I've crashed a SCO box before by trying to change a route that didn't exist. I thought bugs like that were reserved for OS' like Win95, but apparently not.
Of course, VisionFS that runs on SCO Unix is a horrible, horrible hack of a program. It crashes and has to be restarted once a month like clockwork.
people who had been sold on one thing and got another
I *just* finished putting together a 3Com NBX100 system a month ago. Of all the choices we looked at for a similar-sized organization, the NBX100 seemed like the best fit. It had the best mix of current features, including all that you mentioned, as well as future expandability and nice touches like compatibility with H.323 gatekeepers.
We were also impressed with their softphone application... until we used it. We were given a reference at an AOL call center that used the softphones exclusively, so we figured they couldn't be that bad. We were wrong.
The reps told us not to buy cheap USB headsets, so we bought cheap line-level headsets and used the onboard sound cards: big mistake. This caused horrible echoes due to the lack of echo-cancellation in the hardware. We have since replaced all the headsets with Plantronics USB headsets, only to substitute one problem for another. Now they don't echo, but they crash randomly on some of the computers. Here is a list of the outstanding problems we have:
The softphone has a noticeable delay, that gets worse the longer one is on a call. After five minutes of talking, it's like talking on a HAM radio halfway around the world.
There is an 'external page' feature on the NBX that plugs into an amplified speaker paging system. It works from the hardphones, but not from the softphones.
A few people's computers crash and reboot sometimes when they try to answer the phone. This is especially annoying and neither we nor 3Com has *any* idea what the problem could be.
So far, all 3Com has done is blame the OS (Windows 2000) and the network (multicasting?) for all the problems. They finally, a month later, have put someone on our case and are supposedly working on solutions. But I can't believe the problems we have had from a system that was touted as "six years old".
Don't get me wrong: if we had NO softphones, the NBX system would be damn near perfect. The hardphones are slick as hell, but you have to get the $300 business phones to have functionality like call groups and speakerphone.
If you really want softphones, though, Swyx was one solution that was similarly priced and seemed rather impressive. They seemed more focused on the software side of things than 3Com. Their server runs on both Windows 2000 and Linux, which is also a plus.
FWIW, the rage128 support is the same as that for radeon 7500 and above. You have to use the VESA drivers if you want TV-out, which means no acceleration. To switch to accelerated X, you have to reboot the machine with the TV unplugged.
I've tried atitvout, but it doesn't seem to work correctly with the rage128 based cards.
Problem is, technically, without some further contract you're not legally allowed to install any software you buy because it would be an unauthorised copy.
As I understand it, that's fair use. It's okay to make copies for personal use, just like it's okay to brew beer for personal use. Unless it's placed in the 'public sphere', it doesn't exist jurisdictionally speaking. This argument applies (tangentially) to the sodomy laws that were recently struck down as well.
It does have a lot to do with apt, but apt isn't everything. As others have pointed out, apt-rpm is available, but to equate the two is a mistake.
Apt is so powerful on Debian, as well as so necessary, because of the way Debian packages are divided. There are over 8000 packages available on Debian because each program is separated into its component parts and dependencies are calculated based off of those instead of the whole. There are 23 different packages just for OpenOffice.org!
This enables fine-grained control that would be difficult to achieve on source-based distros and impossible on RedHat, where a particular program is usually divided into just two packages, x and x-dev, yet everything is still dependent upon both of them. You end up with base installs that are something absurd like 1400 MB!
Don't get me wrong, I still use RedHat for a few things. Clients who want server support from a big vendor get RedHat. Others who want the latest Linux business desktop and are willing to pay for it to be more stable than Debian unstable get RedHat. They have created a good niche for themselves and I happily recommend their products. When (if) it comes time to move them to Debian, I'd much rather move them from RedHat than from Windows.
I left RedHat for personal use, though, when I realized that they will not support every little project and every little project won't always support them. They target their product for businesses and tend to ignore things like multimedia apps and anything with a slightly questionable legal status.
I'm more than happy to invest my personal time in Debian because I know it will still be around in twenty years. I also know that, since it is run by it's users, Debian won't ever act to remove choices from them.
I use Woody as a desktop with a 2.4.21-rc2-ac2 kernel. Since most GNU software is written with Debian in mind, stock stuff works flawlessly. As a desktop, it can be clunky at times, but I agree with your assertion that one should try to use the same OS on the desktop as on a server when possible. I'm using a PIII/667 and I'm more interested in stability than playing games so I bought a stick of memory for speed and I put up with the clunkiness until KDE 3.1 is stable enough for testing. Who knows, before that happens, Knoppix may end up on a spare partition. I hear it makes a pretty good desktop distro.
Regardless of the terminology used, the physical reality is that, in the case of stealing, an act is committed. In the case of crimes of omission, no act is committed. Under your interpretation, a person can 'commit' neglect without actually being alive. That is a logical fallacy.
Meeker noted that Baystate had reproduced a handful of errors in Bowers program. Kann, Baystate's lawyer, said all the errors came from Bowers' user interface, not the underlying code.
I know you're just trying to be funny, but, seriously, Debian with apt is a completely different way to think about software management. You don't have to try to upgrade the entire system at once and migrate user settings and such. You can just do like he said, and upgrade just the packages you want.
It makes upgrades go smoother and lets you stay on the bleeding edge of whatever packages you want while keeping stable versions of others. Lets face it, the odds of finding an RPM (or even a binary.tar) for an obscure program or utility that installs and works properly with the hacked kernel, compiler and directory scheme that is RedHat is next to nil.
There is a difference between battery and attempted murder.
Not one that can be proved without resorting to mind reading. And the consequences of the two are utterly indistinguishable.
All in all, I think it's not a good idea to try and make an argument by modifying the axioms of your world
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Seriously, though, read that link I posted. It is very typical of the sort of dribble that poly-sci professors try to pass off as coherent thought, and it was just a random link that I found on Google. The sad thing is, it is obvious that even they know it is bullshit. Here's another gem: The second reason why Crime and Criminal Law are not the same is because Crime is all about blameworthiness, culpability, and a whole bunch of other concepts to be explained later.
If you can read that paper and come to a logical formalism of political philosophy, then you are a better mathematician than I have seen!
There is not even an argument in this case that the defendant caused harm to anyone. The argument is that he tried to cause harm to the companies involved.
In your examples, the (alleged) criminal would at least have had the possibility of setting in motion a chain of events that actually resulted in the injury of another.
If I come across a boiler that is about to explode and do not prevent it, am I responsible for the damage it causes? If I throw an axe and it lands in a person's head am I responsible for his injuries, or did the interaction of the axe with the air cause him to be harmed instead?
I'm not going to get into a debate over the extent of causality. It's debatable. That's why we have juries.
The possibility of causality, however, is an absolute requirement for a crime. The existence of injury to begin with is even more necessary.
A possible argument re: your child might be that you caused him to be born, thus you are responsible for preventing him from harming others, just as if you had accellerated an automobile and aimed it in the direction of an intersection; you are then responsible (to a certain extent) for making sure your previous actions don't cause injury. But did you really cause your child to be born, or did someone else help? Are you the cause of everything your child does, or do children have free-will? If you fail to feed your child, do you really cause him to die? Like I said, it's debatable.
Oh, yeah, and as for the second one: I thought it was obvious to everyone that battery was a crime.
It is an act that causes injury.
What I want the person to be charged with is irrelevent. One doesn't have the luxury of looking at the possible punishments and choosing a crime to fit them. It works the other way around.
Not feeding your children is debatable. I suppose if your children were free to find food on their own, no one could accuse you of anything other than being a piss-poor parent.
Many perfectly civilized societies have had traditions of leaving unwanted children on the mountaintop to fend for themselves. I don't think we can claim we are any better in this respect, since our society justifies not only abandoning unwanted children, but actively participating in their demise.
Today's political scientists have given up on that fact. They have defined their role in society merely as interpreters of the wishes of sovereigns. They obviously can't even do that very well. Hell, even lawyers do the same thing. They don't realize that the only reason they exist is to make sure that the legal system maintains a logical, coherent structure as a bulwark against abuses by the government. They have utterly failed that duty.
Actual Judges, not those that are merely stooges of an oppressive government, should be interested in nothing but theory. Their job is to evaluate laws based upon those theories and based upon the 'theoretical' arguments of lawyers who come before them, not merely to dole out punishment based upon the whimsical wishes of a sovereign or the legislature du jour.
They exist as the only partition between an oppressive government and rampant crime. They should treat each with equal disdain and must maintain the ability to think 'theoretically' in order to do so.
There is an entire menagerie of bullshit 'crimes' defined by democratic legislatures these days. 'Attempted _______' is just one example of them. The only semblance they have to actual crime is the fact that said governments label them as such. But for the terminology, they are more alike in every respect to mere illegal acts, not crimes, and as such would not be subject to punitive damages (jail time, extra fines above actual damages, etc...)
Read this explanation from a political science professor, for instance, and try not to be confused. The author, in attempting to reconcile the absurd acts of modern legislatures with actual legal theory, has even managed to confuse himself:
It's useful to think of Criminal Law as a set of both Proscriptive (prohibited) AND Prescriptive (preferred) rules for conduct. This is best understood by the oxymoron "crimes of omission"...
What? He admits that a crime of omission cannot exist because it is an oxymoron. This conclusion is dependent upon the basic definition of crime that has existed since time immemorial: crime requires injury. An injury is an act committed against someone that results in harm to them.
Not doing something is not a crime; it isn't even an act. Yet, implicit also in the acceptance of "prescribed" rules of conduct being punishable as "crimes" is the acceptance of "crimes of omission," which he himself states is an oxymoron.
Thinking about doing something isn't an act, either. It would be more properly termed a thought crime, regardless of what Mr. Gates says.
It should be obvious that even the intellectual charlatans who affix themselves to the coattails of oppressive governments and attempt to explain logically it's actions cannot, in the process, help but become confused themselves.
I wasn't disagreeing with your conclusion, that (waste) biomass is a good source of energy, any more than the original poster was arguing it's antithesis, that biomass isn't useful.
In the general sense, biomass means 'all living matter'. It is only in the special, "I'm an environmental engineer" sense that it means 'waste matter converted into energy'. I thought I was using the general term.
Photosynthesis provides 120 billion tonnes of biomass every year, corresponding to about five times the total world's energy need. -here
Of course, implicit in this statement is the fact that it doesn't include all the other uses we have for biomass: food, timber, crops for animals, etc..
Okay, wow, I can't believe I responded to that without fully realizing your argument.
You think, not only, that
1) Microsoft has a 'reputation' that would be harmed by this group releasing a security exploit of one of their products,
but also that
2) Microsoft's release of a signed boot-loader for Linux would benefit anyone but themselves?
These people already have the hack. They don't need a signed boot-loader. If anything, it is a friendly gesture to encourage Microsoft to get off of their DRM-high-horse and release a solution that would support Linux but not the game pirates. It is not blackmail.
Like, what, fear of losing business? "Support third-party software or I'll write an interface!" isn't a threat to anything but Microsoft's monopolistic business model.
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Okay, for anyone who actually wants this system to work, it needs DDR Memory for $23 instead of that stuff above.
It also needs a $6 heat sink.
And, if you want it to really be comparable to the XBox, you need a $5 network card.
That's what the big-media companies get for selling their articles as a newspaper instead of individually.
Socket 370 Motherboard: $25
Celeron 733: $32
128MB Memory: $32
nVidia Geforce 4: $47
DVD-ROM: $28
Case w/ 300W PS: $23
20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57
4 Channel Sound Card: $8
Total: $252
Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.
I've crashed a SCO box before by trying to change a route that didn't exist. I thought bugs like that were reserved for OS' like Win95, but apparently not.
Of course, VisionFS that runs on SCO Unix is a horrible, horrible hack of a program. It crashes and has to be restarted once a month like clockwork.
I *just* finished putting together a 3Com NBX100 system a month ago. Of all the choices we looked at for a similar-sized organization, the NBX100 seemed like the best fit. It had the best mix of current features, including all that you mentioned, as well as future expandability and nice touches like compatibility with H.323 gatekeepers.
We were also impressed with their softphone application... until we used it. We were given a reference at an AOL call center that used the softphones exclusively, so we figured they couldn't be that bad. We were wrong.
The reps told us not to buy cheap USB headsets, so we bought cheap line-level headsets and used the onboard sound cards: big mistake. This caused horrible echoes due to the lack of echo-cancellation in the hardware. We have since replaced all the headsets with Plantronics USB headsets, only to substitute one problem for another. Now they don't echo, but they crash randomly on some of the computers. Here is a list of the outstanding problems we have:
The softphone has a noticeable delay, that gets worse the longer one is on a call. After five minutes of talking, it's like talking on a HAM radio halfway around the world.
There is an 'external page' feature on the NBX that plugs into an amplified speaker paging system. It works from the hardphones, but not from the softphones.
A few people's computers crash and reboot sometimes when they try to answer the phone. This is especially annoying and neither we nor 3Com has *any* idea what the problem could be.
So far, all 3Com has done is blame the OS (Windows 2000) and the network (multicasting?) for all the problems. They finally, a month later, have put someone on our case and are supposedly working on solutions. But I can't believe the problems we have had from a system that was touted as "six years old".
Don't get me wrong: if we had NO softphones, the NBX system would be damn near perfect. The hardphones are slick as hell, but you have to get the $300 business phones to have functionality like call groups and speakerphone.
If you really want softphones, though, Swyx was one solution that was similarly priced and seemed rather impressive. They seemed more focused on the software side of things than 3Com. Their server runs on both Windows 2000 and Linux, which is also a plus.
FWIW, the rage128 support is the same as that for radeon 7500 and above. You have to use the VESA drivers if you want TV-out, which means no acceleration. To switch to accelerated X, you have to reboot the machine with the TV unplugged.
I've tried atitvout, but it doesn't seem to work correctly with the rage128 based cards.
As I understand it, that's fair use. It's okay to make copies for personal use, just like it's okay to brew beer for personal use. Unless it's placed in the 'public sphere', it doesn't exist jurisdictionally speaking. This argument applies (tangentially) to the sodomy laws that were recently struck down as well.
It does have a lot to do with apt, but apt isn't everything. As others have pointed out, apt-rpm is available, but to equate the two is a mistake.
Apt is so powerful on Debian, as well as so necessary, because of the way Debian packages are divided. There are over 8000 packages available on Debian because each program is separated into its component parts and dependencies are calculated based off of those instead of the whole. There are 23 different packages just for OpenOffice.org!
This enables fine-grained control that would be difficult to achieve on source-based distros and impossible on RedHat, where a particular program is usually divided into just two packages, x and x-dev, yet everything is still dependent upon both of them. You end up with base installs that are something absurd like 1400 MB!
Don't get me wrong, I still use RedHat for a few things. Clients who want server support from a big vendor get RedHat. Others who want the latest Linux business desktop and are willing to pay for it to be more stable than Debian unstable get RedHat. They have created a good niche for themselves and I happily recommend their products. When (if) it comes time to move them to Debian, I'd much rather move them from RedHat than from Windows.
I left RedHat for personal use, though, when I realized that they will not support every little project and every little project won't always support them. They target their product for businesses and tend to ignore things like multimedia apps and anything with a slightly questionable legal status.
I'm more than happy to invest my personal time in Debian because I know it will still be around in twenty years. I also know that, since it is run by it's users, Debian won't ever act to remove choices from them.
I use Woody as a desktop with a 2.4.21-rc2-ac2 kernel. Since most GNU software is written with Debian in mind, stock stuff works flawlessly. As a desktop, it can be clunky at times, but I agree with your assertion that one should try to use the same OS on the desktop as on a server when possible. I'm using a PIII/667 and I'm more interested in stability than playing games so I bought a stick of memory for speed and I put up with the clunkiness until KDE 3.1 is stable enough for testing. Who knows, before that happens, Knoppix may end up on a spare partition. I hear it makes a pretty good desktop distro.
Regardless of the terminology used, the physical reality is that, in the case of stealing, an act is committed. In the case of crimes of omission, no act is committed. Under your interpretation, a person can 'commit' neglect without actually being alive. That is a logical fallacy.
Meeker noted that Baystate had reproduced a handful of errors in Bowers program. Kann, Baystate's lawyer, said all the errors came from Bowers' user interface, not the underlying code.
It makes upgrades go smoother and lets you stay on the bleeding edge of whatever packages you want while keeping stable versions of others. Lets face it, the odds of finding an RPM (or even a binary .tar) for an obscure program or utility that installs and works properly with the hacked kernel, compiler and directory scheme that is RedHat is next to nil.
Not one that can be proved without resorting to mind reading. And the consequences of the two are utterly indistinguishable.
All in all, I think it's not a good idea to try and make an argument by modifying the axioms of your world
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Seriously, though, read that link I posted. It is very typical of the sort of dribble that poly-sci professors try to pass off as coherent thought, and it was just a random link that I found on Google. The sad thing is, it is obvious that even they know it is bullshit. Here's another gem: The second reason why Crime and Criminal Law are not the same is because Crime is all about blameworthiness, culpability, and a whole bunch of other concepts to be explained later.
If you can read that paper and come to a logical formalism of political philosophy, then you are a better mathematician than I have seen!
There is not even an argument in this case that the defendant caused harm to anyone. The argument is that he tried to cause harm to the companies involved.
In your examples, the (alleged) criminal would at least have had the possibility of setting in motion a chain of events that actually resulted in the injury of another.
If I come across a boiler that is about to explode and do not prevent it, am I responsible for the damage it causes? If I throw an axe and it lands in a person's head am I responsible for his injuries, or did the interaction of the axe with the air cause him to be harmed instead?
I'm not going to get into a debate over the extent of causality. It's debatable. That's why we have juries.
The possibility of causality, however, is an absolute requirement for a crime. The existence of injury to begin with is even more necessary.
A possible argument re: your child might be that you caused him to be born, thus you are responsible for preventing him from harming others, just as if you had accellerated an automobile and aimed it in the direction of an intersection; you are then responsible (to a certain extent) for making sure your previous actions don't cause injury. But did you really cause your child to be born, or did someone else help? Are you the cause of everything your child does, or do children have free-will? If you fail to feed your child, do you really cause him to die? Like I said, it's debatable.
It is an act that causes injury.
What I want the person to be charged with is irrelevent. One doesn't have the luxury of looking at the possible punishments and choosing a crime to fit them. It works the other way around.
Would you say it is a crime if no one owns the building or lives in it?
Crimes against property are a grey area. Thought crimes are not; they are non-existent.
Not feeding your children is debatable. I suppose if your children were free to find food on their own, no one could accuse you of anything other than being a piss-poor parent.
Many perfectly civilized societies have had traditions of leaving unwanted children on the mountaintop to fend for themselves. I don't think we can claim we are any better in this respect, since our society justifies not only abandoning unwanted children, but actively participating in their demise.
Today's political scientists have given up on that fact. They have defined their role in society merely as interpreters of the wishes of sovereigns. They obviously can't even do that very well. Hell, even lawyers do the same thing. They don't realize that the only reason they exist is to make sure that the legal system maintains a logical, coherent structure as a bulwark against abuses by the government. They have utterly failed that duty.
Actual Judges, not those that are merely stooges of an oppressive government, should be interested in nothing but theory. Their job is to evaluate laws based upon those theories and based upon the 'theoretical' arguments of lawyers who come before them, not merely to dole out punishment based upon the whimsical wishes of a sovereign or the legislature du jour.
They exist as the only partition between an oppressive government and rampant crime. They should treat each with equal disdain and must maintain the ability to think 'theoretically' in order to do so.
Let's steal sushi, you mean?
Read this explanation from a political science professor, for instance, and try not to be confused. The author, in attempting to reconcile the absurd acts of modern legislatures with actual legal theory, has even managed to confuse himself:
What? He admits that a crime of omission cannot exist because it is an oxymoron. This conclusion is dependent upon the basic definition of crime that has existed since time immemorial: crime requires injury. An injury is an act committed against someone that results in harm to them.
Not doing something is not a crime; it isn't even an act. Yet, implicit also in the acceptance of "prescribed" rules of conduct being punishable as "crimes" is the acceptance of "crimes of omission," which he himself states is an oxymoron.
Thinking about doing something isn't an act, either. It would be more properly termed a thought crime, regardless of what Mr. Gates says.
It should be obvious that even the intellectual charlatans who affix themselves to the coattails of oppressive governments and attempt to explain logically it's actions cannot, in the process, help but become confused themselves.
Remove the rock of shame...
Attach the rock of victory!
Now lets all get drunk and play ping pong!
In the general sense, biomass means 'all living matter'. It is only in the special, "I'm an environmental engineer" sense that it means 'waste matter converted into energy'. I thought I was using the general term.
How's that for pedantry?
Of course, implicit in this statement is the fact that it doesn't include all the other uses we have for biomass: food, timber, crops for animals, etc..
You think, not only, that
1) Microsoft has a 'reputation' that would be harmed by this group releasing a security exploit of one of their products,
but also that
2) Microsoft's release of a signed boot-loader for Linux would benefit anyone but themselves?
These people already have the hack. They don't need a signed boot-loader. If anything, it is a friendly gesture to encourage Microsoft to get off of their DRM-high-horse and release a solution that would support Linux but not the game pirates. It is not blackmail.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means...
Discreditable- Harmful to one's reputation; blameworthy
Like, what, fear of losing business? "Support third-party software or I'll write an interface!" isn't a threat to anything but Microsoft's monopolistic business model.