[Moore] doesn't actually really document anything. It's just him talking over CNN and fox news footage for two hours.
Did you actually watch the movie? It has been at least a couple of months since I saw it, but I can recall plenty of his own footage.
the soldier who said he would not go back because he couldn't kill more civilians
the family from Flint who lost their son, and especially the woman in D.C. crying about that stupid right-wing antagonist bitch on the mall
the petition for congressmen and senators to send their own children to Iraq
the footage of the Iraqi woman in front of her blown up home who had buried several of her civilian familly due to US bombing and occupation. I remember she was screaming hysterically for Allah to save them.
I think you accidently walked into the wrong theatre or something!
Any other stories? I would really like to know about the environments with which others are dealing (read afflicted -- or if not, so much the better - I'd then definitely like to hear from you).
Thank you for the feedback Midnight Thunder. I am very interested in learning whether my experience is the norm or if I have a chance of getting away from it (once there are actually jobs posted on dice and monsters again that apply).
I'm wondering if your last sentence is as specific an assessment that could be made in general: "your mileage may vary".
Not applicable to all Sys Admins I hope, but in a
couple of places I've worked, the most fitting
title would be Nazi!
These are the people who figure I have to use Microsoft products on my desktop, and am not even allowed to do such security-threatening things as change my font size, create a directory, or heaven forbid, install Mozilla (because I'm so sick of dealing with IE I want to punch someone).
So I hate my work environment, I work at about 1/2 speed, because I have to use the crappy point-and-click interface to everything, and the first good offer that comes along...see ya!
If there are any sys admins actually listening to this, am I unlucky, or is it really the consensus of those in your profession that locking down a software developer's workstation so tight that he gets to breathe air only when you provide it is helpful in some way?
Because my belief is that if a malicious employee wants to cause mischief on a machine where he has physical access, it's a piece of cake. But creating an efficient, user-friendly workstation is a completely different matter, and requires access.
Not to hard to tell how frustrated I am over this, I hope.
That said, as an ardent evolutionist with an MS in population genetics, I sometimes have to wonder about things like the bombardier beetle.
I was reading that bit about the bombardier beetle, and it looked awful suspicious to me, the part about how the evolutionists "trumpeted loudly, everywhere, this minor slip in the story". It seems to me more likely that they trumpeted loudly because it made the entire creationists' analysis utter bunk (or at least not in the same ballpark of inexplicability).
If the chemicals are not explosive when mixed, then earlier versions of the bombardier beetle could have had any combination of these chemicals and many others that had no important effects until they stumbled onto the combination of these four that create the defense mechanism.
And when you're talking about a world with... I don't know, is it hundreds of millions of species or is it billions?... it's not hard to immagine that at least one species might stumble into such an unlikely combination over a few hundred million years.
I'm not versed, but from what I can tell, I don't need to be to interpret this one, even when its slanted to look good for the folks with whom I disagree.
I think the point is that people run red lights when the yellow is too short for another reason as well. If the yellow light is too short, the moment you have to decide what to do is too short, and therefore you can make bad decisions.
If they increase the length of the yellow light, you might still make the decision to run a red light on purpose, but the extra second will help you to avoid making the bad decision to run the light when it would actually cause an accident.
The pro-traffic camera side of the argument claims that the whole purpose is safety, so preventing people from running red lights is not the end goal. Preventing accidents is. Longer yellow lights accomplishes that goal.
I always hear the opinion "Debian is a great
distro, but not for the beginner". I agree with
the first part, and don't have an understanding
of the second.
I've been using Linux and Debian long enough that
it is probably just a case of I forgot what I
learned, but could those of you with more fresh
memories of difficulties shed some light for me?
There is one difficulty that has long been a
problem with (I think) any Linux setup --
getting it to work with your hardware; although
that is changing more and more. But I see that
as a distribution-neutral problem.
When it comes to having well integrated software,
and convenience in upgrading packages when you
want new features or bug fixes, I have had far
better luck with Debian than I ever do with
Red Hat or Mandrake. The one version of
Mandrake that I tried (7.2) was laughably broken.
KDE settings would be lost without warning, their
upgrade utility was completely worthless, because
it did no dependency tracking for me, and several
of the packages the "friendly GUI" listed would
fail to be on the servers when I tried to
download them. It was all I could do to keep
the thing from spontaneously combusting. I
gave up and switched my wife to Debian 8)
Maybe I'm just using my system differently
than others? One suspicion I have is that maybe
most newbies just install from CD, and then leave
it alone most of the time. Therefore they don't
expect to install new software they read about
on slashdot or freshmeat, or upgrade to the
latest version of qt for anti-aliased fonts,
etc.
Anyone have
any input that could help me out here? I never
know what to tell potential newbies, because I
always want to recommend Debian, but I know I've
heard lots of people say that's a bad idea.
The following sentence from the original article confuses the hell out of me every time I see it
in any given form:
Let's face it: at the present time there's
nothing under Linux that works as well as
Microsoft Office. Period.
Wrong!
I submit that Microsoft Word, only one piece of
this monstrosity of a... what is it, a program?
An OS? A bug? To continue, Word is more
complicated to use, more frustrating to learn, and
more work to account for all its quirks and failures, than a decent Linux OS in its
entirety.
the "sodding paperclip" as it was described in
one of my favorite trinkets of net humor on a distribution list
the inability to keep a
document looking the same through a close and
re-open
or switching to a different printer
the confounded complexity of trying to accomplish a simple task like writing a letter
without being distracting by 20 different
"helpful aids", none of which are intuitive,
and all of which piss me off everytime I face
them.
and god help you if you want pictures and
captions
Give me an inquisitive, fresh mind, LaTeX, and
a simple text editor, and I'll have him or her
creating letters, reports, web pages, pdf
documents, and much more in a week.
Give me a fresh mind and MS Office, and maybe
I can get them sending me a snail mail letter
in that time...maybe.
Linux applications are not more complicated.
They are simply not MS applications. And since
the better part of our computer-using community
here in the US has spent the
last decade consuming brain cells with knowledge
about how to deal with the Office monstrosity,
they have little tolerance for learning something
new. How are they expected to know that it won't
be as painful this time, and pay off in the end?
And lots of them are repressing the memories, so
they don't even remember how painful it was to
learn Office in the first place. Most likely,
this is the case with our original author here.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you actually watch the movie? It has been at least a couple of months since I saw it, but I can recall plenty of his own footage.
- the soldier who said he would not go back because he couldn't kill more civilians
- the family from Flint who lost their son, and especially the woman in D.C. crying about that stupid right-wing antagonist bitch on the mall
- the petition for congressmen and senators to send their own children to Iraq
- the footage of the Iraqi woman in front of her blown up home who had buried several of her civilian familly due to US bombing and occupation. I remember she was screaming hysterically for Allah to save them.
I think you accidently walked into the wrong theatre or something!- richard
I'm wondering if your last sentence is as specific an assessment that could be made in general: "your mileage may vary".
These are the people who figure I have to use Microsoft products on my desktop, and am not even allowed to do such security-threatening things as change my font size, create a directory, or heaven forbid, install Mozilla (because I'm so sick of dealing with IE I want to punch someone).
So I hate my work environment, I work at about 1/2 speed, because I have to use the crappy point-and-click interface to everything, and the first good offer that comes along...see ya!
If there are any sys admins actually listening to this, am I unlucky, or is it really the consensus of those in your profession that locking down a software developer's workstation so tight that he gets to breathe air only when you provide it is helpful in some way?
Because my belief is that if a malicious employee wants to cause mischief on a machine where he has physical access, it's a piece of cake. But creating an efficient, user-friendly workstation is a completely different matter, and requires access.
Not to hard to tell how frustrated I am over this, I hope.
You forgot about the first version of Lindows,
which was a Windows apps computer that wouldn't
run Windows apps.
- richard
Are these drivers open source, or do they include pre-compiled object files that cannot be re-compiled?
If the chemicals are not explosive when mixed, then earlier versions of the bombardier beetle could have had any combination of these chemicals and many others that had no important effects until they stumbled onto the combination of these four that create the defense mechanism.
And when you're talking about a world with... I don't know, is it hundreds of millions of species or is it billions?... it's not hard to immagine that at least one species might stumble into such an unlikely combination over a few hundred million years.
I'm not versed, but from what I can tell, I don't need to be to interpret this one, even when its slanted to look good for the folks with whom I disagree.
I think the point is that people run red lights
when the yellow is too short for another reason
as well. If the yellow light is too short, the
moment you have to decide what to do is too short,
and therefore you can make bad decisions.
If they increase the length of the yellow light,
you might still make the decision to run a red
light on purpose, but the extra second will help
you to avoid making the bad decision to run the
light when it would actually cause an accident.
The pro-traffic camera side of the argument claims
that the whole purpose is safety, so preventing
people from running red lights is not the end
goal. Preventing accidents is. Longer yellow
lights accomplishes that goal.
I've been using Linux and Debian long enough that it is probably just a case of I forgot what I learned, but could those of you with more fresh memories of difficulties shed some light for me?
There is one difficulty that has long been a problem with (I think) any Linux setup -- getting it to work with your hardware; although that is changing more and more. But I see that as a distribution-neutral problem.
When it comes to having well integrated software, and convenience in upgrading packages when you want new features or bug fixes, I have had far better luck with Debian than I ever do with Red Hat or Mandrake. The one version of Mandrake that I tried (7.2) was laughably broken. KDE settings would be lost without warning, their upgrade utility was completely worthless, because it did no dependency tracking for me, and several of the packages the "friendly GUI" listed would fail to be on the servers when I tried to download them. It was all I could do to keep the thing from spontaneously combusting. I gave up and switched my wife to Debian 8)
Maybe I'm just using my system differently than others? One suspicion I have is that maybe most newbies just install from CD, and then leave it alone most of the time. Therefore they don't expect to install new software they read about on slashdot or freshmeat, or upgrade to the latest version of qt for anti-aliased fonts, etc.
Anyone have any input that could help me out here? I never know what to tell potential newbies, because I always want to recommend Debian, but I know I've heard lots of people say that's a bad idea.
Wrong!
I submit that Microsoft Word, only one piece of this monstrosity of a... what is it, a program? An OS? A bug? To continue, Word is more complicated to use, more frustrating to learn, and more work to account for all its quirks and failures, than a decent Linux OS in its entirety.
Give me an inquisitive, fresh mind, LaTeX, and a simple text editor, and I'll have him or her creating letters, reports, web pages, pdf documents, and much more in a week.
Give me a fresh mind and MS Office, and maybe I can get them sending me a snail mail letter in that time...maybe.
Linux applications are not more complicated. They are simply not MS applications. And since the better part of our computer-using community here in the US has spent the last decade consuming brain cells with knowledge about how to deal with the Office monstrosity, they have little tolerance for learning something new. How are they expected to know that it won't be as painful this time, and pay off in the end? And lots of them are repressing the memories, so they don't even remember how painful it was to learn Office in the first place. Most likely, this is the case with our original author here.