Please, someone save me from RAM slaying bloat of Firefox!
Aside from a few sites (cough), I have never witnessed Firefox being anything but snappy and responsive on any OS with a reasonably-powered machine. How much RAM do you have?
Firefox on Linux always works well, and on Windows I've seen it use ~250 MB before, but that's fairly reasonable for the average Windows machine these days. I don't consider my machines to be particularly well-spec'd (a couple are nearly 10 years old), but I'm not trying to run Windows with only 256 MB of RAM either. What am I missing?
It's also not possible to sexually harass your boss.
For instance, if you have a hot boss and you call her "sugar tits" then chances are she might fire you but you would not be violating any laws so that would be the worst of your punishment.
If, on the other hand, your hot boss calls you "sugar tits", chances are that you are just a typical fat slashdotter and she isn't attracted to you anyways, but is merely making fun of you. Aren't laws fun.
The demonstrated link between educating women and raising living standards in third world countries has little to do with basic sanitation or in sending them into the workforce. It's main benefit is to counter a lot of the bullshit spread by organized religion: to inform young people that children are not "miracles" sent by God to help harvest your crops. Rather, they consume resources and cost money and having everyone reproduce past the rate of replacement is a recipe for ecological disaster and inescapable, crushing poverty.
You can draw a straight line from those guys standing there with their hands up, through the religious shamans, imperialist priests and other irresponsible leaders misinforming and improperly educating young women, failing to teach sane economics and basic physics, encouraging overpopulation and resource depletion, through other exploitative institutions from sweatshops to poorly-structured welfare programs to red light districts everywhere, right to the penniless, child-burdened female sex workers they are pretending to "rescue" from the ridiculously poor decisions every one of them sanctioned and encouraged.
Extremely aggressive people are ironically suicidal most of the time. Personally, I think you would have to be to sign up for most military services. I would say that it's not that most of them have any particular grievance or target or political view, but that they have a need to lash out at something, even themselves.
A competent defense will take this into account. It's the philosophy behind Judo, for instance. Take your attacker's weaknesses into account. The fragility of his determination to do himself good rather than merely to do someone harm, and the mistakes this creates, is definitely a weakness.
The USSR's failure in Afghanistan is a textbook example. As is Hitler's opening the Eastern front and marching into the Russian winter. But it's deeper than just a strategic blunder. Consider the Stockholm syndrome, current suicides in the US armed forces, hell even Vietnam. Many aggressors will completely give up and psychologically join the other side at the slightest sign of resistance. In fact I imagine it's a useful evolutionary trait to run towards the victor in any conflict. But aggressors also often don't think through the consequences of their actions until it's too late, at which point cognitive dissonance sets in and they become regretful and despondent. It's easy to see how this individual trait can express itself at a national level, especially in a democracy. A nation can march itself right off a cliff in order to spite an enemy, almost as easily as an individual.
Obama Bi den -- coincidence or not, this example is just too eerie to ignore.
Personally, I'm not sure I agree that cold war spending risked the US in a significant way. We did a passable job of making defense investments as dual-use as possible. As wasteful as much of it was, America still has significant resources. I am however concerned about the social and legal changes that such a massive collective effort brought about in American society.
Hierarchy is absolutely essential for tasks that have no budget and no due date, such as home repairs. I found that the to-do list in KOrganizer is a surprisingly simple and flexible way to manage hierarchical tasks. I just wish it could handle shared dependencies.
Does anyone use TaskJuggler for project management? I've looked into it before and it's overkill for most of what I do but it seems to have an interesting approach so I'm interested to hear anyone's opinion on it.
That's funny that, for your rant, you randomly chose an age that is below the legal work age in most (all?) of the US, then proceeded to harangue this randomly-selected group of iPhone users for being irresponsible because they don't earn enough to pay for iPhone service, because they are legally prevented.
I'll let you assume what distro I installed for them.
So which was it? I can name a hundred different variables (besides user competence) that would affect this decision, and even though Ubuntu probably stands out as the most obvious choice, the prospect of responding to that user's bug reports might make you consider a bit more mature distro.
I've always kind of been on the impression that anyone who has seriously considered using Linux already knows what distro they expect to be using.
I disagree with this. There are real philosophical differences between distros that are not immediately apparent and that can make a huge difference down the line depending on which one you choose. The average user doesn't really consider the OS at all. The average new Linux user is usually taking a leap just to consider any alternative to Windows or Apple. You could say that a new Linux user is probably installing a distro that has been recommended by a friend, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be the best choice for them.
That's the one thing users should realize about Fedora. You always get the latest stuff, whether you want it or not. If your usage is more slanted towards having the same setup for years at a time, it's a distro that requires some maintenance. If you can handle a more rapid pace of change, however, security updates and new features are forthcoming.
Compilation copyright is a somewhat ridiculous concept that has gained popularity recently. It's akin to saying that you own the copyright to the particular selection of packages and programs on a particular Linux distro or install CD, for instance.
My impression is that there are degrees of "copyrightability" at issue. You have a much stronger copyright claim by re-writing a complete functional unit, such as a program, all at once than you would have by re-writing a single function or replacing a program line-by-line.
Your example of Star Wars leads me to suggest that if you replaced every frame, one at a time, yet still ended up with, say, a western about a religious guy and his gun-slinging buddy and their girl-friend dodging bounty-hunters and rebelling against a corrupt government, then an argument could be made. Is Dark Side of the Moon derived from The Wizard of Oz in a meaningful way? I couldn't say. Certainly not in an obvious way.
Obviously you can't prove a negative, but one method of protecting yourself from derivation claims is to utilize clean-room or "Chinese wall" reverse engineering, documenting the entire process to be able to demonstrate later in court if necessary how you were able to re-implement a piece of code without actually copying or deriving from it.
Anderson is claiming complete Copyright and that is simply an impossibility. As far as I am concerned, this claim is a GPL violation in and of itself.
This is exactly the most disturbing issue to me here. Being able to re-write GPL code and then claim sole copyright on that new code would completely invalidate the entire concept of derivative work on which the GPL and every other software license is based.
I'm guessing that person A could argue that the work contributed by person B was mostly derivative and thus person B does not have any copyright claim due to this.
Personally, I'm surprised that anyone would be bold enough to actually remove copyright notices from existing GPL'd code. Even if you completely rewrite something, piece by piece, over a period of time, that doesn't mean your work is not derivative of the original.
I'm not aware that there is yet any clear rule on this issue, or even that one is possible.
This begs the question of why we don't already have netbooks this awesome, with free internet and days of battery life.
Future value of money, basically. Anything that can be subsidized and supported by a subscription model will be of superior quality whenever the interest rate on lending is >0%. Razors and blades. This is the essence of human capital. Why invest in production or technological improvement when you can invest in locking-in future consumers?
That's true. But insurance is only paid for by your employer because the government provides tax incentives to do so. Get rid of government interference in healthcare and those other things go away too. Choose your own health insurance free of government subsidies and market manipulation and you'll be able to get the options you want.
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Please, someone save me from RAM slaying bloat of Firefox!
Aside from a few sites (cough), I have never witnessed Firefox being anything but snappy and responsive on any OS with a reasonably-powered machine. How much RAM do you have?
Firefox on Linux always works well, and on Windows I've seen it use ~250 MB before, but that's fairly reasonable for the average Windows machine these days. I don't consider my machines to be particularly well-spec'd (a couple are nearly 10 years old), but I'm not trying to run Windows with only 256 MB of RAM either. What am I missing?
The Pope? How many IP lawyers does he have?
It's also not possible to sexually harass your boss.
For instance, if you have a hot boss and you call her "sugar tits" then chances are she might fire you but you would not be violating any laws so that would be the worst of your punishment.
If, on the other hand, your hot boss calls you "sugar tits", chances are that you are just a typical fat slashdotter and she isn't attracted to you anyways, but is merely making fun of you. Aren't laws fun.
How's this:
The demonstrated link between educating women and raising living standards in third world countries has little to do with basic sanitation or in sending them into the workforce. It's main benefit is to counter a lot of the bullshit spread by organized religion: to inform young people that children are not "miracles" sent by God to help harvest your crops. Rather, they consume resources and cost money and having everyone reproduce past the rate of replacement is a recipe for ecological disaster and inescapable, crushing poverty.
You can draw a straight line from those guys standing there with their hands up, through the religious shamans, imperialist priests and other irresponsible leaders misinforming and improperly educating young women, failing to teach sane economics and basic physics, encouraging overpopulation and resource depletion, through other exploitative institutions from sweatshops to poorly-structured welfare programs to red light districts everywhere, right to the penniless, child-burdened female sex workers they are pretending to "rescue" from the ridiculously poor decisions every one of them sanctioned and encouraged.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHZRSlhJxY
So, in this "game", is healthcare subsidized? Is everyone taxed in order to encourage certain arbitrary health regimens over others?
"Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it."
--Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Extremely aggressive people are ironically suicidal most of the time. Personally, I think you would have to be to sign up for most military services. I would say that it's not that most of them have any particular grievance or target or political view, but that they have a need to lash out at something, even themselves.
A competent defense will take this into account. It's the philosophy behind Judo, for instance. Take your attacker's weaknesses into account. The fragility of his determination to do himself good rather than merely to do someone harm, and the mistakes this creates, is definitely a weakness.
The USSR's failure in Afghanistan is a textbook example. As is Hitler's opening the Eastern front and marching into the Russian winter. But it's deeper than just a strategic blunder. Consider the Stockholm syndrome, current suicides in the US armed forces, hell even Vietnam. Many aggressors will completely give up and psychologically join the other side at the slightest sign of resistance. In fact I imagine it's a useful evolutionary trait to run towards the victor in any conflict. But aggressors also often don't think through the consequences of their actions until it's too late, at which point cognitive dissonance sets in and they become regretful and despondent. It's easy to see how this individual trait can express itself at a national level, especially in a democracy. A nation can march itself right off a cliff in order to spite an enemy, almost as easily as an individual.
Obama Bi den -- coincidence or not, this example is just too eerie to ignore.
Personally, I'm not sure I agree that cold war spending risked the US in a significant way. We did a passable job of making defense investments as dual-use as possible. As wasteful as much of it was, America still has significant resources. I am however concerned about the social and legal changes that such a massive collective effort brought about in American society.
Hierarchy is absolutely essential for tasks that have no budget and no due date, such as home repairs. I found that the to-do list in KOrganizer is a surprisingly simple and flexible way to manage hierarchical tasks. I just wish it could handle shared dependencies.
Does anyone use TaskJuggler for project management? I've looked into it before and it's overkill for most of what I do but it seems to have an interesting approach so I'm interested to hear anyone's opinion on it.
That's funny that, for your rant, you randomly chose an age that is below the legal work age in most (all?) of the US, then proceeded to harangue this randomly-selected group of iPhone users for being irresponsible because they don't earn enough to pay for iPhone service, because they are legally prevented.
I'll let you assume what distro I installed for them.
So which was it? I can name a hundred different variables (besides user competence) that would affect this decision, and even though Ubuntu probably stands out as the most obvious choice, the prospect of responding to that user's bug reports might make you consider a bit more mature distro.
/usr is not world-writable on any distro I've used.
I was thinking the same thing. That "feature" never existed. In fact, people griped about it pretty much from day one.
I've always kind of been on the impression that anyone who has seriously considered using Linux already knows what distro they expect to be using.
I disagree with this. There are real philosophical differences between distros that are not immediately apparent and that can make a huge difference down the line depending on which one you choose. The average user doesn't really consider the OS at all. The average new Linux user is usually taking a leap just to consider any alternative to Windows or Apple. You could say that a new Linux user is probably installing a distro that has been recommended by a friend, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be the best choice for them.
That's the one thing users should realize about Fedora. You always get the latest stuff, whether you want it or not. If your usage is more slanted towards having the same setup for years at a time, it's a distro that requires some maintenance. If you can handle a more rapid pace of change, however, security updates and new features are forthcoming.
Compilation copyright is a somewhat ridiculous concept that has gained popularity recently. It's akin to saying that you own the copyright to the particular selection of packages and programs on a particular Linux distro or install CD, for instance.
My impression is that there are degrees of "copyrightability" at issue. You have a much stronger copyright claim by re-writing a complete functional unit, such as a program, all at once than you would have by re-writing a single function or replacing a program line-by-line.
Your example of Star Wars leads me to suggest that if you replaced every frame, one at a time, yet still ended up with, say, a western about a religious guy and his gun-slinging buddy and their girl-friend dodging bounty-hunters and rebelling against a corrupt government, then an argument could be made. Is Dark Side of the Moon derived from The Wizard of Oz in a meaningful way? I couldn't say. Certainly not in an obvious way.
Obviously you can't prove a negative, but one method of protecting yourself from derivation claims is to utilize clean-room or "Chinese wall" reverse engineering, documenting the entire process to be able to demonstrate later in court if necessary how you were able to re-implement a piece of code without actually copying or deriving from it.
Spanking.
Anderson is claiming complete Copyright and that is simply an impossibility. As far as I am concerned, this claim is a GPL violation in and of itself.
This is exactly the most disturbing issue to me here. Being able to re-write GPL code and then claim sole copyright on that new code would completely invalidate the entire concept of derivative work on which the GPL and every other software license is based.
I'm guessing that person A could argue that the work contributed by person B was mostly derivative and thus person B does not have any copyright claim due to this.
Personally, I'm surprised that anyone would be bold enough to actually remove copyright notices from existing GPL'd code. Even if you completely rewrite something, piece by piece, over a period of time, that doesn't mean your work is not derivative of the original.
I'm not aware that there is yet any clear rule on this issue, or even that one is possible.
Mod me up too pls.
This begs the question of why we don't already have netbooks this awesome, with free internet and days of battery life.
Future value of money, basically. Anything that can be subsidized and supported by a subscription model will be of superior quality whenever the interest rate on lending is >0%. Razors and blades. This is the essence of human capital. Why invest in production or technological improvement when you can invest in locking-in future consumers?
That's true. But insurance is only paid for by your employer because the government provides tax incentives to do so. Get rid of government interference in healthcare and those other things go away too. Choose your own health insurance free of government subsidies and market manipulation and you'll be able to get the options you want.
Running lines is part of the service. If it's cost-effective, someone will run a line.
some people absolutely need it to continue to live
Only some?