times I'll just use the IRIX version of Communicator on my X terminal. So much for the environment that Dell's latest commercials goes so far as to call "unstoppable!"
Yes, I know that it's all my fault; that NT is likely "poorly configured" and that complete lockups are the price that I pay for my ignorance. It really doesn't matter, though. This box is going to be running Linux within a month or so.:-)
My sole experience with trying to mount a completely bad floppy under Linux was that the drive busy indicator light went on momentarily, followed by a kernel panic. However, the system didn't hang for any noticeable length of time. And, of course, the panic didn't affect anything else on the rest of the system.
(Incidentally, this is the only time that I have ever seen the Linux kernel panic in five years of using Linux; this was a 1.2-based kernel IIRC. Maybe I'm just lucky?:-) )
The primary bug that Morris' worm relied on, if I recall correctly, was a buffer overrun in the VAX version of finger..
Actually, it was the BSD version of fingerd, but the rest is substantially correct. The one lesson that should have been learned from that whole fiasco is that gets() is a function that should never, ever be used; it provides no way to prevent a malicious program from overwriting its input buffer. Of all of the functions in the standard C library, gets() is probably the only one that can be blamed for billions of US dollars in collective damage over the years. It was certainly the primary culprit in the Morris worm.
It's interesting to note, however, that you still see books and even production code making use of gets(), and therefore encouraging its use! This must be stamped out immediately. Therefore, if you use gets() in production code, especially in mission-critical production code that's supposed to be secure, you are an utter, drooling imbecile. A decade after the Worm, you'd think there would have been some lessons learned, but as Heinlein wrote: "History teaches us that we learn nothing from history."
Read through some of the comments that others have written about the restrictions on network feeds on your satellite dish. What you basically have to do is convince your provider that you can receive the network no other way (i.e., you've got some interference or somesuch that prevents you from reception with an antenna.) Depending on the situation, you may or may not be able to "slide past" some of the regulations.
In the end, though, it's not all that difficult to just use an antenna. All you've got to do is press one button to switch back and forth, and if the networks are broadcasting with a sufficiently strong signal, you may even get a better picture than you do with cable.
.. if you want satellite Internet access, you've always got the option of using DirecPC (you can use that and DirecTV on the same dish.) However, there are some caveats. First and foremost, it's not particularly cheap, especially when you consider that you still have to keep your account with a local ISP (you obviously can't use your dish to send data upstream!) Also, there is no current Linux support, although according to a tech service person I corresponded with via e-mail, it is being "looked into."
I'm a DirecTV subscriber, and I would recommend looking into it. However, I have not had any experience with any of the other providers, and so my recommendation may be a bit skewed. As you would expect from a digital satellite system, the picture and sound are excellent, particularly when movies are shown in Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. (Don't skimp on your audio equipment; the up-front investment is worth it.) The pricing is reasonable, depending on what channels you want; you can go anywhere from $12.99/month (I think) for a "minimal" package to $47.99/month for the Total Choice Balls-To-The-Wall package.
Also keep in mind that DirecTV is merging with USSB, which provides all of the "major" premium channels such as HBO, Showtime, Skinemax, etc. DirecTV currently provides four channels of Starz and eight channels of Encore, along with the Independent Film Channel and a couple of other "premium" networks. If you combine DirecTV with USSB (as I have) you'll have more premium movie channels than you can possibly deal with.
DirecTV is pretty much the acknowledged leader when it comes to sports. You can get, at your option, several regional sports networks.. but don't think you'll be able to tune to Fox Sports Arizona and watch a Diamondbacks game live.. if you want to do that, you'll have to buy the MLB Extra Innings package. The same thing goes for NFL, NBA, etc. Still, I enjoy watching all the local sports-talk programs, even if I can't watch most of the games as they happen.
As far as the Big Four networks are concerned, you can pretty much forget receiving them via your dish, unless you can demonstrate that it is impossible for you to receive them with an antenna. (After all, they can't have you watching CBS or NBC and not seeing the local advertisements, can they?) If you want to discontinue your cable service, your best bet is to just pick up an antenna. If the networks in your area broadcast at any reasonable strength, a small pair of "rabbit ears" should be all you really need. This is all that I use, and the quality of the reception rivals the quality of the cable picture! Reception of network TV via antenna is not nearly as antiquated a notion as it seems.
Finally, another thing I like about DirecTV is the pay-per-view movie channels. Channels 100-199 are all recent movies that have hit the video stores; by pressing a couple of buttons on your remote, you can watch one at your leisure for $2.99, which is what you would pay for a new release at Blockbuster. Once you "buy" a movie, you can watch it for up to twelve hours, so if you get interrupted you can always go back and see parts of it again later. You also get a coupon every month good for $2.50 off a pay-per-view purchase, so if you only watch one movie a month, you get it for $0.49. Not too bad of a deal.
Anyway, these are just some observations. I'm sure that subscribers of other dish providers can offer some similar ones.
Could you name the huge, expensive satellites that SETI is using? The bulk of SETI's work is done with Earth-based radio telescopes that they either lease time on, use at academic institutions, or own outright. Or if SETI uses, for example, observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope, does that mean that the huge Hubble bill is all for the benefit of SETI?:-)
The bottom line is, again, that SETI is privately funded and it has been for quite some time. The funding for SETI was taken away in 1993 by an amendment written by Nevada Senator Richard Byran. (And at that time, SETI funding was less than one tenth of one percent of NASA's budget!) Complaining about SETI is like complaining about Jerry Seinfeld owning dozens of Porsches. They've got the money, it's not yours, and they can do what they want with it.
Re:What do you think Littleton WAS?
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Are we just going to burn them and their demon friends at the steak?
Mmmm.. steak! Make mine medium, please!
What about the parents of these hellspawn?
Excellent point! What role does ancestry play in situations like this? For example, if your mother is half German, a quarter Irish, and a quarter Hellspawn, and if your father is half Norwegian and half Hellspawn, are both equally as responsible if you blow up a busload of nuns? Or does your father receive a disproportionate amount of punishment due to his more pronounced Hellspawn heritage?
Are we going to have priests do excorcisms after the metal detectors at school?!
All kidding aside, I agree completely; saying "Well, these kids did what they did because there was something evil inside of them" accomplishes nothing. Oh sure, it may play well to the pews. But it does nothing practical to explain situations like Littleton, and more importantly, it does nothing to prevent further tragedies. Let's put our collective heads together and think rationally for a bit before we start having school drinking fountains dispense holy water.
Well, this is probably a troll, but what the hell..
#1.) The probability of intelligent life "evolving" (let alone more than once within the range of minimal detectable signal strength of the SETI satellites) is statistically absurd.
Elaborate. People often point out that in any advanced society, "radio will be a short-lived phenomenon", and then demonstrate that we are rapidly moving towards digital communications. This is true. These same people conclude, then, that looking for alien EM signals is a waste of time. These same people neglect to mention, however, that even if all of our communications were digital, the Earth would still be very radio-noisy; the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) is detectable for well beyond a thousand light-years. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that we can go without BMEWS just yet.
#2.) If God had created intelligent life elsewhere and there was any chance of we humans finding it, don't you think he'd have let us know?
Sigh. Let us know how? Through the Bible? This is the same book that states that the value of pi is three (see I Kings 7:23), that the entire universe is between six and eight thousand years old, and that the Earth itself is the center of the universe and does not move (witness Joshua commanding the Sun to "stand still.")
The Bible may be many things, but a science book it is not; Biblical literalists who would have people ignore science by sticking their fingers in their ears and loudly shouting "is not!!" are completely missing the boat. If you honestly believe in a God that will send you to hell for using the brains, curiosity, and common sense that you were given, well.. you've got some issues of your own to work through, I'm afraid.
#3.) Even if there was ETI, who says it would broadcast its existance via EM radiation?
See above. Who says that it wouldn't?
My advice:
Okay, here's some of my own:
Stop complaining. SETI's efforts are not using any of your resources, time, or tax dollars. You have absolutely no right to whine about what other people decide to do with the idle CPU cycles on their own machines. You do have the right to believe that SETI and its purpose are silly, and you can express that belief by choosing not to participate in SETI@Home.
Beyond that, why do you care? If you're right, then how has SETI@Home negatively affected you? Does it "chap your ass" (as Palmer Joss put it in Contact) that people are participating in an effort that you have some deep-seeded religious objections to?
It's not anything so simple as "if you don't need it, why run it." The simple fact of the matter is that the more services that your machine is running/has available, the more vulnerable it is to exploits in said server daemons. If all that you're running is httpd and sshd, then essentially, the only exploits that you're vulnerable to are exploits in the Web server itself (aside from DoS attacks and other vulnerabilities in the core operating system.)
On the other hand, if you're running inetd, you may be susceptible to a whole other range of exploits, depending on what services you have enabled. If telnet and/or rlogin are enabled, you're vulnerable to exploits in those daemons. (There was a bug in AIX four or five years ago that allowed anybody, anywhere to get complete root access with one simple "malformed" rlogin command!) Similarily, if you've got FTP enabled, you're opening yourself up to any and all exploits that may be present in ftpd.
The bottom line is that disabling unneeded services isn't just a good idea because they're unneeded. It's a good idea because it reduces the number of opportunities that script kiddies have to get at your machine. And if you don't need any of the services that are typically handled by inetd, then you don't need inetd.
Well, perhaps not the galaxy.. but didn't they lay claim to the Jovian satellite Europa? Oh wait.. I'm thinking of 2010: Odyssey Two. Pity about the loss of the crew, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I also got a kick out of "Point/Counterpoint: Reservoir Dogs is Fucking Awesome vs. Reservoir Dogs is the Best Movie Ever", and the funny piece they did on the "Midwest peace process" between Illinois and Wisconsin. Other than that, the other replies have pretty much listed all the rest of the classics.
Long live the Onion!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
CmdrTaco found the site to be hilarious ..
.. and numerous other posters have taken their free pot-shots at Christianity
.. but hey, it's the way things are. My advice: Take it with a grain of salt. Learn to laugh at "the dark side." South Park dishes up plenty of scathing social satire, and Christianity is by no means its only target.
Well, so did I. For crying out loud, this guy attacked 101 Dalmations for attempting to "elevate dogs" to the status of humans! That is hilarious. I don't care if it stems from some deep-seeded religious belief; it's just downright funny. It has nothing to do with Christianity per se. What if I put together a Web site proclaiming that THE GIANT PINK UNICORN IS COMING TO KILL US ALL? I'll bet you that a lot of the people that preach the obligatory "respect the views of others" would find that awfully amusing.
So in some ways, the ridicule that is being leveraged towards the CAP is not attacks on Christianity, but instead on the ridiculous views expressed by the reviewer. (And let's be honest, they are ridiculous; I would submit to you that there exist very few Christians that would condemn 101 Dalmations for the reasons given by the reviewer.)
Yes they have, some being a little less gracious and objective than others. I won't bother expanding on some of the commentary that has been given about Christianity being a popular target because of its status as the only major Western religion, or because its main "spokespeople" are often vociferous, intolerant, and bigoted, or any of the other reasons stated.
The bottom line is that when you have Jerry Falwell saying that the third Antichrist is among us and that he's a Jew, that makes Christianity look bad. When you have Fred Phelps and his "loving Christian Web site" http://www.godhatesfags.com, that makes Christianity look bad. And the list goes on. Now, nobody is saying that this is particularly fair. But it's pretty hard to argue that these things do make Christianity look bad, regardless of how diametrically opposed they may be to the hearts and minds of mainstream Christians.
But here's the thing. You said it yourself; the "potshots" are against Christianity, not Christians (or, at least, the cogent ones are.) Mainstream Christians go out of their way to distance themselves from the fundamentalist zealots that preach hatred and intolerance. You might consider that the "attacks" on Christianity are aimed at those same zealots, and not at the Christian population as a whole.
At any rate, one thing is clear: it is not the posters on Slashdot (and other forums) that paint the religion in a very unsavory manner. The extremist minority sects and fundamentalists do a more than adequate job at that. And again, I really don't think this is fair
Works for me.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the Centers for Disease Control and Cult of the Dead Cow have the same acronym?
The author of this article has apparently fallen into the trap that so many other people have; namely, the mindset that the larger a piece of software is, the better it must be. I base this conclusion off of the fact that he seems to correlate bloat with "nifty features" such as voice recognition and "HTML mail."
Is this the bloat you know? Because it isn't the bloat that I know.
We're seeing a trend in software, and it's not a Microsoft-only trend (although one might argue that Microsoft is perhaps the best example.) When you see version 2.0 of a product that has double the system requirements (disk space, memory, processor speed, etc.) of version 1.0, it's pretty hard to explain away the bloat as being "nifty new features" if version 2.0 only provides a few new pieces of functionality. This author would have us believe that if the system requirements of a particular package double from one version to another, then that means that the functionality/usefulness of the new version is double that of its predecessor?
Does anybody really believe that?
For a period of about eight years, I used AppleWorks to do most of my home productivity work. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with it, it was basically an integrated applications suite that contained a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a rudimentary database. The integration was pretty nice; you could insert spreadsheets into your WP documents and the database had features like the always-useful mail merge. And it fit on one side of a 5-1/4" floppy disk, which was 144K.
Now, nobody in their right mind is going to argue that AppleWorks is more powerful than Office 2000. But let's use the author's estimate that a full install of Office requires 200M of disk space (this seems a bit low to me, but what the hell.) By the author's assumption, this means that Office 2000 has 1,422 times the functionality of AppleWorks. Whee! Viva la Office!
It doesn't matter, really; he's preaching to the pew. Microsoft has a large base of loyal customers who have demonstrated time and again that they're really not interested in issues like this. And quite frankly, maybe it's because most of their customers simply don't know enough to complain. (It's hard to suggest this without sounding like an elitist bastard, I know.) In reality, maybe it's pretty tough to blame Microsoft for consistently cranking out some of the most shameless bloatware around. After all, if their customers don't care, then why should they?
The bottom line is this: if you have to "up" the processor requirements and grow your executable size by 20% to accomodate a new, sophisticated rendering engine, then that's one thing. But if you throw in a flight simulator, 600K of unused bitmaps, and a mishmash of other junk and then start complaining about "deadlines", that's something completely different. If it makes me a "whiner" or a "malcontent" to complain about the latter, then I guess I'm proud to stand among the rank-and-file of whiners and malcontents.
Sorry, Redmond; one of the reasons I don't use your stuff is because I don't want to buy a new machine every year. And guess what! Thanks to Linux, I don't have to.
Thank you, CAP, for showing the rest of the world how much of a bad influence The Phantom Menace really is! Even though they admit that "the ignominy in the movie should clearly be fantasy to the young and impressionable and should thus be easily redirected", methinks these people need some serious help.
Screw you guys, I'm a-goin' home.
If anything, we need more Christians "running the show" as it were. At least then there would be a little backbone and common decency .. Not to say that Christians are perfect, because I know I'm not, but at least they have a motive for trying to do more than meet their own selfish ambitions.
Oh, geez. Translation for those keeping score at home: "Christians are fundamentally better people than everybody else in the world." Those who wonder why Christianity is so oft-maligned these days would do well to examine statements such as this. If your claim is that non-Christians do nothing more than serve their own selfish ambitions, I would be happy to provide several counterexamples.
What do you all have against teaching children to focus on thoughts that are righteous and pure, and trying to protect them from what is impure?
The problem is that there is a group of people that has very definite ideas of what is "righteous and pure" and what is not, and would like very much to see these ideas imposed upon society as a whole. You said it yourself; you can't legislate morality. While it is the duty of every responsible parent to teach their children to be good and moral citizens of the planet, we can't toss around terms like "righteous" as if they have any concrete, set-in-stone meaning.
Getting back to the issue at hand, I don't think that we should be too hard on old Liddy; she is just saying the things that she thinks her base voters want to hear. However, like almost all politicians, she simply fails to understand the technical issues related to this. Filters, by and large, simply don't work very well. Keeping young children away from pornography is certainly a laudable goal, but until somebody comes up with a technically feasible way to do it without infringing on people's liberty, parents and educators are going to have to do the unthinkable and assume some responsibility for their children and students.
If the DOJ wins, it sends the clear message the US citizens have no rights, and exist only at the whim of thugs and their sycophants.
Yes, that's correct. If the government is successful in its case against a predatory company that is in obvious violation of existing anti-trust laws, we can expect to see the tanks rolling down Elm Street any day. Better throw down your guns and start waving white hankies!
Give me a break. If Microsoft broke the law, they must be held accountable. You can't picket the courthouse and scream "But I like that chatty paperclip!" and expect to get them off the hook.
TRIAL OF THE CENTURY COMING TO AN END
"Screw You All," Sputters Angry, Defiant Bill Gates
WASHINGTON, DC (AP) - After a flurry of controversy, dismissed jurors, televised fiascos, and general debauchery, the "trial of the century" between Microsoft and the Justice Department appears to be coming to a close. And while it looks as if Microsoft is gearing up to lose this one, nobody is quite sure of the outcome of a trial that has had so many interesting moments.
The biggest wild card in the trial was undoubtedly Ed Muth, the explosive Microsoft expert witness who raised several questions about the software company's predatory business practices. Grilled by government attorney F. Lee Bailey, Fuhrman vowed under oath that he had never used vile and offensive language to refer to Microsoft competitors.
"Have you ever used the phrase 'Macintrash' in the past ten years, Mr. Muth?" asked Bailey dramatically, to which Muth responded "No, I have not." Bailey then asked the question differently: "So if anybody says that you have used the word 'Macintrash', that person would be lying, wouldn't they, Mr. Muth, sir?" Muth affirmed the question with a simple "Yes, that's correct."
However, it was subsequently shown that Muth was lying when the defense played audio tapes of Muth's conversations with screenwriter Laura Hart McKinney. The tapes contained vile and often explicit language, condemning anybody who would dare to attempt competition with Microsoft. "This is a bombshell!" shrieked lead government attorney Joel Cochrane. "The jury must be allowed to hear these tapes!" In the end, Judge Thomas Penfield Ito allowed the jury to hear selected excerpts from the tapes. Muth later plead the fifth and apologized to the public for his comments. "My immature rantings with a screenwriter were never meant to be heard by anybody but the two of us," said Muth ruefully. "And I am ashamed."
But perhaps the most dramatic moment in the trial came when the government had Microsoft chairman Bill Gates attempt to place a piece of shrink wrap that had been found on the grounds of Sun Microsystems on a Windows 98 box. Gates had difficulty wrapping the material around the box, and clearly mouthed to the jurors, "It doesn't fit." Microsoft attorney Bill Neukom triumphantly told the jury that this was evidence of the company's innocence. "If it doesn't fit, the product's shit!" he proclaimed. But the jury appeared to downplay any effect the episode had on the case's outcome. A juror, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press: "What a ridiculous-looking bowtie that guy has."
The trial was not without its lighthearted moments, however. For a period of three days, surfer dude and Gates house guest Brian "Kato" Kaelin was on the stand, offering testimony on Microsoft's viscious stranglehold over the Solitaire market for personal computers.
Ziff-Davis contributed to this report.
.. and you knew where to get your OS."
ftp.kernel.org ?
Gee whiz, Mr. Wilson! Gollllly!
Since science admits when they are wrong. I guess I won't be hearing about Carbon dating anymore.
Other than the fact that you don't like the results that it gives, what problems do you have with carbon dating? Be specific.
I'm also glad to know that the whole layer dating issue is gone for good. Not to mention that a 2-year-old Biology book at college is still trying to show the horse/graffe argument.
Since I'm neither a geologist or a biologist, I guess I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Remember, if you keep cross breeding tomatos long enough, you'll eventually get a dog.
What scientific theories and/or disciplines make this prediction? Be specific.
There is a dinosaur fossil that has a human footprint in it too.
Oh, for crying out loud. Paluxy River, right? You might want to take some time and read through this, if you're so inclined.
One of the differences between scientists and creationists is that scientists acknowledge when their theories are wrong, and either refine or outright reject them and start looking elsewhere. As this "human footprint" evidence proves, the creationist response to being told that something is fraudulent is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout "is not!" Hint: Very few respectable creationists still try to use the Paluxy River "man tracks" as evidence that man and dinosaur co-existed.
I've got an NT workstation at work that sits alongside an NCD X terminal. The damned thing locks up approximately twice a day when I'm using Netscape Communicator 4.5. (It doesn't slow down, BSOD, or require me to kill off Netscape with the Task Manager .. it simply ceases to function and requires a cold boot to even get control back!)
:-)
The tech guys have been most helpful: "We think Communicator is buggy, so please try using IE instead." Now, if I had the time to adequately explain to them that a user application (buggy or not) should never be able to completely take down a "mission-critical" operating system, I suspect we wouldn't be using NT. However, since there are better things to do, I'll put up with a couple of reboots each day; a lot of times I'll just use the IRIX version of Communicator on my X terminal. So much for the environment that Dell's latest commercials goes so far as to call "unstoppable!"
Yes, I know that it's all my fault; that NT is likely "poorly configured" and that complete lockups are the price that I pay for my ignorance. It really doesn't matter, though. This box is going to be running Linux within a month or so.
My sole experience with trying to mount a completely bad floppy under Linux was that the drive busy indicator light went on momentarily, followed by a kernel panic. However, the system didn't hang for any noticeable length of time. And, of course, the panic didn't affect anything else on the rest of the system.
:-) )
(Incidentally, this is the only time that I have ever seen the Linux kernel panic in five years of using Linux; this was a 1.2-based kernel IIRC. Maybe I'm just lucky?
The primary bug that Morris' worm relied on, if I recall correctly, was a buffer overrun in the VAX version of finger ..
Actually, it was the BSD version of fingerd, but the rest is substantially correct. The one lesson that should have been learned from that whole fiasco is that gets() is a function that should never, ever be used; it provides no way to prevent a malicious program from overwriting its input buffer. Of all of the functions in the standard C library, gets() is probably the only one that can be blamed for billions of US dollars in collective damage over the years. It was certainly the primary culprit in the Morris worm.
It's interesting to note, however, that you still see books and even production code making use of gets(), and therefore encouraging its use! This must be stamped out immediately. Therefore, if you use gets() in production code, especially in mission-critical production code that's supposed to be secure, you are an utter, drooling imbecile. A decade after the Worm, you'd think there would have been some lessons learned, but as Heinlein wrote: "History teaches us that we learn nothing from history."
Read through some of the comments that others have written about the restrictions on network feeds on your satellite dish. What you basically have to do is convince your provider that you can receive the network no other way (i.e., you've got some interference or somesuch that prevents you from reception with an antenna.) Depending on the situation, you may or may not be able to "slide past" some of the regulations.
In the end, though, it's not all that difficult to just use an antenna. All you've got to do is press one button to switch back and forth, and if the networks are broadcasting with a sufficiently strong signal, you may even get a better picture than you do with cable.
.. if you want satellite Internet access, you've always got the option of using DirecPC (you can use that and DirecTV on the same dish.) However, there are some caveats. First and foremost, it's not particularly cheap, especially when you consider that you still have to keep your account with a local ISP (you obviously can't use your dish to send data upstream!) Also, there is no current Linux support, although according to a tech service person I corresponded with via e-mail, it is being "looked into."
We shall see.
I'm a DirecTV subscriber, and I would recommend looking into it. However, I have not had any experience with any of the other providers, and so my recommendation may be a bit skewed. As you would expect from a digital satellite system, the picture and sound are excellent, particularly when movies are shown in Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. (Don't skimp on your audio equipment; the up-front investment is worth it.) The pricing is reasonable, depending on what channels you want; you can go anywhere from $12.99/month (I think) for a "minimal" package to $47.99/month for the Total Choice Balls-To-The-Wall package.
.. but don't think you'll be able to tune to Fox Sports Arizona and watch a Diamondbacks game live .. if you want to do that, you'll have to buy the MLB Extra Innings package. The same thing goes for NFL, NBA, etc. Still, I enjoy watching all the local sports-talk programs, even if I can't watch most of the games as they happen.
Also keep in mind that DirecTV is merging with USSB, which provides all of the "major" premium channels such as HBO, Showtime, Skinemax, etc. DirecTV currently provides four channels of Starz and eight channels of Encore, along with the Independent Film Channel and a couple of other "premium" networks. If you combine DirecTV with USSB (as I have) you'll have more premium movie channels than you can possibly deal with.
DirecTV is pretty much the acknowledged leader when it comes to sports. You can get, at your option, several regional sports networks
As far as the Big Four networks are concerned, you can pretty much forget receiving them via your dish, unless you can demonstrate that it is impossible for you to receive them with an antenna. (After all, they can't have you watching CBS or NBC and not seeing the local advertisements, can they?) If you want to discontinue your cable service, your best bet is to just pick up an antenna. If the networks in your area broadcast at any reasonable strength, a small pair of "rabbit ears" should be all you really need. This is all that I use, and the quality of the reception rivals the quality of the cable picture! Reception of network TV via antenna is not nearly as antiquated a notion as it seems.
Finally, another thing I like about DirecTV is the pay-per-view movie channels. Channels 100-199 are all recent movies that have hit the video stores; by pressing a couple of buttons on your remote, you can watch one at your leisure for $2.99, which is what you would pay for a new release at Blockbuster. Once you "buy" a movie, you can watch it for up to twelve hours, so if you get interrupted you can always go back and see parts of it again later. You also get a coupon every month good for $2.50 off a pay-per-view purchase, so if you only watch one movie a month, you get it for $0.49. Not too bad of a deal.
Anyway, these are just some observations. I'm sure that subscribers of other dish providers can offer some similar ones.
Could you name the huge, expensive satellites that SETI is using? The bulk of SETI's work is done with Earth-based radio telescopes that they either lease time on, use at academic institutions, or own outright. Or if SETI uses, for example, observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope, does that mean that the huge Hubble bill is all for the benefit of SETI? :-)
The bottom line is, again, that SETI is privately funded and it has been for quite some time. The funding for SETI was taken away in 1993 by an amendment written by Nevada Senator Richard Byran. (And at that time, SETI funding was less than one tenth of one percent of NASA's budget!) Complaining about SETI is like complaining about Jerry Seinfeld owning dozens of Porsches. They've got the money, it's not yours, and they can do what they want with it.
Are we just going to burn them and their demon friends at the steak?
.. steak! Make mine medium, please!
Mmmm
What about the parents of these hellspawn?
Excellent point! What role does ancestry play in situations like this? For example, if your mother is half German, a quarter Irish, and a quarter Hellspawn, and if your father is half Norwegian and half Hellspawn, are both equally as responsible if you blow up a busload of nuns? Or does your father receive a disproportionate amount of punishment due to his more pronounced Hellspawn heritage?
Are we going to have priests do excorcisms after the metal detectors at school?!
Do 'em over the phone! Just like The Sins Of Kilty O'Neal!
All kidding aside, I agree completely; saying "Well, these kids did what they did because there was something evil inside of them" accomplishes nothing. Oh sure, it may play well to the pews. But it does nothing practical to explain situations like Littleton, and more importantly, it does nothing to prevent further tragedies. Let's put our collective heads together and think rationally for a bit before we start having school drinking fountains dispense holy water.
Well, this is probably a troll, but what the hell ..
.. you've got some issues of your own to work through, I'm afraid.
#1.) The probability of intelligent life "evolving" (let alone more than once within the range of minimal detectable signal strength of the SETI satellites) is statistically absurd.
Elaborate. People often point out that in any advanced society, "radio will be a short-lived phenomenon", and then demonstrate that we are rapidly moving towards digital communications. This is true. These same people conclude, then, that looking for alien EM signals is a waste of time. These same people neglect to mention, however, that even if all of our communications were digital, the Earth would still be very radio-noisy; the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) is detectable for well beyond a thousand light-years. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that we can go without BMEWS just yet.
#2.) If God had created intelligent life elsewhere and there was any chance of we humans finding it, don't you think he'd have let us know?
Sigh. Let us know how? Through the Bible? This is the same book that states that the value of pi is three (see I Kings 7:23), that the entire universe is between six and eight thousand years old, and that the Earth itself is the center of the universe and does not move (witness Joshua commanding the Sun to "stand still.")
The Bible may be many things, but a science book it is not; Biblical literalists who would have people ignore science by sticking their fingers in their ears and loudly shouting "is not!!" are completely missing the boat. If you honestly believe in a God that will send you to hell for using the brains, curiosity, and common sense that you were given, well
#3.) Even if there was ETI, who says it would broadcast its existance via EM radiation?
See above. Who says that it wouldn't?
My advice:
Okay, here's some of my own:
Stop complaining. SETI's efforts are not using any of your resources, time, or tax dollars. You have absolutely no right to whine about what other people decide to do with the idle CPU cycles on their own machines. You do have the right to believe that SETI and its purpose are silly, and you can express that belief by choosing not to participate in SETI@Home.
Beyond that, why do you care? If you're right, then how has SETI@Home negatively affected you? Does it "chap your ass" (as Palmer Joss put it in Contact) that people are participating in an effort that you have some deep-seeded religious objections to?
If so, please ignore it.
It's not anything so simple as "if you don't need it, why run it." The simple fact of the matter is that the more services that your machine is running/has available, the more vulnerable it is to exploits in said server daemons. If all that you're running is httpd and sshd, then essentially, the only exploits that you're vulnerable to are exploits in the Web server itself (aside from DoS attacks and other vulnerabilities in the core operating system.)
On the other hand, if you're running inetd, you may be susceptible to a whole other range of exploits, depending on what services you have enabled. If telnet and/or rlogin are enabled, you're vulnerable to exploits in those daemons. (There was a bug in AIX four or five years ago that allowed anybody, anywhere to get complete root access with one simple "malformed" rlogin command!) Similarily, if you've got FTP enabled, you're opening yourself up to any and all exploits that may be present in ftpd.
The bottom line is that disabling unneeded services isn't just a good idea because they're unneeded. It's a good idea because it reduces the number of opportunities that script kiddies have to get at your machine. And if you don't need any of the services that are typically handled by inetd, then you don't need inetd.
Well, perhaps not the galaxy .. but didn't they lay claim to the Jovian satellite Europa? Oh wait .. I'm thinking of 2010: Odyssey Two. Pity about the loss of the crew, though.