and we haven't proved that gravity exists. sure we've proven the effects: "drop an apple, watch it fall"
yet we seem to put faith in the theory of gravity.
science is really cool. and i'm not a creationist or anything wacko like that...I love science. i'm completely sceptical of religion, organized or other(it's man made) and do not find it appealing. i do have the common geek itch of wanting to know how everything works. i like things like startrek, cosmos, TLC, Discovery channel, mathematics, physics, etc.
but with every new scientific discovery, theory or documentary, i just shake my head....in amazement. and i think it's here, where i depart some of my fellow geeks.
just think about entropy. while huge amounts of energy are falling to a lower level of order, planets cool, stars fade...yet their are pockets of INCREASING order that are just spectacular.
humans. animals. life. blackholes. supernova. evolution.
the phenomenon that we as conscience, self aware beings can appreciate.
i don't think it's an accident.
we could unlock 99.9% of the mysteries of the multiverse...and still end up asking a simple question:
why?
i'm pretty certain their's something bigger then us out there. existing on a different level.
i choose to call it god...sure doubts arise. but that's faity. just like faith that the our theory of the sun is correct and will long out last me (it's there in the morning, guaranteed, even if i can't see it)
science has done more for my faith then any bible thumping wacknut could ever dream of.
faith in an organized/unorganized religion is a people thing. people naturally want to box things up, make rules, traditions etc.
faith in a supreme being...that's all together different.
-an anecdote by Steven Hawkings in the opening of "A Brief History of Time":
"A well-known scientist once gave a lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collections of stars called our galaxy. At the end of lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said, ' What you told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.'
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ' What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down.'"
Re:What kind of students were they?
on
Darl Goes to Harvard
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
from reading this page:
http://web.mit.edu/jonas/www/faim/
here's a choice quote that is very important to me:
"This isn't a group of crazy commie hippies who want to destroy their business model(SCO's), but rather, we're engineers and scientists (and law students) who recognize that they may have a valid claim, but tune them out when they(SCO) make irrational statements."
and SCO sure does make a LOT of those irrational comments eh?
SCO _is_ irrational. And if we can keep discrediting them with calm cool logic, and not froth at the mouth, we'll make headway.
Awesome job guys! You guys are role models on how to handle FUD.
What I don't under is that they had the chance to look like the good guys (for a while)...I mean they were going up against Microsoft's player.
They should have take a page from the classic play book: Make it badass, Give it away for free, then later on when everyone loves you, start to slowly increase revenue generating schemes.
As far back as I can remember, Real has made themselves the biggest nuisance.
WTF were they thinking? Real Business Plan:
1. piss everyone off 2. piss everyone off some more 3. let microsoft roll you
if you are an oem, small or large, prepared to buck the establishment?
then be prepared to die.
if you don't play ball, you're not playing at all.
Microsoft still controlls the playing field.
Competition is great for all of us...till somebody finally really wins.
with 40billion in general liquidity, 40billion estimated worth of the founder, and 40billion estimated worth of the next several officers combined(after the founder)...I think we know who has won.
and it's not the public...hell it's not even the stockholders.
yea right and pixar is sitting around waiting to be commoditized...
do you think they still have animators making 6 figures and working on the most expensive SGI systems?
hardly.
there are creative-talent/animators/programmers with awesome bacgrounds lined out door waiting for a chance to work for pixar...some for peanuts, others actually for free.
they have inexpensive linux servers and workstations shored up by some proprietary hardware. they write their own stuff.
dude, they are awesome.
I can guarantee you Disney needed Pixar far more then Pixar needed Disney.
Disney is like a government now. Beauracratic, slow and dumb. It's a giant slug of a company, and couldn't formulate a decent business plan if it landed on their head.
Pixar is in the drivers seat now. There isn't a close second either.
let's go further, with a geeks help. others feel free to add on.
1. Don't use Outlook or Outlook Express, I don't care what your reasons are. Don't do it.
2. Use Mozilla 99.9% of the time. Fall back to IE only for sites that absolutely need it. In mozilla disallow window/image/statusbar manipulation by the browser, as well as supressing popups.
3. Run spybot search & destroy, innoculate your machine. run a spybot host file.
4. Run AV, something other then Norton, they are the number one target now, as far as anti-anti-virus software is concerned.
5. Home users with a single computer should disable workstation and server service. Many other services are excellent candidates as well.
6. Ditch MSN messenger (and popups) and go with GAIM if you have simple messenging needs.
7. Check your startup programs once every few weeks...i.e. start>>>run>>>msconfig
8. a repeat of parent's #4, but I think the xp firewall is tripe, make it a "must do" and get a linksys type firewall device. stopping the constant hammering a little up stream.
Most average users don't know about these options, it's up to us geeks, to show them.
Could have fooled me. Watching U.S. football playoffs today, I lost track of the number of IBM Linux commercials. Strangely, I didn't see any IBM MacOS commercials, nor did I see any IBM AS/400 or IBM Windows commercials.
A lot of people like to use the word agnostic as meaning "not supporting one side or the other".
I prefer the version by the guy who most famously brought it to light, Professor Huxley in 1869.
in a nutshell, "we are incapable of knowing"
so if i'm agnostic when in comes to a supreme being, it means that I believe that at this current time, I cannot know if one exists, so I do not bother with such questions.
if i'm agnostic when it comes to operating systems, it means that I believe that with the information present, I cannot know if one is better then the other, so I do not bother with such questions.
IBM isn't stupid, they will give to the customer whatever the customer wants. If that's windows...so be it. But they sure "appear" to be advertising the fact that they know about a "pretty good thing"...and that we may want to know about it too.
Well, hold on, let us take a look at your scary figures:
800,000deaths/365days = (more or less) 2200 deaths per day.
2200 per day over the whole united states.
number of cities in US over 100,000 = 260
2200/260 = 8
Thats 8 deaths per city over 100,000, per day. We'll lower the number a little because we're discounting hundreds of small towns under 100,000.
So on average a populate area has 6-7 deaths per day from heart disease. More if your a bigger city..less if your a smaller city.
YAWN.
Will that even put a scratch in the stockmarket?
not one iota. reason why? it's nature. plus people chose to eat that mcdonalds and not exercise. The people in the twintowers didn't choose their fate.
Several Thousand going all in one instant, in the same place?
Hell yea, that'll make an impact.
You see, one is called nature. And the other is called horror. Your statistics aren't so scary when put in proper perspective. I could talk about the number of people dying around the globe, and work those numbers up so that headlines read very startingly.
It seems that your anecdotal evidence might actually have some backing.
"concludes that despite what may appear to be a high prevalence rate of arrests for serious offenses among NFL players, these players in fact "seem to have a lower [crime] rate than the comparable population," even though they are members of a profession that rewards violence on the football field."
drugs, sex and alcolhol aren't for kids either...yet we clearly see (and many first hand experienced) that kids do have access to drugs, sex, alcohol and other adult oriented things.
>>But that's irrelevant
Well i just proved you wrong. Kids are going to have access to this stuff, they always have, always wil. So you just can't make up reality.
I don't pretend to know the answer or where the balance should lay between freedom and morality, but I do know that there should be discussion.
So I'd have to say that I can see the Curmudgeon point of view...video game violence should be discussed.
I know a lot of people are going to mention mozilla. And for good reason. It just works. But I'd like to mention that pop-ups represent a golden opportunity to introduce opensource software to your non-techie friends and family.
The non-geeks have a difficult time understanding the whole concept. But if you solve a very visible problem for them, like pop-ups, you earn a chance to tell them why mozilla exists. Don't beat them on the head with it (i.e. don't preach), just feed them a little. Next time they have a problem, they'll come back for more.
So while pop-ups are a curse for your average folk, we geeks can make a little use out of the situation.
To the defenders of the.org camp:
You would be ok with me setting up www.redhatlinux.net and tacking on some proprietary software? then involve myself in business relating to linux?
in the end everyone has to put food on the table and pay the rent...i'm sure the mysql.org people intend to make money like anyone else...of course they are going to use someone else's good name to do it.
i don't see anything wrong with that.
j
if i refrained from using or experimenting with an OS because the visible figure head was an egotistical ass, who thought they were mental giants...
mac and windows would have been scratched off a long time ago...and now i'd have to scratch off linux.....NOT....
i'll keep on using all three os's and others...and i'll be damned if i let those mental giants' pissing match affect my views of technology.
i don't have to think highly of jobs or gates to use their creations, sure i can begrudgingly respect them for where they have brought us. now this torvalds opinion...who cares. he's just one man. screw him.
I was wondering if some of the distros might possibly end up as specialized usage (i.e.officially marketed) distros...for example: mandrake as a home user desktop, friendly and fun, while redhat could be geared towards high end servers...Where I work, we recently recieved a proposal for an Oracle setup, and it would have utilized two Redhat servers.
At home I run Mandrake for fun...it's amazing what you get, if look at it from a computer newbie's perspective. Good Email/Internet,lots of cool utils and the games blow away anything that comes with windows. I see a lot of potential in the Mandrake setup for completely nontechical users. I could basically setup Mandrake right out of the box, put a few icons on the desktop, and with a similar amount of training for a person who has never used windows, they would be pretty happy....internet/email/games/music.
Slashdot Mirror
on a similar topic, does anyone know how to make knoppix load completely to ram?
i imagine this would be faster then my normal harddrive based install.
for systems with a gig or more of ram.
thanks.
and we haven't proved that gravity exists. sure we've proven the effects: "drop an apple, watch it fall"
yet we seem to put faith in the theory of gravity.
science is really cool. and i'm not a creationist or anything wacko like that...I love science. i'm completely sceptical of religion, organized or other(it's man made) and do not find it appealing. i do have the common geek itch of wanting to know how everything works. i like things like startrek, cosmos, TLC, Discovery channel, mathematics, physics, etc.
but with every new scientific discovery, theory or documentary, i just shake my head....in amazement. and i think it's here, where i depart some of my fellow geeks.
just think about entropy. while huge amounts of energy are falling to a lower level of order, planets cool, stars fade...yet their are pockets of INCREASING order that are just spectacular.
humans. animals. life. blackholes. supernova. evolution.
the phenomenon that we as conscience, self aware beings can appreciate.
i don't think it's an accident.
we could unlock 99.9% of the mysteries of the multiverse...and still end up asking a simple question:
why?
i'm pretty certain their's something bigger then us out there. existing on a different level.
i choose to call it god...sure doubts arise. but that's faity. just like faith that the our theory of the sun is correct and will long out last me (it's there in the morning, guaranteed, even if i can't see it)
science has done more for my faith then any bible thumping wacknut could ever dream of.
faith in an organized/unorganized religion is a people thing. people naturally want to box things up, make rules, traditions etc.
faith in a supreme being...that's all together different.
-an anecdote by Steven Hawkings in the opening of "A Brief History of Time":
"A well-known scientist once gave a lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collections of stars called our galaxy. At the end of lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said, ' What you told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.'
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ' What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down.'"
from reading this page:
http://web.mit.edu/jonas/www/faim/
here's a choice quote that is very important to me:
"This isn't a group of crazy commie hippies who want to destroy their business model(SCO's), but rather, we're engineers and scientists (and law students) who recognize that they may have a valid claim, but tune them out when they(SCO) make irrational statements."
and SCO sure does make a LOT of those irrational comments eh?
SCO _is_ irrational. And if we can keep discrediting them with calm cool logic, and not froth at the mouth, we'll make headway.
Awesome job guys! You guys are role models on how to handle FUD.
You make some great points. AdPlayer! hee hee...
What I don't under is that they had the chance to look like the good guys (for a while)...I mean they were going up against Microsoft's player.
They should have take a page from the classic play book: Make it badass, Give it away for free, then later on when everyone loves you, start to slowly increase revenue generating schemes.
As far back as I can remember, Real has made themselves the biggest nuisance.
WTF were they thinking? Real Business Plan:
1. piss everyone off
2. piss everyone off some more
3. let microsoft roll you
ah whatever.
if you are an oem, small or large, prepared to buck the establishment?
then be prepared to die.
if you don't play ball, you're not playing at all.
Microsoft still controlls the playing field.
Competition is great for all of us...till somebody finally really wins.
with 40billion in general liquidity, 40billion estimated worth of the founder, and 40billion estimated worth of the next several officers combined(after the founder)...I think we know who has won.
and it's not the public...hell it's not even the stockholders.
yea right and pixar is sitting around waiting to be commoditized...
do you think they still have animators making 6 figures and working on the most expensive SGI systems?
hardly.
there are creative-talent/animators/programmers with awesome bacgrounds lined out door waiting for a chance to work for pixar...some for peanuts, others actually for free.
they have inexpensive linux servers and workstations shored up by some proprietary hardware. they write their own stuff.
dude, they are awesome.
I can guarantee you Disney needed Pixar far more then Pixar needed Disney.
Disney is like a government now. Beauracratic, slow and dumb. It's a giant slug of a company, and couldn't formulate a decent business plan if it landed on their head.
Pixar is in the drivers seat now. There isn't a close second either.
let's go further, with a geeks help. others feel free to add on.
1. Don't use Outlook or Outlook Express, I don't care what your reasons are. Don't do it.
2. Use Mozilla 99.9% of the time. Fall back to IE only for sites that absolutely need it. In mozilla disallow window/image/statusbar manipulation by the browser, as well as supressing popups.
3. Run spybot search & destroy, innoculate your machine. run a spybot host file.
4. Run AV, something other then Norton, they are the number one target now, as far as anti-anti-virus software is concerned.
5. Home users with a single computer should disable workstation and server service. Many other services are excellent candidates as well.
6. Ditch MSN messenger (and popups) and go with GAIM if you have simple messenging needs.
7. Check your startup programs once every few weeks...i.e. start>>>run>>>msconfig
8. a repeat of parent's #4, but I think the xp firewall is tripe, make it a "must do" and get a linksys type firewall device. stopping the constant hammering a little up stream.
Most average users don't know about these options, it's up to us geeks, to show them.
>>They are fairly OS agnostic
Could have fooled me. Watching U.S. football playoffs today, I lost track of the number of IBM Linux commercials. Strangely, I didn't see any IBM MacOS commercials, nor did I see any IBM AS/400 or IBM Windows commercials.
A lot of people like to use the word agnostic as meaning "not supporting one side or the other".
I prefer the version by the guy who most famously brought it to light, Professor Huxley in 1869.
in a nutshell, "we are incapable of knowing"
so if i'm agnostic when in comes to a supreme being, it means that I believe that at this current time, I cannot know if one exists, so I do not bother with such questions.
if i'm agnostic when it comes to operating systems, it means that I believe that with the information present, I cannot know if one is better then the other, so I do not bother with such questions.
IBM isn't stupid, they will give to the customer whatever the customer wants. If that's windows...so be it. But they sure "appear" to be advertising the fact that they know about a "pretty good thing"...and that we may want to know about it too.
That thing is linux.
Agnostic? Could have fooled me.
>>800,000 deaths from heart disease a year
Well, hold on, let us take a look at your scary figures:
800,000deaths/365days = (more or less) 2200 deaths per day.
2200 per day over the whole united states.
number of cities in US over 100,000 = 260
2200/260 = 8
Thats 8 deaths per city over 100,000, per day. We'll lower the number a little because we're discounting hundreds of small towns under 100,000.
So on average a populate area has 6-7 deaths per day from heart disease. More if your a bigger city..less if your a smaller city.
YAWN.
Will that even put a scratch in the stockmarket?
not one iota. reason why? it's nature. plus people chose to eat that mcdonalds and not exercise. The people in the twintowers didn't choose their fate.
Several Thousand going all in one instant, in the same place?
Hell yea, that'll make an impact.
You see, one is called nature. And the other is called horror. Your statistics aren't so scary when put in proper perspective. I could talk about the number of people dying around the globe, and work those numbers up so that headlines read very startingly.
move along nothing here to post about.
to get around your problem, go to command line and do a:
#wget http://your-link-here/your-file.rpm
I know that doesn't make real player right. I hate their guts as well. But at least you can get your RPMs.
>>Real, why did you have picked such a significant extention such as "rpm"?!
just another dumb move in a long line of dumb moves by Real.
It seems that your anecdotal evidence might actually have some backing.
"concludes that despite what may appear to be a high prevalence rate of arrests for serious offenses among NFL players, these players in fact "seem to have a lower [crime] rate than the comparable population," even though they are members of a profession that rewards violence on the football field."
http://www.amstat.org/pressroom/nflcrime.html
I admit to being surprised.
jef
>>This isn't a kid's game
drugs, sex and alcolhol aren't for kids either...yet we clearly see (and many first hand experienced) that kids do have access to drugs, sex, alcohol and other adult oriented things.
>>But that's irrelevant
Well i just proved you wrong. Kids are going to have access to this stuff, they always have, always wil. So you just can't make up reality.
I don't pretend to know the answer or where the balance should lay between freedom and morality, but I do know that there should be discussion.
So I'd have to say that I can see the Curmudgeon point of view...video game violence should be discussed.
What can it hurt?
jef
I know a lot of people are going to mention mozilla. And for good reason. It just works. But I'd like to mention that pop-ups represent a golden opportunity to introduce opensource software to your non-techie friends and family.
The non-geeks have a difficult time understanding the whole concept. But if you solve a very visible problem for them, like pop-ups, you earn a chance to tell them why mozilla exists. Don't beat them on the head with it (i.e. don't preach), just feed them a little. Next time they have a problem, they'll come back for more.
So while pop-ups are a curse for your average folk, we geeks can make a little use out of the situation.
jef
To the defenders of the .org camp:
You would be ok with me setting up www.redhatlinux.net and tacking on some proprietary software? then involve myself in business relating to linux?
in the end everyone has to put food on the table and pay the rent...i'm sure the mysql.org people intend to make money like anyone else...of course they are going to use someone else's good name to do it.
i don't see anything wrong with that.
j
uh yes....eps
if i refrained from using or experimenting with an OS because the visible figure head was an egotistical ass, who thought they were mental giants... mac and windows would have been scratched off a long time ago...and now i'd have to scratch off linux.....NOT.... i'll keep on using all three os's and others...and i'll be damned if i let those mental giants' pissing match affect my views of technology. i don't have to think highly of jobs or gates to use their creations, sure i can begrudgingly respect them for where they have brought us. now this torvalds opinion...who cares. he's just one man. screw him.
I was wondering if some of the distros might possibly end up as specialized usage (i.e.officially marketed) distros ...for example: mandrake as a home user desktop, friendly and fun, while redhat could be geared towards high end servers...Where I work, we recently recieved a proposal for an Oracle setup, and it would have utilized two Redhat servers.
At home I run Mandrake for fun...it's amazing what you get, if look at it from a computer newbie's perspective. Good Email/Internet,lots of cool utils and the games blow away anything that comes with windows. I see a lot of potential in the Mandrake setup for completely nontechical users. I could basically setup Mandrake right out of the box, put a few icons on the desktop, and with a similar amount of training for a person who has never used windows, they would be pretty happy....internet/email/games/music.