walking upright is a behavior learned from example
I don't question that humans could fail to learn to walk upright; however, it's beyond question that walking upright for a human being is more efficient than crawling around on all fours.
Humans engage in all sorts of learned (and unlearned) behaviors which are counter-survival.
This is no more a proof of common ancestry than it is of common design.
Your analogy is flawed. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any form of life on earth was 'designed'. There's no point in discussing a 'designer' when there isn't a shred of proof indicating the existence of such a being.
Without delving into fairy tales, we need to look at the evidence that we have. Our genetic sequencing of various plants and animals tells us that many of our genes aren't just 'similar' but actually identical to the ones found in other animals, and for some genes even in plants. The difference between a mouse and a human, for example, is measured by just a *few hundred* genes in all; all the rest are identical between the two animals.
We can either postulate that through some incredible coincidence each species developed a subset of genes that, to a greater or lesser degree, simply seem identical, or that all species derive from common ancestors stretching back to the beginning of life on Earth. Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest logical explanation is the way to go, and in this case that's the common ancestor - not a huge stack of bizarre coincidences for nearly every creature alive.
Without knowing too much about evolution theory, it would seem to me that intelligence would always be a selective factor in all species.
Actually, the evidence would point to the opposite. So far as we know, over the entire history of life on this planet only one species has achieved human-level intelligence - ours. The most successful species on the planets are nothing more than tiny biological machines - insects - and they show no indication whatsoever of developing bigger brains, nor have they over hundreds of millions of years.
Even for the 'brainy' animals like gorillas and chimpanzees brain growth stopped some time ago. They continued to evolve in other ways, but brain growth wasn't one of them. In fact, most of the variations of proto-humans that died out also didn't develop brains much beyond that of a chimpanzee, although they did continue to evolve in different areas, some of them rather specialized.
Some folks speculate that there's a limit to how useful a big brain is compared to how much energy it consumes (the human brain typically consumes about 40% of the body's total energy). Beyond this limit the increased survival advantage is relatively trivial in comparison to energy consumption, which means that the larger brain is actually a defect in terms of survival. The theory is that it takes some very specialized circumstances to promote brain growth beyond this point, until the 'plateau' is surpassed and the brain is once again large enough to confer a survival advantage that outweighs its energy requirements. It would explain why apes aren't developing larger brains, and why nearly all of our evolutionary relatives developed a larger brain to a point, then seemed to stop although they still evolved and adapted to their environment.
Human-level intelligence could very well be a combination of mild defects that occurred during a very forgiving period in Earth's ecological history, in a place where food was easy to come by and these defects didn't compromise survival. A certain selective set of very special cirumstances that lasted long enough to result in our big-brained ancestors (and our relatives, the Neanderthals), but in any other time or place would've killed those with the defects.
People also assume that human evolution will continue to result in bigger brains, although there's no evidence to support this. It might very well be that the next step in our evolution won't be larger brains but more social, community-oriented ones with a suppression of violent instincts. That certainly seems to be more advantageous, especially when you already have a brain large enough to make yourself the dominant species and what you really need is a method to avoid species self-destruction.
Note how some moron wasted a point stupidly modding this post down instead of using it wisely to mod the original post up...
As if this is something new? Brain-damaged and vindictive mods are common. Especially those who use 'overrated' to avoid meta-moderation, or who use all of their mod points against a single poster because that poster made a fool out of the moderator in public.
it is this ability to lose the heat generated by running that enables hummans to run down pretty much any other mammal, as the animal will have to stop (or else die of heat stroke) long before the human.
While this is true, you also missed his point. If the human were to run full-out after the gazelle he'd quickly drop from both heat exhaustion AND energy expenditure. The human HAS to jog in order to balance energy expended with heat dissipated, otherwise the upright body position doesn't matter for shit.
However, with the balance in place a human being can outrun, over long distances, almost any animal on the face of the planet. Wolves are one of the very few exceptions - because wolves also have a quadripedal 'jogging' gait that allows them to cover long distances at a fairly rapid pace without overheating, despite the fact that they don't sweat and are covered in fur.
Being quadripedal is a decent advantage for long-distance travel. Being hairless works out pretty well too, except in colder climates. Having a gait inbetween 'walk' and 'run' that balances energy expenditure with heat dissipation and which doesn't deplete short-term reserves is absolutely essential if you want to outrace prey over the long haul. It is, however, a peculiar evolution, and most predators have no such gait, relying either on short-term speed, surprise, and/or teamwork to catch faster animals.
It's easier for the average Joe to commit murder with a car. Despite what you see on television, most people are entirely incapable of hitting a target *that doesn't move* beyond 30 feet, using a handgun. For your common murderous schmuck, you either need to get up close and personal, or use a rifle - only a rifle is fairly difficult to conceal, which is why it isn't often used for murder.
A car, however...hell, most people have the goddamndest time trying *not* to run over people, at least where I'm from. Substitute 'trying not to' with 'try' and you could litter the streets with the bodies of pedestrians right quick.
nVidia's back, I guess. This will sell a lot of 6800GT's.
Not really. nVidia admits to optimizing their card to run Doom 3, and it shows in benchmarks vs ATI re HL2 (ATI blows away nVidia, if you didn't know).
So with my ATI card I get acceptable framerates for Doom and incredible framerates for HL2. If I go the nVidia route I get the reverse, except that the nVidia cards might actually perform worse on HL2 than the ATI cards do with Doom.
I'd rather have white-listing than another round of useless laws and more tax dollars spent chasing the tails of spammers.
White-listing isn't a cop-out. It's a great way to keep people you don't want to hear from from bothering you. If I want to take *your* call, I'll add you to my list. Otherwise, piss off.
Fact: Windows holds a huge majority of the desktop market Fact: The MAJORITY of PEOPLE are going to need to be comfortable with, and semi-knowledgeable of Windows and Office.
Conclusion: It makes no sense for a university to buy an ass load of Macs for general student use when those students are going to be going into the workforce using Windows.
Fact: A good many of the classes I took during my university years had nothing to do with my major but were required anyway for 'a well-rounded education'
Fact: Of those classes, not a single thing that I learned has been of any practical value in the real world - except to provide more tuition dollars to my former university, and to keep professors on payroll who'd otherwise be flipping burgers.
Conclusion: a good deal of what goes on at the average university has shit-all to do with what will be useful or needed in the real world, so why should computers be any different?
...it's the culture. When I was teaching computer science to middle school students I offered an advanced course for the really talented kids - about a dozen in any school year. In this course one of the things I taught them to do was to install and configure Linux, as well as to do some light programming in C and Perl on the machines. This was just one part of the class, but I thought it was an important one.
The school district, in it's infinite wisdom, not only decided that I couldn't install Linux on any regular working machines, but that it wouldn't even fork over the money to buy a single Linux package. Some members of the administration fought tooth and nail to ban this part of the course altogether, claiming that Linux was "the tool of hackers" and that I was training my kids "to break the law". One even went so far as to claim I was "brainwashing" my kids by teaching them things "they shouldn't be learning". Morons.
Apparently the MS message that Linux was evil had gotten through to the more gullible staff. Combined with the fact that by the end of the year these kids could run circles around most of the IT folks - and certainly around any teacher or administrator - and the program wasn't the least bit popular, except with the kids.
In order to do this part of the course at all I had to take broken machines, find the good parts among them, and construct new working machines from those parts. Okay, no problem, I just made it a section of the course. Good experience for the kids to build their own computers.
After that I had to buy my own copies of Linux (for decent manuals - beats trying to explain man pages to 11-year-olds), as well as extra copies of Unix texts (to show them where Linux had it's roots), C texts, and Perl texts. Quite a chunk of change.
But I was insistent and at least a couple dozen kids walked away with an education in something other than how to use Word or Excel on Windows. Unfortunately when I left my entire built-from-scratch Linux lab was scrapped and replaced with Windows installs, despite the fact that the Linux machines were far more reliable than the Windows ones and that the kids had come to prefer them.
It isn't just that Windows is the most common operating system. It's also because most IT personnel in school systems wouldn't know Linux if it up and bit them in the ass, and because the teachers and administrators don't trust students who can do something they can't using an operating system they don't understand and have been told is the training ground for evil hacker-types.
When your use of your new toy starts to affect other people your freedoms become secondary. No one would buy a sword, run around beheading people, and use "its mine and I can use it any way I want" as a defence.
In case you can't wrap your brain around this fact, no one is talking about buying swords and lopping off heads with them. Moron.
Try sticking your strawman analogy where the sun don't shine.
Once I buy something, it's mine. Oh wait! So not true anymore; now I don't buy, I *lease* under whatever terms my corporate and government masters deign to grant me. God forbid that I should actually *own* something to be used in whatever fashion I see fit. Oh no, I'm just a consumer peon, I can't possibly be allowed such a right!
Your figures are flat-out wrong, on all counts. The U.S. population was approximately 130 million during the WW 2 years; it's now around 285 million people, not even close to the 400 million you claim.
During World War 2, when - get this - WE WERE ACTUALLY AT WAR - the Army reached a maximum size of 8.1 people. You would expect this, seeing as how we were, well, fighting a WORLD WAR. Prior to the beginning of mobilization the Army had around 400,000 troops, down markedly from the 3.5 million deployed during World War 1.
We haven't fought a world war since then. We haven't even fought a declared war since then, as it appears that neither Congress nor the President has the backbone to actually declare war upon a foreign nation anymore.
According to figures produced by our very own government, we have 1.5 million people under arms in active service - not 1.2 million people - with over 2 million more in the reserves. This is greater than the total armed strength of the United States during World War I - when we were actually AT WAR.
So yes, seeing as how we aren't at war with anyone except for Iraq (and remember, Bush said that war apparently ended some 800 U.S. dead ago - and it wasn't a declared war either), our army is far larger than it should be DURING PEACETIME.
As for the threat of the big new boogeyman called 'terrorism', a number of folks including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2003, have said that our army is not only more than large enough to deal with the problem, but that traditional warfare and body count are ineffective against terrorists, and that terrorism is more properly the purview of intelligence agencies like the CIA, NSA, and FBI. In fact, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff they want "to realign its forces to focus on better use of precision firepower, increased use of special operations forces and speedier deployments abroad." In other words, they don't want a higher head count, but smaller, far more effective forces for rapid deployment. The sort of force where every U.S. soldier, with proper fire support, is worth at least ten of any enemy.
I happen to agree with them. Where we disagree is that I don't want to use these forces to impose Pax Americana, but rather to swiftly punish any nation which dares to attack us. Apart from an actual attack, I have no interest whatsoever in seeing the army do anything but defend our borders.
For nations with vastly larger military forces, in times of actual war we can always raise more troops just like we did in both World Wars. We don't have to worry about an invasion (unless you think those feisty Canadian radicals are plotting to conquer us) so in any war we'll have time to raise and train troops - and kick the shit out of the enemy when we're good and ready. Been there, done it twice, and can do it again if need be.
True, immediate threats are gone. There is no Soviet Union, China isn't out to conquer the world, and it's not like the EU is actually going to go on a rampage to forcefully unite all of Europe under one banner. And even if they did, well, *that's what nukes are for*. If the shit hits the fan, we can always obliterate the target and be done with it. And although the liberals will no doubt gasp in horror, in any deadly serious conflict I'd much rather use the nukes than see 500,000 Americans return home in body bags.
I wouldn't mind tax cuts to NASA if I saw similar percentage tax cuts to the U.S. war budget. As a U.S. citizen I'm damned tired of forking over money to a vastly-oversized military so that my politicians can measure their dick sizes by bombing other nations.
Let's put an end to Pax Americana and world domination. I don't want to dominate anyone and i really don't give a shit if two groups of people in Bumfuck, Nowhere want to kill each other in huge numbers. Let them, I say. So long as we have markets to sell to why should we care what sort of genocidal insanity some shit-hole on the other side of the planet is engaged in?
Cut the war budget along with NASA's and I'll be cheering congress on, for once.
Try prying your lips loose from Billy G.'s cock for a second and actually engaging in a bit of reading comprehension. Hard for a fan-boy like you, but do try to give it a shot.
Nowhere did I claim that ol' Billy boy is a power monger. Fact is, I don't think he has what it takes to be a real powermonger. At the end of the day he's still nothing more than a very rich little geek, and no one is going to willingly follow him except for little wannabe losers or those who are paid to do so. Whether Billy wants to powermonger or not is irrelevent because apart from the power he can buy he doesn't have the 'right stuff' to do the job and never will.
But what is beyond dispute is that Billy used unethical, immoral, and illegal business tactics to catapult Microsoft into a monopoly position. This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of recorded fact, admitted as so to a court of law. No matter what you might claim, a person is as a person does, and in this case that makes Billy as unethical and immoral as the things that he has done.
Sure, Billy is the richest geek in the world. But he's still just a geek, a morally bereft one who doesn't care how many laws he breaks or people he stomps on to get ahead.
And now you want to tell me that he's actually trying to do good deeds out of purely altruistic motives? Just how fucking stupid are you? The man's history tells us he's anything but altruistic so if he gives to charity or cuts benefits for stockholders there's one thing we can be sure of: ultimately, it's meant to benefit Billy G., even if it's just to dress up his image for the history books.
You said he was only interested in accumulating wealth and power. I call bullshit.
Yes, bullshit. He's also interested in rewriting history in his favor. The rich have been using gifts to charity to obscure past immoral and illegal actions for centuries; it's a timeless tradition stretching all the way back to the dawn of human history.
Bill knows he isn't going to live forever and he wants people to worship at his grave site - much like loser geek Microsofties worship him now. The best way to do that is to buy absolution, a practice so common that at one time the Catholic church did a booming business in the sale of forgivenness.
I seriously doubt ol' Bill is as interested in charity as he is in how he'll be portrayed once he's pushing up daisies.
What's amusing is that Republicans claim that Democrats are a bunch of thievin', cheatin' liars while they themselves are as pristine as new-fallen snow; and the Democrats do the exact same thing.
But to those of us with our heads screwed on straight - which means, those of us who aren't brainless borg-puppies, mouths wide open for party boss dick - BOTH the Democrats and Republicans are a bunch of thievin', cheatin' lying scumbags out to screw everyone and their mother for a weekend trip to Tahiti and the company of a teenage whore.
Yes, I know - I'm playing 'taunt the idiot party faithful'. But really, the party faithful deserve it for being so willfully blind to the sort of snakes their politicians really are.
The defining purpose of a public corporation isn't to maximize profit by any means necessary.
No, it's to maximize profits by any *legal* means necessary. Otherwise the Mafia would be a corporation like any other, as would the Colombian drug cartels.
Of course there is a different standard for GPL coders. They HOLD themselves to a higher standard when they release "Free Software."
Like I said, you're hip-deep. I've released a number of things under the GPL and not because I'm holding myself to some 'higher' moral standard. My sole motivation is to prevent the incorporation of work I've done FOR FREE by someone else into a proprietary, closed-source program.
I don't code to push a moral standard, nor will I bend over and grab my ankles to please the unwashed masses. My code, my copyright, my choice. You get to use it according to the terms *I* set, or not at all.
Libertarianism isn't just about YOUR freedom, it's about EVERYONE's freedom.
No, it isn't. That's the socialist clap-trap that pseudo-liberals are so fond of, the bullshit where they somehow 'enhance' your life by stripping you of your rights and freedoms for the 'greater good'.
Libertarianism recognizes there's no such thing as a 'greater good'. There's only individual good, and all legislation and government powers must be tailored to support and enhance this individual good. Libertarianism does not, under any circumstance, support stripping the rights of individuals for the 'good of everyone'. In fact, this is antithetical to the very basis of libertarianism.
(And before anyone stars making idiot arguments about murder, theft, etc. exercise some brain cells and think about what INDIVIDUAL good actually means.)
A protection racket would be if the schools paid them money to avoid being sued
Well, that's funny - several of these universities have openly admitted that they've bowed to the RIAA over 'fear of being sued'. Which I do believe meets your definition of 'protection racket'.
Kinda funny, to think that the record industry is run by a government-approved Mafia....
This "you can still make money" bullshit is rediculous.
Suse seems to be doing just fine, and a very large percentage of their sales comes from selling boxed professional sets of Suse Linux - which you can get for free if you want to go forth and download whatever flavor of Linux (Suse or not) you prefer yourself.
But a lot of folks are like me: technically savvy, but not really interested in wasting our time putting together the pieces ourselves when we can just by the whole lot with an ultra-simple install for $89 - and get some pretty nifty (if rather simple) nicely-organized manuals in the process, manuals which even my 11-year-old middle school students can easily grasp and use to do their own configurations.
It's worth the $89 to me. And apparently a whole lot of other folks as well. I'm not buying product, I'm buying *convenience*.
Slashdot Mirror
walking upright is a behavior learned from example
I don't question that humans could fail to learn to walk upright; however, it's beyond question that walking upright for a human being is more efficient than crawling around on all fours.
Humans engage in all sorts of learned (and unlearned) behaviors which are counter-survival.
Max
This is no more a proof of common ancestry than it is of common design.
Your analogy is flawed. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any form of life on earth was 'designed'. There's no point in discussing a 'designer' when there isn't a shred of proof indicating the existence of such a being.
Without delving into fairy tales, we need to look at the evidence that we have. Our genetic sequencing of various plants and animals tells us that many of our genes aren't just 'similar' but actually identical to the ones found in other animals, and for some genes even in plants. The difference between a mouse and a human, for example, is measured by just a *few hundred* genes in all; all the rest are identical between the two animals.
We can either postulate that through some incredible coincidence each species developed a subset of genes that, to a greater or lesser degree, simply seem identical, or that all species derive from common ancestors stretching back to the beginning of life on Earth. Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest logical explanation is the way to go, and in this case that's the common ancestor - not a huge stack of bizarre coincidences for nearly every creature alive.
Max
Without knowing too much about evolution theory, it would seem to me that intelligence would always be a selective factor in all species.
Actually, the evidence would point to the opposite. So far as we know, over the entire history of life on this planet only one species has achieved human-level intelligence - ours. The most successful species on the planets are nothing more than tiny biological machines - insects - and they show no indication whatsoever of developing bigger brains, nor have they over hundreds of millions of years.
Even for the 'brainy' animals like gorillas and chimpanzees brain growth stopped some time ago. They continued to evolve in other ways, but brain growth wasn't one of them. In fact, most of the variations of proto-humans that died out also didn't develop brains much beyond that of a chimpanzee, although they did continue to evolve in different areas, some of them rather specialized.
Some folks speculate that there's a limit to how useful a big brain is compared to how much energy it consumes (the human brain typically consumes about 40% of the body's total energy). Beyond this limit the increased survival advantage is relatively trivial in comparison to energy consumption, which means that the larger brain is actually a defect in terms of survival. The theory is that it takes some very specialized circumstances to promote brain growth beyond this point, until the 'plateau' is surpassed and the brain is once again large enough to confer a survival advantage that outweighs its energy requirements. It would explain why apes aren't developing larger brains, and why nearly all of our evolutionary relatives developed a larger brain to a point, then seemed to stop although they still evolved and adapted to their environment.
Human-level intelligence could very well be a combination of mild defects that occurred during a very forgiving period in Earth's ecological history, in a place where food was easy to come by and these defects didn't compromise survival. A certain selective set of very special cirumstances that lasted long enough to result in our big-brained ancestors (and our relatives, the Neanderthals), but in any other time or place would've killed those with the defects.
People also assume that human evolution will continue to result in bigger brains, although there's no evidence to support this. It might very well be that the next step in our evolution won't be larger brains but more social, community-oriented ones with a suppression of violent instincts. That certainly seems to be more advantageous, especially when you already have a brain large enough to make yourself the dominant species and what you really need is a method to avoid species self-destruction.
Max
Note how some moron wasted a point stupidly modding this post down instead of using it wisely to mod the original post up...
As if this is something new? Brain-damaged and vindictive mods are common. Especially those who use 'overrated' to avoid meta-moderation, or who use all of their mod points against a single poster because that poster made a fool out of the moderator in public.
Moderation on slashdot is a joke.
Max
Neanderthals and many species of proto-humans had flat foreheads
Neanderthals weren't proto-humans but human contemporaries, with brains just as large as our own despite differences in skull shape.
Max
it is this ability to lose the heat generated by running that enables hummans to run down pretty much any other mammal, as the animal will have to stop (or else die of heat stroke) long before the human.
While this is true, you also missed his point. If the human were to run full-out after the gazelle he'd quickly drop from both heat exhaustion AND energy expenditure. The human HAS to jog in order to balance energy expended with heat dissipated, otherwise the upright body position doesn't matter for shit.
However, with the balance in place a human being can outrun, over long distances, almost any animal on the face of the planet. Wolves are one of the very few exceptions - because wolves also have a quadripedal 'jogging' gait that allows them to cover long distances at a fairly rapid pace without overheating, despite the fact that they don't sweat and are covered in fur.
Being quadripedal is a decent advantage for long-distance travel. Being hairless works out pretty well too, except in colder climates. Having a gait inbetween 'walk' and 'run' that balances energy expenditure with heat dissipation and which doesn't deplete short-term reserves is absolutely essential if you want to outrace prey over the long haul. It is, however, a peculiar evolution, and most predators have no such gait, relying either on short-term speed, surprise, and/or teamwork to catch faster animals.
Max
It's easier for the average Joe to commit murder with a car. Despite what you see on television, most people are entirely incapable of hitting a target *that doesn't move* beyond 30 feet, using a handgun. For your common murderous schmuck, you either need to get up close and personal, or use a rifle - only a rifle is fairly difficult to conceal, which is why it isn't often used for murder.
A car, however...hell, most people have the goddamndest time trying *not* to run over people, at least where I'm from. Substitute 'trying not to' with 'try' and you could litter the streets with the bodies of pedestrians right quick.
Max
nVidia's back, I guess. This will sell a lot of 6800GT's.
Not really. nVidia admits to optimizing their card to run Doom 3, and it shows in benchmarks vs ATI re HL2 (ATI blows away nVidia, if you didn't know).
So with my ATI card I get acceptable framerates for Doom and incredible framerates for HL2. If I go the nVidia route I get the reverse, except that the nVidia cards might actually perform worse on HL2 than the ATI cards do with Doom.
I think I'll stick with my ATI card.
Max
I'd rather have white-listing than another round of useless laws and more tax dollars spent chasing the tails of spammers.
White-listing isn't a cop-out. It's a great way to keep people you don't want to hear from from bothering you. If I want to take *your* call, I'll add you to my list. Otherwise, piss off.
Max
Fact: Windows holds a huge majority of the desktop market
Fact: The MAJORITY of PEOPLE are going to need to be comfortable with, and semi-knowledgeable of Windows and Office.
Conclusion: It makes no sense for a university to buy an ass load of Macs for general student use when those students are going to be going into the workforce using Windows.
Fact: A good many of the classes I took during my university years had nothing to do with my major but were required anyway for 'a well-rounded education'
Fact: Of those classes, not a single thing that I learned has been of any practical value in the real world - except to provide more tuition dollars to my former university, and to keep professors on payroll who'd otherwise be flipping burgers.
Conclusion: a good deal of what goes on at the average university has shit-all to do with what will be useful or needed in the real world, so why should computers be any different?
Max
...it's the culture. When I was teaching computer science to middle school students I offered an advanced course for the really talented kids - about a dozen in any school year. In this course one of the things I taught them to do was to install and configure Linux, as well as to do some light programming in C and Perl on the machines. This was just one part of the class, but I thought it was an important one.
The school district, in it's infinite wisdom, not only decided that I couldn't install Linux on any regular working machines, but that it wouldn't even fork over the money to buy a single Linux package. Some members of the administration fought tooth and nail to ban this part of the course altogether, claiming that Linux was "the tool of hackers" and that I was training my kids "to break the law". One even went so far as to claim I was "brainwashing" my kids by teaching them things "they shouldn't be learning". Morons.
Apparently the MS message that Linux was evil had gotten through to the more gullible staff. Combined with the fact that by the end of the year these kids could run circles around most of the IT folks - and certainly around any teacher or administrator - and the program wasn't the least bit popular, except with the kids.
In order to do this part of the course at all I had to take broken machines, find the good parts among them, and construct new working machines from those parts. Okay, no problem, I just made it a section of the course. Good experience for the kids to build their own computers.
After that I had to buy my own copies of Linux (for decent manuals - beats trying to explain man pages to 11-year-olds), as well as extra copies of Unix texts (to show them where Linux had it's roots), C texts, and Perl texts. Quite a chunk of change.
But I was insistent and at least a couple dozen kids walked away with an education in something other than how to use Word or Excel on Windows. Unfortunately when I left my entire built-from-scratch Linux lab was scrapped and replaced with Windows installs, despite the fact that the Linux machines were far more reliable than the Windows ones and that the kids had come to prefer them.
It isn't just that Windows is the most common operating system. It's also because most IT personnel in school systems wouldn't know Linux if it up and bit them in the ass, and because the teachers and administrators don't trust students who can do something they can't using an operating system they don't understand and have been told is the training ground for evil hacker-types.
Max
When your use of your new toy starts to affect other people your freedoms become secondary. No one would buy a sword, run around beheading people, and use "its mine and I can use it any way I want" as a defence.
In case you can't wrap your brain around this fact, no one is talking about buying swords and lopping off heads with them. Moron.
Try sticking your strawman analogy where the sun don't shine.
Max
Once I buy something, it's mine. Oh wait! So not true anymore; now I don't buy, I *lease* under whatever terms my corporate and government masters deign to grant me. God forbid that I should actually *own* something to be used in whatever fashion I see fit. Oh no, I'm just a consumer peon, I can't possibly be allowed such a right!
Max
Your figures are flat-out wrong, on all counts. The U.S. population was approximately 130 million during the WW 2 years; it's now around 285 million people, not even close to the 400 million you claim.
During World War 2, when - get this - WE WERE ACTUALLY AT WAR - the Army reached a maximum size of 8.1 people. You would expect this, seeing as how we were, well, fighting a WORLD WAR. Prior to the beginning of mobilization the Army had around 400,000 troops, down markedly from the 3.5 million deployed during World War 1.
We haven't fought a world war since then. We haven't even fought a declared war since then, as it appears that neither Congress nor the President has the backbone to actually declare war upon a foreign nation anymore.
According to figures produced by our very own government, we have 1.5 million people under arms in active service - not 1.2 million people - with over 2 million more in the reserves. This is greater than the total armed strength of the United States during World War I - when we were actually AT WAR.
So yes, seeing as how we aren't at war with anyone except for Iraq (and remember, Bush said that war apparently ended some 800 U.S. dead ago - and it wasn't a declared war either), our army is far larger than it should be DURING PEACETIME.
As for the threat of the big new boogeyman called 'terrorism', a number of folks including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2003, have said that our army is not only more than large enough to deal with the problem, but that traditional warfare and body count are ineffective against terrorists, and that terrorism is more properly the purview of intelligence agencies like the CIA, NSA, and FBI. In fact, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff they want "to realign its forces to focus on better use of precision firepower, increased use of special operations forces and speedier deployments abroad." In other words, they don't want a higher head count, but smaller, far more effective forces for rapid deployment. The sort of force where every U.S. soldier, with proper fire support, is worth at least ten of any enemy.
I happen to agree with them. Where we disagree is that I don't want to use these forces to impose Pax Americana, but rather to swiftly punish any nation which dares to attack us. Apart from an actual attack, I have no interest whatsoever in seeing the army do anything but defend our borders.
For nations with vastly larger military forces, in times of actual war we can always raise more troops just like we did in both World Wars. We don't have to worry about an invasion (unless you think those feisty Canadian radicals are plotting to conquer us) so in any war we'll have time to raise and train troops - and kick the shit out of the enemy when we're good and ready. Been there, done it twice, and can do it again if need be.
True, immediate threats are gone. There is no Soviet Union, China isn't out to conquer the world, and it's not like the EU is actually going to go on a rampage to forcefully unite all of Europe under one banner. And even if they did, well, *that's what nukes are for*. If the shit hits the fan, we can always obliterate the target and be done with it. And although the liberals will no doubt gasp in horror, in any deadly serious conflict I'd much rather use the nukes than see 500,000 Americans return home in body bags.
Max
I wouldn't mind tax cuts to NASA if I saw similar percentage tax cuts to the U.S. war budget. As a U.S. citizen I'm damned tired of forking over money to a vastly-oversized military so that my politicians can measure their dick sizes by bombing other nations.
Let's put an end to Pax Americana and world domination. I don't want to dominate anyone and i really don't give a shit if two groups of people in Bumfuck, Nowhere want to kill each other in huge numbers. Let them, I say. So long as we have markets to sell to why should we care what sort of genocidal insanity some shit-hole on the other side of the planet is engaged in?
Cut the war budget along with NASA's and I'll be cheering congress on, for once.
Max
Try prying your lips loose from Billy G.'s cock for a second and actually engaging in a bit of reading comprehension. Hard for a fan-boy like you, but do try to give it a shot.
Nowhere did I claim that ol' Billy boy is a power monger. Fact is, I don't think he has what it takes to be a real powermonger. At the end of the day he's still nothing more than a very rich little geek, and no one is going to willingly follow him except for little wannabe losers or those who are paid to do so. Whether Billy wants to powermonger or not is irrelevent because apart from the power he can buy he doesn't have the 'right stuff' to do the job and never will.
But what is beyond dispute is that Billy used unethical, immoral, and illegal business tactics to catapult Microsoft into a monopoly position. This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of recorded fact, admitted as so to a court of law. No matter what you might claim, a person is as a person does, and in this case that makes Billy as unethical and immoral as the things that he has done.
Sure, Billy is the richest geek in the world. But he's still just a geek, a morally bereft one who doesn't care how many laws he breaks or people he stomps on to get ahead.
And now you want to tell me that he's actually trying to do good deeds out of purely altruistic motives? Just how fucking stupid are you? The man's history tells us he's anything but altruistic so if he gives to charity or cuts benefits for stockholders there's one thing we can be sure of: ultimately, it's meant to benefit Billy G., even if it's just to dress up his image for the history books.
Max
You said he was only interested in accumulating wealth and power. I call bullshit.
Yes, bullshit. He's also interested in rewriting history in his favor. The rich have been using gifts to charity to obscure past immoral and illegal actions for centuries; it's a timeless tradition stretching all the way back to the dawn of human history.
Bill knows he isn't going to live forever and he wants people to worship at his grave site - much like loser geek Microsofties worship him now. The best way to do that is to buy absolution, a practice so common that at one time the Catholic church did a booming business in the sale of forgivenness.
I seriously doubt ol' Bill is as interested in charity as he is in how he'll be portrayed once he's pushing up daisies.
Max
What's amusing is that Republicans claim that Democrats are a bunch of thievin', cheatin' liars while they themselves are as pristine as new-fallen snow; and the Democrats do the exact same thing.
But to those of us with our heads screwed on straight - which means, those of us who aren't brainless borg-puppies, mouths wide open for party boss dick - BOTH the Democrats and Republicans are a bunch of thievin', cheatin' lying scumbags out to screw everyone and their mother for a weekend trip to Tahiti and the company of a teenage whore.
Yes, I know - I'm playing 'taunt the idiot party faithful'. But really, the party faithful deserve it for being so willfully blind to the sort of snakes their politicians really are.
Max
The defining purpose of a public corporation isn't to maximize profit by any means necessary.
No, it's to maximize profits by any *legal* means necessary. Otherwise the Mafia would be a corporation like any other, as would the Colombian drug cartels.
Max
Of course there is a different standard for GPL coders. They HOLD themselves to a higher standard when they release "Free Software."
Like I said, you're hip-deep. I've released a number of things under the GPL and not because I'm holding myself to some 'higher' moral standard. My sole motivation is to prevent the incorporation of work I've done FOR FREE by someone else into a proprietary, closed-source program.
I don't code to push a moral standard, nor will I bend over and grab my ankles to please the unwashed masses. My code, my copyright, my choice. You get to use it according to the terms *I* set, or not at all.
Max
Libertarianism isn't just about YOUR freedom, it's about EVERYONE's freedom.
No, it isn't. That's the socialist clap-trap that pseudo-liberals are so fond of, the bullshit where they somehow 'enhance' your life by stripping you of your rights and freedoms for the 'greater good'.
Libertarianism recognizes there's no such thing as a 'greater good'. There's only individual good, and all legislation and government powers must be tailored to support and enhance this individual good. Libertarianism does not, under any circumstance, support stripping the rights of individuals for the 'good of everyone'. In fact, this is antithetical to the very basis of libertarianism.
(And before anyone stars making idiot arguments about murder, theft, etc. exercise some brain cells and think about what INDIVIDUAL good actually means.)
Max
It's become more or less modus operandi - let's charge everyone for the costs incurred by a few.
That's been going on for decades. What do you think seat belt and helmet laws are all about?
Max
A protection racket would be if the schools paid them money to avoid being sued
Well, that's funny - several of these universities have openly admitted that they've bowed to the RIAA over 'fear of being sued'. Which I do believe meets your definition of 'protection racket'.
Kinda funny, to think that the record industry is run by a government-approved Mafia....
Max
You forgot the clause where the GPL forces you to release YOUR source code under the GPL if you use the GPL'd code.
You aren't 'forced' to do anything. If you don't like the GPL, then *don't use the fucking code*. It's that simple. Get over it.
Max
This "you can still make money" bullshit is rediculous.
Suse seems to be doing just fine, and a very large percentage of their sales comes from selling boxed professional sets of Suse Linux - which you can get for free if you want to go forth and download whatever flavor of Linux (Suse or not) you prefer yourself.
But a lot of folks are like me: technically savvy, but not really interested in wasting our time putting together the pieces ourselves when we can just by the whole lot with an ultra-simple install for $89 - and get some pretty nifty (if rather simple) nicely-organized manuals in the process, manuals which even my 11-year-old middle school students can easily grasp and use to do their own configurations.
It's worth the $89 to me. And apparently a whole lot of other folks as well. I'm not buying product, I'm buying *convenience*.
Max