Funnily enough, I've been thinking along the same lines while writing a general package management specification. A small amount of info in source packages is a hell of a lot simpler than anything else. However, there are many big packages out there that don't even use autoconf, so getting them to add packing info is less than likely.
MS isn't all bad, man. Maybe you can start by telling us why WMA sucks? Because it's not open-source? Sorry but you're going to have to do better than that.
How about the plain fact that lots of people cannot and never will be able to use it? Windows won't even boot on my (Intel) computer, and even if it did, I doubt I'd waste the disk space.
When automated drivers start crashing into me on the highway I start looking for liability. And if that automated driver was a self-contained, autonomous being that is otherwise incapable of making a sensible rebuttle in court, what am I to do then? Do I sue the makers? That's like suing parents...
No, it's not like suing the parents. You sue the people who said that it was ok to let the computer drive in the first place. Let's say I hook up a laptop to a car, and tell it to feed/dev/random to a couple of robotic steering arms. Is the guy that wrote the/dev/random driver at fault? Of course not, I am. Just like the T2 movie, the guy who invented the AI chip wasn't to blame for WW3, it was the guy who decided it would be neat to let it control nukes.
I wasn't really referring to the open-source part of the GPL, more the fact that software compiled against it must be open. Thus, it wouldn't "hurt" MS, as nobody would be able to re-use the interface code, but it would allow for more competition, as hardware support is one of the areas in which MS has the most control.
I'd imagine this would require a relicensing of the driver SDK, so yes, I suppose it would be a taking of IP. But I was under the impression that MS could be compensated for a taking, and if this is the case, the value of the SDK would probably be much less than any other action with similar benefits. Or is a taking completely out of the question?
I suppose the DOJ could make it easier to compete with MS by making the driver interface GPLish with an exception for Windows itself. I haven't developed drivers for Windows, but surely there is at least one component that must be compiled against? This way, drivers would either be open or need extra work to write a non-GPLed interface. This would encourage hardware companies to develop openly and thus make the MS monopoly less of a threat for OS competitors. Or am I way off base here?
You can configure it so you don't have to log on with Linux. The downside is that everything runs as root, so it's easy to break. However, *any* OS that doesn't give the user a chance to log on will have that problem.
With a little work, you could configure Linux to assume that the person sitting at the console is a certain normal user (as opposed to root,) but why bother when all you have to say is "This is your username and password, use them to log on." ? He's in his eighties, he's not stupid.
Most people at home only want to browse the internet and write letters and play the occasional game. Is that too much to ask for Linux?
As much as I hate to admit it, yes, that *is* too much for Linux to handle. The problem isn't anything technical, it's merely the MS monopoly. Virtually every new computer user that is introduced to Linux to browse the net and play games is going to go out to the nearest computer shop and buy whatever game they've heard is cool, or get a copy from a friend. They are going to go to shareware sites and download screensavers/utilities etc. They are going to buy computer magazines in the shops.
Imagine the frustration when they discover that everything out there caters to MS-Windows alone. Linux is beating MS on technical issues, and recently on ease of use. It's the social issue that Linux doesn't stand a chance on. Take a look in your nearest newsagent's next time you're there. I know I haven't ever seen a Linux magazine, and I actively look for them. But you can assume that a computer magazine is for MS-Windows unless it has Mac in the title or something.
We don't need a game API on Linux - we already have enough. SDL, Clanlib, Crystal Space, LibGGI, Mesa. Sorry if I missed anyone out:). They may be specialised in some cases (Mesa only does 3D I believe,) but isn't this the correct approach; to mix & match?
XFree 4 will be a lot speedier because of the direct video access, is that what you are after?
The reason why certain apps don't drag-n-drop correctly between each other has nothing to do with GNOME or KDE. IIRC, it's because there are two conflicting standards, the Motif standard and the X standard that came along afterwards. Of course, Sod's Law dictates that the different projects used different standards.
Both teams are working on interoperability, and if you don't want to help, then you can at least do bettter than calling them "boneheaded" and just be quiet.
I wont, but Redhat releasing new distros and fragmenting the industry is whats bad.. i don't use redhat, but being a market leader i would have thought they would be smarter about scheduling.
God yes. Redhat's releasing another version? Those morons. The last thing we need is updates to the software, and bugfixes. Wasn't somebody attributing the "Hacked Linux server" to Redhat 6.0 not having an up-to-date version of cron a day or two ago?
now all thos suckers who got "6.0" training need 6.1 training, now all the people who have support contracts need downtime to upgrade after only having a system up for 5 months..
How in hell can somebody who knows how to use 6.0 be confused when it comes to 6.1? In case you hadn't noticed, it's a *minor* version jump. That means it's not too different, just more up to date.
Thats how *NOT* to run a business, i know RedHat won't just drop 6.0 but it won't be there truely supported platform once 6.1 is released..
It won't be their "truely" supported platform? As long as it's supported, what's the difference? It's not like somebody on the end of the 'phone would say, "Sorry, but that's too technical a question for me to answer about 6.0, so upgrade to 6.1." Worst case scenario, they are told to get the latest RPM of something, and upgrade it.
had it been a service release, people could upgrade in due time and get the new patches/features and additions to the os..
It *is* a service release. That's why it's 6.1 and not 7.0.
a kernel upgrade, and a window manager upgrade don't consitute a 7.0 either.. IMHO 7.0 should be a radical new form of Linux with a solid foundation, a good programming backend, and a feature set to compare to other unices..
Most end-users use a window manager. It's their primary interface to the OS. Therefore, when a new version comes out, it's a Big Deal. We're not talking about kernel 2.2.1 vs. 2.2.2, or KDE 1.1.1 vs. KDE 1.1.2. These are major changes, and the basis for the operating system, so the distribution version numbering should reflect this.
redhat should buy up a few distros to narrow it down and bring more talent in and spread some of the wealth.
While I think that "narrowing it down" is generally a bad thing when it comes to Linux, I think that if they can afford Mandrake, they should snap them up. From what I can tell, they are basically the same, except for the fact that Mandrake is more polished. Redhat could benefit from the better setup, etc, and Mandrake could benefit from the spending power and brand name.
Redhat and Mandrake seem to be going for the exact same market, unlike a lot of the other distros, so I don't think there would be any sacrifices in diversity.
Am I missing something here? Lots of people have raved about how much slower C++ is. C++, as well as C, is the definition of a program written by a human. The most efficient language is therefore the one that suits the writers of the code. Larger projects benefit from object-orientation, so leaving C for such a language seems reasonable.
Speed issues are largely just compiler issues. Whatever you say about each language, they both end up as machine code. How fast the executable is depends on the compiler far more than the language.
Redhat's errata page is hardly "obscure." And there *is* a utility that checks for updates. It's called Netscape, and only idiot admins miss out this step of the installation.
I'll tell you why this is called FUD. The server was set up to test how secure Linux is as an OS. The guy got local access through a closed-source application that has no connection with Linux apart from the fact that it runs on it. It's like saying MS-Windows is insecure if somebody found a bug in, say, SimCity.
After that, he gained root priveledges by exploiting a hole that was not only old, but also fixed and documented. Neither of these problems are related to the OS at all. Yet the basic information that is floating around is that a Linux box got cracked. FUD.
One reason why UMSDOS is better than a loopback filesystem is that these are average users here. So chances are, the FAT filesystem is fragmented badly. This means that the loopback swap/ext2 filesystem will be fragmented too, and therefore slower than UMSDOS.
Of course, this problem isn't apparent to most people who can create a distro, because they defrag regularly. It has tradeoffs of course, like needing more space. I agree that the loopback device is the "right" way of doing things, but UMSDOS isn't that bad, and gets the job done better in a lot of cases for the kind of user this distro is aimed at.
So, what you want children to be taught is how to sit still for 10-40 minutes at a time while the rest of the class works through what took our subject 30 seconds?
Hey, I managed to do it without getting into too much trouble. But it was pretty frustrating. Back in primary school (age 4-11,) it was easier for me with a couple of the subjects. You know why? Because they were taught from exercise books - it meant that I could carry on with working while the other kids just fell behind. Same goes for English. However, if you take this to it's logical conclusion, with each kid being taught individually from books, although it will encourage the smarter people to learn more, it will discourage socialising, which can't be a good thing. Where's the compromise here?
However, like other people have said, when the pressure is on you to do homework, it can seriously harm your motivation when all you have done all day is sit in class being bored. It doesn't get better the older you get, either. At Uni, it was just plain depressing when you have to be taught C by people who shouldn't be let near a computer because it has small parts. These were the people who had trouble teaching because they told everyone to call their programs "while" and "test" on a UNIX platform.
In short, if I have to go through all this to be called smart, then I shouldn't have to endure being labelled nuts. No offense to all the truly autistic people out there, but I'm a normal person when it comes to socialising and I don't want people to think otherwise just because I'm smart.
There is some fascinating speculation going on these days that the well-known stereotype of the computer geek or nerd may actually be a description of mild autism, especially a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome.
Exactly. Note the words "speculation" and "sterotype". All reliable forms of information when it comes to writing news articles.
Asperger's syndrome patients, who usually develop their traits at a young age, often have these tendencies:... fascination with fantasy worlds and arcane facts..."
Hmm. Arcane facts. Does that include being able to recall around 70% of the "Pop-up Video" facts about a song by just watching it once? Sad, but that's about all the musical ability I have:).
...if a Queen of some other contry is offended or something if I don't address her as "Your Majesty", well, that's none of my business, she should get over it.
Probably just a poor choice of words then. Sorry. But calling the Queen "Your Majesty" isn't a case of acknowledging that she is a better person than anyone else, in my opinion. It's just a case of recognising that she holds a position of authority over me. I would call her that whether or not I was a British citizen, because a title is mostly just tradition anyway.
I'm basically in agreement with you though. I don't believe anyone is a better human being just because of their heritage. That would be bordering on racism as far as I can tell.
For the record though, I don't respect our Prime Minister for getting elected by the public any more than I respect the Teletubbies for getting to number one in the music charts. It's basically the same thing, isn't it? Except for the fact the Teletubbies didn't lie to the public about what they would get if they bought their single.
It's none of your business whether or not you offend someone? I bet you're a joy to know. This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she is the Queen. It's just a case of being *polite*
I'm from the U.K. and I think that the Queen doesn't serve any useful purpose apart from bringing in the tourists. If I ever met her, I wouldn't call her a freeloader to her face. It's not because I recognise her importance, it's just that I am polite. Big deal if you respect the president of Greece more than the Queen of the U.K. They both deserve our respect and courtesy. Learn some diplomacy sometime.
...in order to develop bone structure, etc. the extraterrestrials would have to be carbon or silicon based.
Doesn't this rely on the assumption that all intelligent (I assume you meant intelligent) life *requires* bone structure? There is life on Earth that doesn't have bone structure, although none of it is intelligent (at least in the way most people define intelligence.) It seems like one of those things you can never prove, just disprove. Like you said, it could be a case of everyone seeing bone structure everywhere on Earth, causing us to believe that there isn't an alternative way of doing it that doesn't impose the restriction to carbon/silicon.
It also depends on how you define life. Is the definition "anything that has evolved" or can it be expanded to artificial creations? We may come across a planet populated by volleyball-playing lego robots that the creators have abandoned:).
Another little interesting tidbit is the theory that all intelligent civilizations see eclipses...
I guess non-intelligent life can see eclipses as well:)
The board itself is an inanimate object, but the way that people use them can be harmful.
How? I can't think of any way of harming somebody with a board except for hitting them on the head with it. If other people believe that it is evil, that still doesn't mean somebody can be harmed with it.
Even if your not doing anything supernatural when using it, your then fooling yourself to put your trust into the supposed abilities of an inanimate object...
If you're trusting a piece of wood to tell you things, then you are a few clowns short of a circus IMHO, and deserve everything you get.
I tend to just think it's counter productive and hurts your relationship with God.
Nah, my relationship with God broke down because of a lack of communication, you know? He never called, visited, you know, you miss the little things...
But seriously, daemon != demon. Anyone using the logo as an argument against the OS is taking the piss. If a government refuses to let their population use an operating system for that reason (I doubt it's that big a deal, although I've never visited any countries other people mentioned,) then the government is *way* too oppressive for it's own good and will probably end up being overthrown anyway.
What I want to know is why there isn't a ton of distributions of *BSDs all over the place. The BSD license is more permissive than GPL, so what's the problem?
I'm a Christian, and sometimes I just can't see how many others can go on living.
Maybe I should just kill myself now, huh?
IMO, mandatory evolution curriculum (and in the school format, in order not to fail many science classes, one must acknowledge it as perfect truth) is quite detrimental to religious freedom.
In that it contradicts many religions, yes. How does this make it any less a biological fact?
To change the topic a little, what exactly makes the evolution theory any more valid than any other?
The basic reason is that no other theory has been put forward that explains things as well as evolution. By far. And that includes Creationism, of course. If you have any ideas, go ahead, be the next Darwin, nobody's stopping you.
1. An intelligent Being created the universe and set it into motion with order and design, and created beings with free will--man. But man disobeyed, and imperfection bred imperfection, setting the 2nd law of thermodynamics into effect...
If God created Man, then how come we have such strong ties with other species? How come a hell of a lot of other "beings" were around before Man, if the Bible says that we were created around the same time? If the Bible knows what went on, then why doesn't it mention all of the species that became extinct before Man was around, huh? Do you think that it could possibly have been because Man wrote the Bible, and didn't have knowledge of the history of the world at that time?
2. Chaos became order,
Heh. I think you should check out the genetic programming story that was posted on/. not long ago. This is a perfect example of chaos becoming order:).
...and shortly after everything materialized, the laws of the universe shifted radically--
How did the laws change? Do you mean the laws of physics? Those are the only laws that would seem to apply at this time.
...instead of things gradually becoming more orderly, they became subjected to entropy. Except for living beings, which, for some reason, defied this by evolving into better-adjusted beings.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. The random mutations and the chance of certain beings living and reproducing is a fundamental point that evolution relies on. Perhaps if people were taught it in school, then more people would understand it.
No, I'm not in favor of shoving ANY system of beliefs down anyone's throat.
Neither am I. However, the theory has been around for long enough to be considered fact. OK, so the Bible has been around for longer, but I have yet so see *any* evidence of it being fact. I have seen ample evidence that evolution is fact. Modern biology is based upon evolution. To deny evolution is to deny biology - how can you teach biology without teaching evolution?
Ahh, maybe I'm just bitter about having to recite stupid (in my view) prayers and sing religious songs at school when I was younger... Never did anyone give me a reason to believe in anything like that.
...it isn't proven (it's extremely hard to give a biological proof). Theory is theory until proven, and shouldn't be represented as anything else until then.
You cannot prove a theory at all. You can only prove that it is a "reasonable" theory that makes more sense than anything else. Has anybody proven without a shadow of a doubt that the theory of gravity is true? Of course not. The theory of gravity and the theory of evolution are on level ground when it comes to provability. I will accept that evolution is not taught as fact when gravity is not taught as fact.
I think this is actually not as bad as a lot of people seem to think it is -- it'll certainly open up more discussions about our origins, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.
Yes, but this move is being pushed by the people who blindly believe in a book. A BOOK. No offense meant, and I know that the Old Testament isn't meant to be taken literally, but it's taking the piss when people who believe a woman can be made out of a man's rib can actually block people from teaching a basic biological theory in school.
In my humble opinion, too many people take too many theories for granted (religion and science both).
If we didn't take a few theories for granted, then we would not get anywhere. How could we possibly advance in science if we were forced to, for example, prove that the Earth was round every time we wanted to advance a theory on planetary motion? May I remind you that the Earth hasn't actually been proven to be round (for the anally retentive among us,) only that you can keep moving away from a certain point, only to end up back where you started. OK, so it seems that the Earth is round, but it hasn't been proven. It just seems like the best explanation. I'll stop being sarcastic now, but you get my point.
I'll admit that the theory of evolution may not be 100% perfect, but it's the best we have, and it makes sense. Which is more than I can say about Creationism, even if I was being generous. This is taking PC far too far. Stop being so silly.
If you read every line of code before you install it, yes. But who does? Most users won't read a single line of code, especially as Linux starts to attract more non-technical users.
The security doesn't come about from every user reading the code. The security comes from the people who find a cool app and want to improve it. If anyone looks through the code, it is bound to be publicised straight away. If it isn't a cool or useful app, nobody will use it anyway, so this would be a non-issue.
...if you have a GUI that allows you to do complex one-off operations...
Maybe I don't have the imagination, but I fail to see any GUI being half-way near powerful enough for a lot of tasks while still being as quick to use as the command-line.
A scripting language that allows you access to all the features of an OO system (not just stdin, stdout, stderr and a single return value for each program... proper RPC, object creation, etc) would be a much more powerful replacement, and would be easier to learn.
You mean like Python? Scripting languages like that already exist, and they aren't taking over the world as far as I can tell. I think Python is great, but there's no way I would dump the CL for it.
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It's not just the cost that's frustrating. A lot of films have more features if you buy them in America as opposed to elsewhere.
Funnily enough, I've been thinking along the same lines while writing a general package management specification. A small amount of info in source packages is a hell of a lot simpler than anything else. However, there are many big packages out there that don't even use autoconf, so getting them to add packing info is less than likely.
How about the plain fact that lots of people cannot and never will be able to use it? Windows won't even boot on my (Intel) computer, and even if it did, I doubt I'd waste the disk space.
No, it's not like suing the parents. You sue the people who said that it was ok to let the computer drive in the first place. Let's say I hook up a laptop to a car, and tell it to feed /dev/random to a couple of robotic steering arms. Is the guy that wrote the /dev/random driver at fault? Of course not, I am. Just like the T2 movie, the guy who invented the AI chip wasn't to blame for WW3, it was the guy who decided it would be neat to let it control nukes.
I wasn't really referring to the open-source part of the GPL, more the fact that software compiled against it must be open. Thus, it wouldn't "hurt" MS, as nobody would be able to re-use the interface code, but it would allow for more competition, as hardware support is one of the areas in which MS has the most control.
I'd imagine this would require a relicensing of the driver SDK, so yes, I suppose it would be a taking of IP. But I was under the impression that MS could be compensated for a taking, and if this is the case, the value of the SDK would probably be much less than any other action with similar benefits. Or is a taking completely out of the question?
I suppose the DOJ could make it easier to compete with MS by making the driver interface GPLish with an exception for Windows itself. I haven't developed drivers for Windows, but surely there is at least one component that must be compiled against? This way, drivers would either be open or need extra work to write a non-GPLed interface. This would encourage hardware companies to develop openly and thus make the MS monopoly less of a threat for OS competitors. Or am I way off base here?
You can configure it so you don't have to log on with Linux. The downside is that everything runs as root, so it's easy to break. However, *any* OS that doesn't give the user a chance to log on will have that problem.
With a little work, you could configure Linux to assume that the person sitting at the console is a certain normal user (as opposed to root,) but why bother when all you have to say is "This is your username and password, use them to log on." ? He's in his eighties, he's not stupid.
As much as I hate to admit it, yes, that *is* too much for Linux to handle. The problem isn't anything technical, it's merely the MS monopoly. Virtually every new computer user that is introduced to Linux to browse the net and play games is going to go out to the nearest computer shop and buy whatever game they've heard is cool, or get a copy from a friend. They are going to go to shareware sites and download screensavers/utilities etc. They are going to buy computer magazines in the shops.
Imagine the frustration when they discover that everything out there caters to MS-Windows alone. Linux is beating MS on technical issues, and recently on ease of use. It's the social issue that Linux doesn't stand a chance on. Take a look in your nearest newsagent's next time you're there. I know I haven't ever seen a Linux magazine, and I actively look for them. But you can assume that a computer magazine is for MS-Windows unless it has Mac in the title or something.
We don't need a game API on Linux - we already have enough. SDL, Clanlib, Crystal Space, LibGGI, Mesa. Sorry if I missed anyone out :). They may be specialised in some cases (Mesa only does 3D I believe,) but isn't this the correct approach; to mix & match?
XFree 4 will be a lot speedier because of the direct video access, is that what you are after?
Both teams are working on interoperability, and if you don't want to help, then you can at least do bettter than calling them "boneheaded" and just be quiet.
God yes. Redhat's releasing another version? Those morons. The last thing we need is updates to the software, and bugfixes. Wasn't somebody attributing the "Hacked Linux server" to Redhat 6.0 not having an up-to-date version of cron a day or two ago?
now all thos suckers who got "6.0" training need 6.1 training, now all the people who have support contracts need downtime to upgrade after only having a system up for 5 months..
How in hell can somebody who knows how to use 6.0 be confused when it comes to 6.1? In case you hadn't noticed, it's a *minor* version jump. That means it's not too different, just more up to date.
Thats how *NOT* to run a business, i know RedHat won't just drop 6.0 but it won't be there truely supported platform once 6.1 is released..
It won't be their "truely" supported platform? As long as it's supported, what's the difference? It's not like somebody on the end of the 'phone would say, "Sorry, but that's too technical a question for me to answer about 6.0, so upgrade to 6.1." Worst case scenario, they are told to get the latest RPM of something, and upgrade it.
had it been a service release, people could upgrade in due time and get the new patches/features and additions to the os..
It *is* a service release. That's why it's 6.1 and not 7.0.
a kernel upgrade, and a window manager upgrade don't consitute a 7.0 either.. IMHO 7.0 should be a radical new form of Linux with a solid foundation, a good programming backend, and a feature set to compare to other unices..
Most end-users use a window manager. It's their primary interface to the OS. Therefore, when a new version comes out, it's a Big Deal. We're not talking about kernel 2.2.1 vs. 2.2.2, or KDE 1.1.1 vs. KDE 1.1.2. These are major changes, and the basis for the operating system, so the distribution version numbering should reflect this.
While I think that "narrowing it down" is generally a bad thing when it comes to Linux, I think that if they can afford Mandrake, they should snap them up. From what I can tell, they are basically the same, except for the fact that Mandrake is more polished. Redhat could benefit from the better setup, etc, and Mandrake could benefit from the spending power and brand name.
Redhat and Mandrake seem to be going for the exact same market, unlike a lot of the other distros, so I don't think there would be any sacrifices in diversity.
Am I missing something here? Lots of people have raved about how much slower C++ is. C++, as well as C, is the definition of a program written by a human. The most efficient language is therefore the one that suits the writers of the code. Larger projects benefit from object-orientation, so leaving C for such a language seems reasonable.
Speed issues are largely just compiler issues. Whatever you say about each language, they both end up as machine code. How fast the executable is depends on the compiler far more than the language.
Redhat's errata page is hardly "obscure." And there *is* a utility that checks for updates. It's called Netscape, and only idiot admins miss out this step of the installation.
I'll tell you why this is called FUD. The server was set up to test how secure Linux is as an OS. The guy got local access through a closed-source application that has no connection with Linux apart from the fact that it runs on it. It's like saying MS-Windows is insecure if somebody found a bug in, say, SimCity.
After that, he gained root priveledges by exploiting a hole that was not only old, but also fixed and documented. Neither of these problems are related to the OS at all. Yet the basic information that is floating around is that a Linux box got cracked. FUD.
One reason why UMSDOS is better than a loopback filesystem is that these are average users here. So chances are, the FAT filesystem is fragmented badly. This means that the loopback swap/ext2 filesystem will be fragmented too, and therefore slower than UMSDOS.
Of course, this problem isn't apparent to most people who can create a distro, because they defrag regularly. It has tradeoffs of course, like needing more space. I agree that the loopback device is the "right" way of doing things, but UMSDOS isn't that bad, and gets the job done better in a lot of cases for the kind of user this distro is aimed at.
Hey, I managed to do it without getting into too much trouble. But it was pretty frustrating. Back in primary school (age 4-11,) it was easier for me with a couple of the subjects. You know why? Because they were taught from exercise books - it meant that I could carry on with working while the other kids just fell behind. Same goes for English. However, if you take this to it's logical conclusion, with each kid being taught individually from books, although it will encourage the smarter people to learn more, it will discourage socialising, which can't be a good thing. Where's the compromise here?
However, like other people have said, when the pressure is on you to do homework, it can seriously harm your motivation when all you have done all day is sit in class being bored. It doesn't get better the older you get, either. At Uni, it was just plain depressing when you have to be taught C by people who shouldn't be let near a computer because it has small parts. These were the people who had trouble teaching because they told everyone to call their programs "while" and "test" on a UNIX platform.
In short, if I have to go through all this to be called smart, then I shouldn't have to endure being labelled nuts. No offense to all the truly autistic people out there, but I'm a normal person when it comes to socialising and I don't want people to think otherwise just because I'm smart.
There is some fascinating speculation going on these days that the well-known stereotype of the computer geek or nerd may actually be a description of mild autism, especially a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome.
Exactly. Note the words "speculation" and "sterotype". All reliable forms of information when it comes to writing news articles.
Asperger's syndrome patients, who usually develop their traits at a young age, often have these tendencies: ... fascination with fantasy worlds and arcane facts..."
Hmm. Arcane facts. Does that include being able to recall around 70% of the "Pop-up Video" facts about a song by just watching it once? Sad, but that's about all the musical ability I have :).
Probably just a poor choice of words then. Sorry. But calling the Queen "Your Majesty" isn't a case of acknowledging that she is a better person than anyone else, in my opinion. It's just a case of recognising that she holds a position of authority over me. I would call her that whether or not I was a British citizen, because a title is mostly just tradition anyway.
I'm basically in agreement with you though. I don't believe anyone is a better human being just because of their heritage. That would be bordering on racism as far as I can tell.
For the record though, I don't respect our Prime Minister for getting elected by the public any more than I respect the Teletubbies for getting to number one in the music charts. It's basically the same thing, isn't it? Except for the fact the Teletubbies didn't lie to the public about what they would get if they bought their single.
I'm from the U.K. and I think that the Queen doesn't serve any useful purpose apart from bringing in the tourists. If I ever met her, I wouldn't call her a freeloader to her face. It's not because I recognise her importance, it's just that I am polite. Big deal if you respect the president of Greece more than the Queen of the U.K. They both deserve our respect and courtesy. Learn some diplomacy sometime.
Doesn't this rely on the assumption that all intelligent (I assume you meant intelligent) life *requires* bone structure? There is life on Earth that doesn't have bone structure, although none of it is intelligent (at least in the way most people define intelligence.) It seems like one of those things you can never prove, just disprove. Like you said, it could be a case of everyone seeing bone structure everywhere on Earth, causing us to believe that there isn't an alternative way of doing it that doesn't impose the restriction to carbon/silicon.
It also depends on how you define life. Is the definition "anything that has evolved" or can it be expanded to artificial creations? We may come across a planet populated by volleyball-playing lego robots that the creators have abandoned :).
Another little interesting tidbit is the theory that all intelligent civilizations see eclipses...
I guess non-intelligent life can see eclipses as well :)
How? I can't think of any way of harming somebody with a board except for hitting them on the head with it. If other people believe that it is evil, that still doesn't mean somebody can be harmed with it.
Even if your not doing anything supernatural when using it, your then fooling yourself to put your trust into the supposed abilities of an inanimate object...
If you're trusting a piece of wood to tell you things, then you are a few clowns short of a circus IMHO, and deserve everything you get.
I tend to just think it's counter productive and hurts your relationship with God.
Nah, my relationship with God broke down because of a lack of communication, you know? He never called, visited, you know, you miss the little things...
But seriously, daemon != demon. Anyone using the logo as an argument against the OS is taking the piss. If a government refuses to let their population use an operating system for that reason (I doubt it's that big a deal, although I've never visited any countries other people mentioned,) then the government is *way* too oppressive for it's own good and will probably end up being overthrown anyway.
What I want to know is why there isn't a ton of distributions of *BSDs all over the place. The BSD license is more permissive than GPL, so what's the problem?
Maybe I should just kill myself now, huh?
IMO, mandatory evolution curriculum (and in the school format, in order not to fail many science classes, one must acknowledge it as perfect truth) is quite detrimental to religious freedom.
In that it contradicts many religions, yes. How does this make it any less a biological fact?
To change the topic a little, what exactly makes the evolution theory any more valid than any other?
The basic reason is that no other theory has been put forward that explains things as well as evolution. By far. And that includes Creationism, of course. If you have any ideas, go ahead, be the next Darwin, nobody's stopping you.
1. An intelligent Being created the universe and set it into motion with order and design, and created beings with free will--man. But man disobeyed, and imperfection bred imperfection, setting the 2nd law of thermodynamics into effect...
If God created Man, then how come we have such strong ties with other species? How come a hell of a lot of other "beings" were around before Man, if the Bible says that we were created around the same time? If the Bible knows what went on, then why doesn't it mention all of the species that became extinct before Man was around, huh? Do you think that it could possibly have been because Man wrote the Bible, and didn't have knowledge of the history of the world at that time?
2. Chaos became order,
Heh. I think you should check out the genetic programming story that was posted on /. not long ago. This is a perfect example of chaos becoming order :).
How did the laws change? Do you mean the laws of physics? Those are the only laws that would seem to apply at this time.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. The random mutations and the chance of certain beings living and reproducing is a fundamental point that evolution relies on. Perhaps if people were taught it in school, then more people would understand it.
No, I'm not in favor of shoving ANY system of beliefs down anyone's throat.
Neither am I. However, the theory has been around for long enough to be considered fact. OK, so the Bible has been around for longer, but I have yet so see *any* evidence of it being fact. I have seen ample evidence that evolution is fact. Modern biology is based upon evolution. To deny evolution is to deny biology - how can you teach biology without teaching evolution?
Ahh, maybe I'm just bitter about having to recite stupid (in my view) prayers and sing religious songs at school when I was younger... Never did anyone give me a reason to believe in anything like that.
Last time I checked, X wasn't part of the OS :)
You cannot prove a theory at all. You can only prove that it is a "reasonable" theory that makes more sense than anything else. Has anybody proven without a shadow of a doubt that the theory of gravity is true? Of course not. The theory of gravity and the theory of evolution are on level ground when it comes to provability. I will accept that evolution is not taught as fact when gravity is not taught as fact.
I think this is actually not as bad as a lot of people seem to think it is -- it'll certainly open up more discussions about our origins, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.
Yes, but this move is being pushed by the people who blindly believe in a book. A BOOK. No offense meant, and I know that the Old Testament isn't meant to be taken literally, but it's taking the piss when people who believe a woman can be made out of a man's rib can actually block people from teaching a basic biological theory in school.
In my humble opinion, too many people take too many theories for granted (religion and science both).
If we didn't take a few theories for granted, then we would not get anywhere. How could we possibly advance in science if we were forced to, for example, prove that the Earth was round every time we wanted to advance a theory on planetary motion? May I remind you that the Earth hasn't actually been proven to be round (for the anally retentive among us,) only that you can keep moving away from a certain point, only to end up back where you started. OK, so it seems that the Earth is round, but it hasn't been proven. It just seems like the best explanation. I'll stop being sarcastic now, but you get my point.
I'll admit that the theory of evolution may not be 100% perfect, but it's the best we have, and it makes sense. Which is more than I can say about Creationism, even if I was being generous. This is taking PC far too far. Stop being so silly.
The security doesn't come about from every user reading the code. The security comes from the people who find a cool app and want to improve it. If anyone looks through the code, it is bound to be publicised straight away. If it isn't a cool or useful app, nobody will use it anyway, so this would be a non-issue.
Maybe I don't have the imagination, but I fail to see any GUI being half-way near powerful enough for a lot of tasks while still being as quick to use as the command-line.
A scripting language that allows you access to all the features of an OO system (not just stdin, stdout, stderr and a single return value for each program... proper RPC, object creation, etc) would be a much more powerful replacement, and would be easier to learn.
You mean like Python? Scripting languages like that already exist, and they aren't taking over the world as far as I can tell. I think Python is great, but there's no way I would dump the CL for it.