Slack gives you a nice command line environment, but it's not worth my time anymore until its package manager can resolve dependencies.
I first started using Slackware Linux when you had to download multiple floppies to install it. I really liked Slack because it was a great way to learn Linux. I stopped using it because it was pretty difficult to upgrade versions.
I switched to Red Hat because you could get books containing an installation CD-ROM. Afterward I switched to Mandrake because it was RPM-based and had a bigger set of userland tools than Red Hat. I stuck with Mandrake until about version 10.
Afterward I started using CentOS due to the availability of third-party repos like RPMForge and EPEL. I recently switched to Scientific Linux due to them bringing out the latest version months before CentOS did. Half of my boxes now run Scientific Linux 6.
My other Linux boxes are now running Arch Linux, which reminds me a lot of Slack. Arch uses a rolling release model and it has pacman, an excellent package manager that handles dependencies really well. If you like Slack but are frustrated by a lack of a package manager that handles dependencies you should really give Arch a try...
You did not have to tell us that, it is quite obvious from your post.
I do not like having to patch my kernel... < to yadda, yadda, yadda >
I AM a professional Linux systems administrator and I have never had to do any of what you described over the last 15 years I have used Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch and various other distributions).
Maybe if you chose supported hardware you would not have this issue? You don't seem to mind having to buy supported hardware to run your precious OS-X.
I do not like having two(!) different sound systems being installed, and my system still not always have sound.
Checks current systems -- ALSA works fine for me out of the box. Extra sound system? I am a control freak so I got in the habit of building my systems up from a minimal install which means that I don't install that POS called Pulse Audio. I will admit that there are little pieces of OSS lying around but they never seem to get in the way.
Linux usability? I'm sorry it sucks. It always sucked. I used GNOME...
That is your problem there. GNOME sucks, not Linux. KDE has gotten as bloated as Windows so it is starting to suck too. Fluxbox rules!
1. It's hard. It's hard to do it right. It takes resources. It takes time. It takes expertise...
Hmmm... I am currently running CentOS on most of my multimedia boxes, mainly because I support Red Hat servers at work. Let's see, minimal CentOS install, install the RPM Forge repo RPM, yum install [fluxbox, vlc, etc.]. Not exactly rocket science there buddy!
As far as resources, if you are speaking hardware I have a P-II 300 running Fluxbox on Ubuntu in my workshop. The result is sweet, sweet music while I work on my carpentry projects. Can you even get OS-X to run on older hardware? I'll bet you need a CPU made within the last two to three years to get OS-X to install much less run.
Linux doesn't have the resources when it comes to interfaces, and everyday office software.
How many interfaces does the Mac have? One? There are plenty for Linux, it is the user's choice as to what to run. Choice is good.
As far as office software, Open Office works great for me. I even put it on my Vista laptop because the stupid new MS Office ribbon menu UI sucks big time.
There's no coherent feel, beyond shoddy. You'd think after all these years, someone would get it right, but they never have, because of #1.
All my boxes have a feel that is exactly right for me, because I know how to set them up that way. They are all internally coherent, which is all that matters to me.
I don't like having to run my computers the same way everyone else does because Jobs or Gates/Ballmer dictates that is how it has to be. And I sure as hell don't like having to pay for additional software to do simple stuff like changing the stupid Office ribbon menu UI into the old-school UI I prefer to use.
Desktop Linux can go die in an alley and rot, for all I care. Anything beyond a server, and it's worthless.
If you want to give Apple all that $$$ that is your business, I prefer to keep my $$$. Just because you are a major FAIL when it comes to setting up Linux does not mean that Linux is worthless to others.
My company and my school both use MS Office, so thats what I use. Its a PIA to transfer documents back and forth, the formatting always gets screwed up, just not worth it.
Maybe its just me but I would prefer to read a poorly-formatted article with actual content in it rather than a nicely-formatted one containing no content at all. As far as your brain goes, the first is a good meal and the second is only empty calories.
My preferred way of making documents? I use SSH to tunnel to a VNC session running on a server and then use OpenOffice on the server. Any Windows machine I use only needs a copy of puTTY and VNCviewer available before I can get to work.
The nice thing about doing it this way is that all my documents remain on the server. To me the big PIA is having to move documents between computers at work, school and home in order to work on those documents in those different places. Using OpenOffice on the server means no more unnecessary moving of the documents from computer to computer.
Another thing I like is how VNC saves the state of your session. You can be in the middle of a working on a document and then find out you need to go to another location. You close the vncviewer and the next time you open up the vncviewer again you will be where you last left off.
One disadvantage is that in order to access your documents you have to be on a computer connected to a network. I find that these days whenever I am at work or at school it is rare to find a non-network-connected PC. If I need to get on the network while away from home I can always go to a Starbucks and grab a cup of coffee while connecting to the network from there.
Another downside is that printing is a pain. I haven't bothered to set up remote printing yet, that is on my to-do list. If I need to distribute a document I will usually export it to a PDF file and send that out as an email attachment. PDF is a good format to send to others because everyone has a PDF viewer.
I also use Open Office on my only Windows machine, a Vista laptop. I do not want to run any bootleg software nor do I want to pay for a copy of MS Office. On the most part Open Office under both Linux and Windows works well for me on a day-to-day basis.
I have had only minor formatting problems with documents when transferring files between computers if they have been saved in the older Word 97/2000 format. Unless you are doing some funky document formatting the older Word format should also work reasonably well for you.
I have been receiving more.docx files these days, the odf-converter-integrator plug-in really helps as far as allowing me to import those files into Open Office. If I need to work on those documents I will convert them into the older Word 97/2000 format before working on them.
If your formatting is constantly having problems then I suggest you look into using styles to format your document. If you use a style sheet to define the look of your document it will convert more cleanly which means fewer problems with the formatting breaking on you.
"For xenophobia there are two main objects of the phobia. The first is a population group present within a society that is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, pogroms, or in the worst case, genocide."
Genocide as a survival instinct? That is a new one on me.
Closet racist - !?!?!? You are the first to suggest I am. So far, none of my friends has accused me of that -- White, Indian, Asian, or (for lack of a better term), my friends with dark skin who are neither American nor African.
Having non-White "friends" does not automatically make you a non-racist. Here is an idea, why don't you tell your non-White "friends" that xenophobia is a "survival instinct" and see how well they receive the news. I'll bet your non-White "friends" will start having second thoughts about your alleged lack of racism...
Are all white men bad? Are all other people good?... If your evil "White Men" did not allow women to vote, who voted to give them the right? Could there perhaps be white men who truly believe all people were created equal? (I know there are.)
Don't be putting words in my mouth. I did not say all White people were bad. I did not use the word "evil" anywhere.
While it is true that White males did give women the right to vote it was not until over 100 years after the US was founded. Also, Black and Hispanic males did not get to vote on allowing women to vote because they were not allowed to vote freely until almost 200 years after the US was founded.
"Capitalism is all about greed and selfishness" - Another Communist lie.
There you go putting words in my mouth again. Where did I say I was a Communist and/or supporter of Communism?
Why is it that 99% of the countries that have tried Communism has [sic] failed dramatically?
Way to pull numbers out of your ass. Do you have a reference backing up your assertion that "99% of the countries that have tried Communism have failed dramatically?" (this [sic] is also for subject-verb agreement).
Communist [sic] always advocate the the redistribution of wealth -- when will they figure out how to generate it on their own? (i.e. without stealing and murdering from the people who scrimped and saved.)
Again, I said nothing about redistribution of wealth. That is why I have to keep questioning your reading comprehension skills (again the [sic] is for subject-verb agreement).
To get back on topic, don't you think that when Enron tanked that the capitalists running that company stole from its employees and stockholders? You don't think that the capitalists running the companies in trouble right now are stealing when they take huge bonuses as they run their companies into the ground?
And isn't capitalism supposed to be about the survival of the fittest in the marketplace? Don't you think that the bailouts being given to AIG and the auto industry are "redistribution of wealth" albeit on a much larger scale?
A wise man once told me, "Before embracing a philosophy, check out the life of the philosopher." (Can he live out his value system?) Marx sure didn't. Neither did Stalin nor Mao.
Stop taking into account skin color when you judge someone and perhaps if enough people stop giving a damn what melanin content their fellows have we can move beyond this bigotry.
As a Chicano skin color is not important to me, I have family members that range from light-skinned to dark-skinned. It does seem to matter a lot to White people, especially from the US South. I spent two years in Georgia while in the Army and boy was I glad to get out of that unenlightened hellhole. Even though that was over 20 years ago not much has changed in the South since then.
While its important to not forget the past there is no need to bring it into the present.
The only way not to bring the past into the present is to forget it. Why is it that Whites in the South can keep bringing up their past by pointing to their Confederate ancestors but when I try to bring up the past I am accused of being racist?
If anyone is racist it is those from the South, while the descendants of the Confederates keep talking about "states rights" that is only code for "keep the Blacks enslaved". The Confederates were fighting in part for states to have the right to keep certain people as property; however, the descendants of the Confederates are too intellectually dishonest to admit that their ancestors were fighting to keep Blacks enslaved.
Cut the racial crap, we live in a messed up but still wonderful country and the people who founded it were not perfect... The American dream of working hard and succeeding is alive and well and its color blind.
Do have proof of this dubious assertion? If so bring out your facts. Here are the facts according to the US Census Bureau:
Median income (2006) --------------------- Whites - $50,673 Blacks - $31,969 Hispanics - $37,781
Income $100,000 and over (2006) ----------------- Whites - 20.2% Blacks - 9.1% Hispanics - 10.5%
If the US was truly color blind then these numbers would even. An before you blame education for the lack of equality in these statistics remember that Blacks and Hispanics tend to have crappier schools than Whites.
Speaking of color blindness, blindness is considered a handicap in most cases, why not in this case? Why is it that Whites can celebrate their culture and proudly point to being descended from Scottish or Irish or German or French people? Why is it when Blacks and Hispanics say they are proud of their heritage they are accused of being racist? That is a big double standard there.
Besides if you are color blind then you are ignoring a large part of who I am and where I came from. You are also consciously denying any contributions that Mexico and Spain had in the past in building the US.
The answer is not to ignore race but to not make negative judgments based on race and that has to start with the Whites. For example, the KKK has been around since the 1800's and yet they still exist. If Whites truly valued color-blindness then you would think that he first place to start changing things would be with their White brothers and sisters.
To me "color blindness" is code for me to become White. Dress like Whites do, speak like Whites do, believe like Whites do. Now if I do that because I want to do so that is one thing but when success in the US is predicated on that concept then you are forcing me to become White to succeed in this country. There is another word for that, tyranny...
I realize the Founding Fathers were not perfect. The founding of America was a step in the right direction.
Again, you need to qualify: a step in the right direction for White males.
Slavery existed in Africa long before slaves were sold in the Americas. People fought, bled and died to outlaw it in the U.S. It still exists in Africa and other parts of the world and I understand it is on the rise. (For the record, I believe it was and still is despicable.)
The topic was that of slavery in the United States, not slavery anywhere else. If you want to talk about slavery elsewhere, did you know that Mexico outlawed slavery in 1828, more than 30 years before the US did? And without having to fight a long, bloody war?
Did you know that it was illegal to own slaves in Texas yet the White male descendants of the "Founding Fathers" illegally imported slaves when they settled in Texas? And that one of the first things they did after the gaining "independence" for Texas was to re-institute slavery of Blacks?
Japanese -- Wow! I did NOT know the founding fathers threw Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Tell me, which one of the Founding Fathers was still alive in 1942?
I said: OK, your "Founding Fathers" and the nation they founded. Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills?
And then there is a survival instinct called xenophobia.
Hah! Xenophobia as a survival instinct, that is a good one. Maybe you need read up on nativism in the US during the 1800's. How was keeping out non-Whites from the US a survival instinct? This makes you sound like a closet racist or a subconscious racist.
The point of my original post was to point out that Communism and Fascism are inherently selfish and greedy. They never helped anyone except the party elite.
And capitalism is not about selfishness and greed? The economy is currently in the toilet because of selfishness and greed. The sad part is that much of the selfishness and greed was by the White male descendants of the "Founding Fathers" who make up the elites that currently control many of the financial and governmental institutions in the US.
The Founding Fathers were unusual. They were men of wealth and power. They were NOT greedy. They gave up their time, wealth, and power to establish something better for everyone.
OK, so you claim the "Founding Fathers" gave up their wealth and power. So why is it that it took over 240 years to elect a non-White president? Why is it that the elites are still disproportionately made up of White males? Why is it that today poverty disproportionately affects non-Whites?
I'll bet that you fancy yourself a libertarian and that you believe that the US is about the potential for individual success no matter who you are or where you come from. If that is so then it must be the moral failings of non-Whites as to why non-Whites are not doing as well as Whites are here in the US.
Like I said above, either you are a closet racist or a subconscious racist if you do not see that the condition of non-Whites today is due in large part to 240+ years of this country favoring Whites over non-Whites. I would rather believe that you are not racist and that you are just the victim of a piss-poor US educational system.
Yes, it was not perfect. They could not agree to abolish slavery in the new country. (Many of the Founding Fathers were against it.)
It was not that the "Founding Fathers" COULD NOT abolish slavery it is that they WOULD NOT abolish slavery. All that was missing was the WILL to do so.
Had the "Founding Fathers" done so then I would be agreeing with you as to their greatness. However, since they did n
OK, your "Founding Fathers" and the nation they founded:
1) did not allow White females to own property and vote 2) owned Black Americans as property 3) instituted a policy of genocide towards Native Americans 4) killed innocent Mexican Americans and stole their land 5) threw Japanese Americans in concentration camps
I think the examples above illustrate my point that your point is valid as long as you are talking about White males.
And no, pointing out racism does not make one a racist...
The bottom line difference between Fascism and Communism is labels. Both are murderous tyrants. Bandits.
The historic clash between Communism and Fascists was about who would get credit for the creating a worldwide utopian society. Mostly it was over which set of elite get the power and money.
Contrast that to people like the Founding Fathers. George Washington could have been king, but gave up his power and wealth to create something greater. They never advocated a Utopian society. They just wanted a place where WHITE MALES were allowed to live a life without without tyranny.
It's funny how the fanboi mentality works (and not as a valid argument, mind you)
MS creates a browser (and packages it w/ their OS)
Everyone is up in arms. ZOMG monopoly!
Microsoft did not just package IE with Windows, it illegally tied the it to Windows where the user had no choice about it being installed and they could not remove it easily. The US and EU governments have investigated and have accused Microsoft of being a monopoly, it is not just fanbois making that accusation.
Sound more like an incessantly nagging spouse on a power trip please...
You yourself are either a fanboi or an astroturfer. I mean come on, a content-free post complaining about other computer users complaining about the software installed on THEIR computers?
If you are an astroturfer, does Microsoft pay well? If you are doing this for free why? Why do you feel compelled to defend a large faceless corporation like Microsoft? Especially given their past criminal behavior?
Too bad you can't channel all that time and energy into some productive activities that benefit humankind instead...
A recent study by a Australian university claims that intensive use of marijuana reduces brain size up to 20% (that's missing neurons).
...
I have to post as AC because most modders dislike this opinions (drug addition problems) and rate them as flamebait.
You don't HAVE to post a AC, you just did because you don't have the courage to stand up for your convictions.
A quick read of the article you linked to pointed out some problems with the "study":
1) The person conducting the study is "Professor Jon Currie [who] is the director of addiction medicine at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne". A professor of "addiction medicine" who wants people to stop doing drugs can hardly be considered an unbiased researcher.
2) The study size was only 15 which is considered way too small. Also, I doubt the sample was randomly selected, so most likely there is some selection bias going on. Did the people studied only include White people? Were any Black, Asian or Hispanics also studied? If not then the sample is definitely suffering from selection bias.
3) It does not sound like any MRIs were taken on those being studied before the study began. Without measuring the brains of those studied beforehand how can you state without a doubt that those studied had suffered from any brain shrinkage at all? Maybe those selected had shrunken brains before the study began and their brain sizes did not change very much if at all during the period in question.
4) If there was brain shrinkage how can you say it was due to cannabis? Did the 15 people studied also drink alcohol? Smoked tobacco products? Did cocaine? Did crystal meth? Did LSD? Did ecstasy? Abused prescription drugs? The article does not mention MRIs being taking on a non-drug-using control group either.
5) And last but not least, we have Slashdot mantra #1: CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION! This study may provide some correlation but that is about it. You cannot say there is any causation until similar studies show similar correlations. Even then if the supporting studies use small samples suffering from selection bias and no control groups then they would be just as useless as this study seems to be.
You should study a little statistics and examine these kinds of issues before you validate any studies that try to use statistics to "prove" anything...
My question is this: These days, how well do Mandriva systems do as time goes forward and you update and upgrade things? Should you decide to manually config things, will the GUI tools handle it seamlessly or barf obnoxiously?
I had a box at work (a small web server) that I upgraded from 2005 Free to 2006 Free and only a few things broke. Most of the problems I could fix pretty easily using the GUI tools, but some of the stuff needed fixing through the command line.
I tried to upgrade that same box to 2007 Free and LOTS of stuff broke. The biggest problem was that Apache went from 2.0 to 2.2, which broke a lot of web-related stuff. Since the main reason I was using Mandriva on that web server was because it was extremely easy to update I was disappointed when I found out it updated Apache to 2.2 without giving me a choice about the matter.
I ended up having to futz with that box to try to get it to work right once again and after spending about eight hours trying to get it fixed I finally gave up. I ended up installing CentOS Server 4.4 on that box; believe it or not it took less time to get CentOS configured the way I wanted than the eight hours I had wasted trying to fix the problems that arose with Mandriva 2007.
Don't get me wrong, I am still a big fan of Mandriva but I am still deciding whether I should go the upgrade route with my 2006 box at home or if I should reinstall from scratch. I will probably add another hard drive and do a new installation. Good thing I went to separate/etc/home and/var partitions years ago!
I still keep the faith in american people. When the objectives are correct (ie. science, progress, etc) and not dirty (ie. war, money) no other country in the world can match the american spirit.
I am an American and you just made me LOL. While it is true that historically the Americans have kicked ass in science, that scientific progress was not always accomplished through ethical means. Read up on the Tuskegee experiment to see what I mean...
I prefer Mr Bush's version - "we ought to make the pie higher."
(I'm still not sure why people ridicule that one. Increasing the height of a pie will surely increase the volume of each slice just as effectively as increasing its radius will...)
It is an proper-English-usage thing. While it is true that the three dimensions are length X width X height, if the height of one pie is greater than another people usually don't say that one pie is higher than another, they usually say that it one pie is taller than the other.
Think about it this way, if there were three shelves, one 2 units high, one 4 units high, and one 6 units high, a pie on the second shelf is higher than a pie on the first shelf, and a pie on the third shelf is higher than both the pie on the first shelf as well as the pie on the second shelf.
Economically, if you liken wealth to height, because the poor have fewer wealth units they could be considered short, the middle class would be mid-height, and since the rich have a lot of wealth units they could be considered tall. Which pie would be within reach of all? The lowest one, as the highest pie would only be reachable by the wealthy.
In my mind, while most of the mangled English of Bush's can be attributed to his being an idiot, this particular mis-statement can also be considered a Freudian slip as his desire to keep the pie higher accurately reflects his wish that only the wealthy supporters of the Republican Party should be able to benefit from his economic policies...
where in the constitution does it say anything about habeas corpus specificly... i have been looking and find nothing saying habeas corpus is this...
Maybe you should RTFA:
Similarly, Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that "the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English law principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.
I'm guessing a law punishing people for speaking unconstitionally would certainly violate the first amendment.
The GP did not say anything about a new law limiting unconstitutional speech, only application of existing laws against treason to those speaking (and acting) in a treasonous manner.
I personally think you have come up with a new definition for IRONY: defending the First Amendment rights of an Attorney General who does not believe those First Amendment rights exist in the first place!
What I want? I want an absolute free nation with as little government as humanaly possible. Kinda like the one we had that made this nation the richest on earth in such a short time.. 1789 to 1913... capitalism and liberty... ya, cant go wrong with freedom my friend.
Absolute free nation? Liberty? Freedom? Maybe to the White man! It is not the Constitution that has "holes" in it, it is your knowledge of history as you seem to have forgotten about a few events that occurred between 1789 and 1913: How about the attempted genocide of the Native Americans and the death of many Mexicans during the land grab that occurred due to "Manifest Destiny"? Or a little institution involving African Americans called "slavery" where human beings were considered property solely due to the color of their skin?
Jeez, whatever you are smoking I'd like some. Maybe then I could forget that our constitutional rights are rapidly disappearing due to the fact there is an idiot in the White House who trumped up a bogus "War on Terror" which scared the citizens of this nation to willingly give up those rights in the first place!
Although I use VMWare for Win2K, if you don't want to pay for VMWare Workstation, you can use MS's VirtualPC for free while supplies last.
While I haven't had a chance to play with Virtual PC yet (mainly because I don't like running Windows as the host OS), unless you are running W2K3 Server Enterprise Edition as the host OS you will need a Windows license for the host as well as one for the virtual machine. That extra licensing cost for Windows is one reason why I prefer to use Linux as the host OS.
The VMware Player and VMWare Server products are both free (as in beer) to use. I find that the stripped down Server version of CentOS works wonderfully as the host OS and I use VMware to run Windows 98, 2000, XP and W2K3 Server virtual machines. As a matter of fact at work I am moving most of my servers to VMware Server both to better utilize the hardware we have as well as to simplify backing up those servers.
VMware Server is also available in a Windows version if you decide to use Windows as the host OS; while VMware recommends you run it on a Server verion of Windows you can successfully run it on a desktop version of Windows. You just need to ignore the warning that VMware server gives you, it is related to an artifical limitation imposed by Microsoft on IIS (only one website can be run on IIS on the desktop version of Windows, stopping the default website will allow the VMware management interface to run just fine).
Most of the problems I have when driving are with White poople yakking on cell phones when they should be paying attention to their driving. Yet I am not stupid enough to say all White people are shitty drivers...
A similar thing happened when a gangster thug by the name of Pancho Villa came across the southern border a half century later.
You obviously don't know history as well as you think you do. Pancho Villa was a General in charge of revolutionary troops in the northern part of Mexico. George Washington was a General in charge of revolutionary troops in the U.S. If Pancho Villa was a "gangster thug" then George Washington was one too...
Any of the paid upgrades (10.0 to 10.2, 10.2 to 10.3, and 10.3 to 10.4) have had multiple times the number of updates (both behind the scenes and in terms of system apps) that ANY of MS's "upgrades" have had (95 to 98, 2000 to XP, and coming "soon", XP to Vista).
I agree with you, Micro$oft sometimes makes you pay for service packs.
I don't know why you are even telling me this, Windoze sucks! The only reason I use Windoze is because I have to at work.
I am a Linux user and have not paid for a service pack in years...
Slashdot Mirror
Slack gives you a nice command line environment, but it's not worth my time anymore until its package manager can resolve dependencies.
I first started using Slackware Linux when you had to download multiple floppies to install it. I really liked Slack because it was a great way to learn Linux. I stopped using it because it was pretty difficult to upgrade versions.
I switched to Red Hat because you could get books containing an installation CD-ROM. Afterward I switched to Mandrake because it was RPM-based and had a bigger set of userland tools than Red Hat. I stuck with Mandrake until about version 10.
Afterward I started using CentOS due to the availability of third-party repos like RPMForge and EPEL. I recently switched to Scientific Linux due to them bringing out the latest version months before CentOS did. Half of my boxes now run Scientific Linux 6.
My other Linux boxes are now running Arch Linux, which reminds me a lot of Slack. Arch uses a rolling release model and it has pacman, an excellent package manager that handles dependencies really well. If you like Slack but are frustrated by a lack of a package manager that handles dependencies you should really give Arch a try...
er... I had some less than greater than signs in that /. felt the need to edit out.
You need to use HTML character entities:
< is <
> is >
More info: HTML character entities
That said, I am not a sysadmin...
You did not have to tell us that, it is quite obvious from your post.
I do not like having to patch my kernel... < to yadda, yadda, yadda >
I AM a professional Linux systems administrator and I have never had to do any of what you described over the last 15 years I have used Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch and various other distributions).
Maybe if you chose supported hardware you would not have this issue? You don't seem to mind having to buy supported hardware to run your precious OS-X.
I do not like having two(!) different sound systems being installed, and my system still not always have sound.
Checks current systems -- ALSA works fine for me out of the box. Extra sound system? I am a control freak so I got in the habit of building my systems up from a minimal install which means that I don't install that POS called Pulse Audio. I will admit that there are little pieces of OSS lying around but they never seem to get in the way.
Linux usability? I'm sorry it sucks. It always sucked. I used GNOME...
That is your problem there. GNOME sucks, not Linux. KDE has gotten as bloated as Windows so it is starting to suck too. Fluxbox rules!
1. It's hard. It's hard to do it right. It takes resources. It takes time. It takes expertise...
Hmmm... I am currently running CentOS on most of my multimedia boxes, mainly because I support Red Hat servers at work. Let's see, minimal CentOS install, install the RPM Forge repo RPM, yum install [fluxbox, vlc, etc.]. Not exactly rocket science there buddy!
As far as resources, if you are speaking hardware I have a P-II 300 running Fluxbox on Ubuntu in my workshop. The result is sweet, sweet music while I work on my carpentry projects. Can you even get OS-X to run on older hardware? I'll bet you need a CPU made within the last two to three years to get OS-X to install much less run.
Linux doesn't have the resources when it comes to interfaces, and everyday office software.
How many interfaces does the Mac have? One? There are plenty for Linux, it is the user's choice as to what to run. Choice is good.
As far as office software, Open Office works great for me. I even put it on my Vista laptop because the stupid new MS Office ribbon menu UI sucks big time.
There's no coherent feel, beyond shoddy. You'd think after all these years, someone would get it right, but they never have, because of #1.
All my boxes have a feel that is exactly right for me, because I know how to set them up that way. They are all internally coherent, which is all that matters to me.
I don't like having to run my computers the same way everyone else does because Jobs or Gates/Ballmer dictates that is how it has to be. And I sure as hell don't like having to pay for additional software to do simple stuff like changing the stupid Office ribbon menu UI into the old-school UI I prefer to use.
Desktop Linux can go die in an alley and rot, for all I care. Anything beyond a server, and it's worthless.
If you want to give Apple all that $$$ that is your business, I prefer to keep my $$$. Just because you are a major FAIL when it comes to setting up Linux does not mean that Linux is worthless to others.
By the way, I checked out your hacks to get MacOSX to boot on non-Apple hardware link. I don't have to perform ANY hacks to get Linux to work on my PCs.
The procedures listed on that page ARE system administration tasks and relatively advanced ones at that. Besides, I th
My company and my school both use MS Office, so thats what I use. Its a PIA to transfer documents back and forth, the formatting always gets screwed up, just not worth it.
Maybe its just me but I would prefer to read a poorly-formatted article with actual content in it rather than a nicely-formatted one containing no content at all. As far as your brain goes, the first is a good meal and the second is only empty calories.
My preferred way of making documents? I use SSH to tunnel to a VNC session running on a server and then use OpenOffice on the server. Any Windows machine I use only needs a copy of puTTY and VNCviewer available before I can get to work.
The nice thing about doing it this way is that all my documents remain on the server. To me the big PIA is having to move documents between computers at work, school and home in order to work on those documents in those different places. Using OpenOffice on the server means no more unnecessary moving of the documents from computer to computer.
Another thing I like is how VNC saves the state of your session. You can be in the middle of a working on a document and then find out you need to go to another location. You close the vncviewer and the next time you open up the vncviewer again you will be where you last left off.
One disadvantage is that in order to access your documents you have to be on a computer connected to a network. I find that these days whenever I am at work or at school it is rare to find a non-network-connected PC. If I need to get on the network while away from home I can always go to a Starbucks and grab a cup of coffee while connecting to the network from there.
Another downside is that printing is a pain. I haven't bothered to set up remote printing yet, that is on my to-do list. If I need to distribute a document I will usually export it to a PDF file and send that out as an email attachment. PDF is a good format to send to others because everyone has a PDF viewer.
I also use Open Office on my only Windows machine, a Vista laptop. I do not want to run any bootleg software nor do I want to pay for a copy of MS Office. On the most part Open Office under both Linux and Windows works well for me on a day-to-day basis.
I have had only minor formatting problems with documents when transferring files between computers if they have been saved in the older Word 97/2000 format. Unless you are doing some funky document formatting the older Word format should also work reasonably well for you.
I have been receiving more .docx files these days, the odf-converter-integrator plug-in really helps as far as allowing me to import those files into Open Office. If I need to work on those documents I will convert them into the older Word 97/2000 format before working on them.
If your formatting is constantly having problems then I suggest you look into using styles to format your document. If you use a style sheet to define the look of your document it will convert more cleanly which means fewer problems with the formatting breaking on you.
"Elite [sic]" - How did I misspell it?
Elites, it is plural. It is not one elite but a set of elites that run this place (look up subject-verb agreement).
Xenophobia - The dictionary definition is a fear of unfamiliar things. That is why I call it a survival instinct.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia:
"For xenophobia there are two main objects of the phobia. The first is a population group present within a society that is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, pogroms, or in the worst case, genocide."
Genocide as a survival instinct? That is a new one on me.
Closet racist - !?!?!? You are the first to suggest I am. So far, none of my friends has accused me of that -- White, Indian, Asian, or (for lack of a better term), my friends with dark skin who are neither American nor African.
Having non-White "friends" does not automatically make you a non-racist. Here is an idea, why don't you tell your non-White "friends" that xenophobia is a "survival instinct" and see how well they receive the news. I'll bet your non-White "friends" will start having second thoughts about your alleged lack of racism...
Are all white men bad? Are all other people good? ... If your evil "White Men" did not allow women to vote, who voted to give them the right? Could there perhaps be white men who truly believe all people were created equal? (I know there are.)
Don't be putting words in my mouth. I did not say all White people were bad. I did not use the word "evil" anywhere.
While it is true that White males did give women the right to vote it was not until over 100 years after the US was founded. Also, Black and Hispanic males did not get to vote on allowing women to vote because they were not allowed to vote freely until almost 200 years after the US was founded.
"Capitalism is all about greed and selfishness" - Another Communist lie.
There you go putting words in my mouth again. Where did I say I was a Communist and/or supporter of Communism?
Why is it that 99% of the countries that have tried Communism has [sic] failed dramatically?
Way to pull numbers out of your ass. Do you have a reference backing up your assertion that "99% of the countries that have tried Communism have failed dramatically?" (this [sic] is also for subject-verb agreement).
Communist [sic] always advocate the the redistribution of wealth -- when will they figure out how to generate it on their own? (i.e. without stealing and murdering from the people who scrimped and saved.)
Again, I said nothing about redistribution of wealth. That is why I have to keep questioning your reading comprehension skills (again the [sic] is for subject-verb agreement).
To get back on topic, don't you think that when Enron tanked that the capitalists running that company stole from its employees and stockholders? You don't think that the capitalists running the companies in trouble right now are stealing when they take huge bonuses as they run their companies into the ground?
And isn't capitalism supposed to be about the survival of the fittest in the marketplace? Don't you think that the bailouts being given to AIG and the auto industry are "redistribution of wealth" albeit on a much larger scale?
A wise man once told me, "Before embracing a philosophy, check out the life of the philosopher." (Can he live out his value system?) Marx sure didn't. Neither did Stalin nor Mao.
Stop taking into account skin color when you judge someone and perhaps if enough people stop giving a damn what melanin content their fellows have we can move beyond this bigotry.
As a Chicano skin color is not important to me, I have family members that range from light-skinned to dark-skinned. It does seem to matter a lot to White people, especially from the US South. I spent two years in Georgia while in the Army and boy was I glad to get out of that unenlightened hellhole. Even though that was over 20 years ago not much has changed in the South since then.
While its important to not forget the past there is no need to bring it into the present.
The only way not to bring the past into the present is to forget it. Why is it that Whites in the South can keep bringing up their past by pointing to their Confederate ancestors but when I try to bring up the past I am accused of being racist?
If anyone is racist it is those from the South, while the descendants of the Confederates keep talking about "states rights" that is only code for "keep the Blacks enslaved". The Confederates were fighting in part for states to have the right to keep certain people as property; however, the descendants of the Confederates are too intellectually dishonest to admit that their ancestors were fighting to keep Blacks enslaved.
Cut the racial crap, we live in a messed up but still wonderful country and the people who founded it were not perfect ... The American dream of working hard and succeeding is alive and well and its color blind.
Do have proof of this dubious assertion? If so bring out your facts. Here are the facts according to the US Census Bureau:
Median income (2006)
---------------------
Whites - $50,673
Blacks - $31,969
Hispanics - $37,781
Income $100,000 and over (2006)
-----------------
Whites - 20.2%
Blacks - 9.1%
Hispanics - 10.5%
Reference: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104552.html
If the US was truly color blind then these numbers would even. An before you blame education for the lack of equality in these statistics remember that Blacks and Hispanics tend to have crappier schools than Whites.
Speaking of color blindness, blindness is considered a handicap in most cases, why not in this case? Why is it that Whites can celebrate their culture and proudly point to being descended from Scottish or Irish or German or French people? Why is it when Blacks and Hispanics say they are proud of their heritage they are accused of being racist? That is a big double standard there.
Besides if you are color blind then you are ignoring a large part of who I am and where I came from. You are also consciously denying any contributions that Mexico and Spain had in the past in building the US.
The answer is not to ignore race but to not make negative judgments based on race and that has to start with the Whites. For example, the KKK has been around since the 1800's and yet they still exist. If Whites truly valued color-blindness then you would think that he first place to start changing things would be with their White brothers and sisters.
To me "color blindness" is code for me to become White. Dress like Whites do, speak like Whites do, believe like Whites do. Now if I do that because I want to do so that is one thing but when success in the US is predicated on that concept then you are forcing me to become White to succeed in this country. There is another word for that, tyranny...
I realize the Founding Fathers were not perfect. The founding of America was a step in the right direction.
Again, you need to qualify: a step in the right direction for White males.
Slavery existed in Africa long before slaves were sold in the Americas. People fought, bled and died to outlaw it in the U.S. It still exists in Africa and other parts of the world and I understand it is on the rise. (For the record, I believe it was and still is despicable.)
The topic was that of slavery in the United States, not slavery anywhere else. If you want to talk about slavery elsewhere, did you know that Mexico outlawed slavery in 1828, more than 30 years before the US did? And without having to fight a long, bloody war?
Did you know that it was illegal to own slaves in Texas yet the White male descendants of the "Founding Fathers" illegally imported slaves when they settled in Texas? And that one of the first things they did after the gaining "independence" for Texas was to re-institute slavery of Blacks?
Japanese -- Wow! I did NOT know the founding fathers threw Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Tell me, which one of the Founding Fathers was still alive in 1942?
I said: OK, your "Founding Fathers" and the nation they founded. Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills?
And then there is a survival instinct called xenophobia.
Hah! Xenophobia as a survival instinct, that is a good one. Maybe you need read up on nativism in the US during the 1800's. How was keeping out non-Whites from the US a survival instinct? This makes you sound like a closet racist or a subconscious racist.
The point of my original post was to point out that Communism and Fascism are inherently selfish and greedy. They never helped anyone except the party elite.
And capitalism is not about selfishness and greed? The economy is currently in the toilet because of selfishness and greed. The sad part is that much of the selfishness and greed was by the White male descendants of the "Founding Fathers" who make up the elites that currently control many of the financial and governmental institutions in the US.
The Founding Fathers were unusual. They were men of wealth and power. They were NOT greedy. They gave up their time, wealth, and power to establish something better for everyone.
OK, so you claim the "Founding Fathers" gave up their wealth and power. So why is it that it took over 240 years to elect a non-White president? Why is it that the elites are still disproportionately made up of White males? Why is it that today poverty disproportionately affects non-Whites?
I'll bet that you fancy yourself a libertarian and that you believe that the US is about the potential for individual success no matter who you are or where you come from. If that is so then it must be the moral failings of non-Whites as to why non-Whites are not doing as well as Whites are here in the US.
Like I said above, either you are a closet racist or a subconscious racist if you do not see that the condition of non-Whites today is due in large part to 240+ years of this country favoring Whites over non-Whites. I would rather believe that you are not racist and that you are just the victim of a piss-poor US educational system.
Yes, it was not perfect. They could not agree to abolish slavery in the new country. (Many of the Founding Fathers were against it.)
It was not that the "Founding Fathers" COULD NOT abolish slavery it is that they WOULD NOT abolish slavery. All that was missing was the WILL to do so.
Had the "Founding Fathers" done so then I would be agreeing with you as to their greatness. However, since they did n
OK, your "Founding Fathers" and the nation they founded:
1) did not allow White females to own property and vote
2) owned Black Americans as property
3) instituted a policy of genocide towards Native Americans
4) killed innocent Mexican Americans and stole their land
5) threw Japanese Americans in concentration camps
I think the examples above illustrate my point that your point is valid as long as you are talking about White males.
And no, pointing out racism does not make one a racist...
The bottom line difference between Fascism and Communism is labels. Both are murderous tyrants. Bandits.
The historic clash between Communism and Fascists was about who would get credit for the creating a worldwide utopian society. Mostly it was over which set of elite get the power and money.
Contrast that to people like the Founding Fathers. George Washington could have been king, but gave up his power and wealth to create something greater. They never advocated a Utopian society. They just wanted a place where WHITE MALES were allowed to live a life without without tyranny.
There, fixed that for you.
It's funny how the fanboi mentality works (and not as a valid argument, mind you)
Microsoft did not just package IE with Windows, it illegally tied the it to Windows where the user had no choice about it being installed and they could not remove it easily. The US and EU governments have investigated and have accused Microsoft of being a monopoly, it is not just fanbois making that accusation.
Sound more like an incessantly nagging spouse on a power trip please...
You yourself are either a fanboi or an astroturfer. I mean come on, a content-free post complaining about other computer users complaining about the software installed on THEIR computers?
If you are an astroturfer, does Microsoft pay well? If you are doing this for free why? Why do you feel compelled to defend a large faceless corporation like Microsoft? Especially given their past criminal behavior?
Too bad you can't channel all that time and energy into some productive activities that benefit humankind instead...
A recent study by a Australian university claims that intensive use of marijuana reduces brain size up to 20% (that's missing neurons).
I have to post as AC because most modders dislike this opinions (drug addition problems) and rate them as flamebait.
You don't HAVE to post a AC, you just did because you don't have the courage to stand up for your convictions.
A quick read of the article you linked to pointed out some problems with the "study":
1) The person conducting the study is "Professor Jon Currie [who] is the director of addiction medicine at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne". A professor of "addiction medicine" who wants people to stop doing drugs can hardly be considered an unbiased researcher.
2) The study size was only 15 which is considered way too small. Also, I doubt the sample was randomly selected, so most likely there is some selection bias going on. Did the people studied only include White people? Were any Black, Asian or Hispanics also studied? If not then the sample is definitely suffering from selection bias.
3) It does not sound like any MRIs were taken on those being studied before the study began. Without measuring the brains of those studied beforehand how can you state without a doubt that those studied had suffered from any brain shrinkage at all? Maybe those selected had shrunken brains before the study began and their brain sizes did not change very much if at all during the period in question.
4) If there was brain shrinkage how can you say it was due to cannabis? Did the 15 people studied also drink alcohol? Smoked tobacco products? Did cocaine? Did crystal meth? Did LSD? Did ecstasy? Abused prescription drugs? The article does not mention MRIs being taking on a non-drug-using control group either.
5) And last but not least, we have Slashdot mantra #1: CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION! This study may provide some correlation but that is about it. You cannot say there is any causation until similar studies show similar correlations. Even then if the supporting studies use small samples suffering from selection bias and no control groups then they would be just as useless as this study seems to be.
You should study a little statistics and examine these kinds of issues before you validate any studies that try to use statistics to "prove" anything...
I tried to upgrade that same box to 2007 Free and LOTS of stuff broke. The biggest problem was that Apache went from 2.0 to 2.2, which broke a lot of web-related stuff. Since the main reason I was using Mandriva on that web server was because it was extremely easy to update I was disappointed when I found out it updated Apache to 2.2 without giving me a choice about the matter.
I ended up having to futz with that box to try to get it to work right once again and after spending about eight hours trying to get it fixed I finally gave up. I ended up installing CentOS Server 4.4 on that box; believe it or not it took less time to get CentOS configured the way I wanted than the eight hours I had wasted trying to fix the problems that arose with Mandriva 2007.
Don't get me wrong, I am still a big fan of Mandriva but I am still deciding whether I should go the upgrade route with my 2006 box at home or if I should reinstall from scratch. I will probably add another hard drive and do a new installation. Good thing I went to separate
It is an proper-English-usage thing. While it is true that the three dimensions are length X width X height, if the height of one pie is greater than another people usually don't say that one pie is higher than another, they usually say that it one pie is taller than the other.
Think about it this way, if there were three shelves, one 2 units high, one 4 units high, and one 6 units high, a pie on the second shelf is higher than a pie on the first shelf, and a pie on the third shelf is higher than both the pie on the first shelf as well as the pie on the second shelf.
Economically, if you liken wealth to height, because the poor have fewer wealth units they could be considered short, the middle class would be mid-height, and since the rich have a lot of wealth units they could be considered tall. Which pie would be within reach of all? The lowest one, as the highest pie would only be reachable by the wealthy.
In my mind, while most of the mangled English of Bush's can be attributed to his being an idiot, this particular mis-statement can also be considered a Freudian slip as his desire to keep the pie higher accurately reflects his wish that only the wealthy supporters of the Republican Party should be able to benefit from his economic policies...
Similarly, Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that "the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English law principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.
I personally think you have come up with a new definition for IRONY: defending the First Amendment rights of an Attorney General who does not believe those First Amendment rights exist in the first place!
Jeez, whatever you are smoking I'd like some. Maybe then I could forget that our constitutional rights are rapidly disappearing due to the fact there is an idiot in the White House who trumped up a bogus "War on Terror" which scared the citizens of this nation to willingly give up those rights in the first place!
The VMware Player and VMWare Server products are both free (as in beer) to use. I find that the stripped down Server version of CentOS works wonderfully as the host OS and I use VMware to run Windows 98, 2000, XP and W2K3 Server virtual machines. As a matter of fact at work I am moving most of my servers to VMware Server both to better utilize the hardware we have as well as to simplify backing up those servers.
VMware Server is also available in a Windows version if you decide to use Windows as the host OS; while VMware recommends you run it on a Server verion of Windows you can successfully run it on a desktop version of Windows. You just need to ignore the warning that VMware server gives you, it is related to an artifical limitation imposed by Microsoft on IIS (only one website can be run on IIS on the desktop version of Windows, stopping the default website will allow the VMware management interface to run just fine).
Most of the problems I have when driving are with White poople yakking on cell phones when they should be paying attention to their driving. Yet I am not stupid enough to say all White people are shitty drivers...
And biased websites as well: Accuracy in Media - Who We Are The only minority staff member works in the mailroom!!!
A media source cannot really be called unbiased if it does not provide a varied set of viewpoints that only a diverse workforce can bring...
I don't know why you are even telling me this, Windoze sucks! The only reason I use Windoze is because I have to at work.
I am a Linux user and have not paid for a service pack in years...
FLAMEBAIT?!? Jesus, don't you Mac zealots have a sense of humor??? WTF do you think the :-) is for???
Bad as the Windoze fanbois are the Mac fanbois are definitely worse...