Hitting a building at precisely the right point to cause such an efficient collapse would, I imagine, require at least as much skill as landing the plane...
Everyone claims that this was sophisticated, planned for months, etc.
If not for heightened security tomorrow, I could have pulled this off with 20 like minded and loyal friends. 5 per plane, and no flight crew of 3 pilots and 5 flight attendents would be able to stop me.
Hmm...a few facts missing here:
The flight crew aren't the problem - you need to get past airport security with whatever guns you have
You need pilots that can fly a commercial jet, which requires a lot of training, not everyone can do it. The pilot would realise that they were doomed anyway and crash the plane onto an uninhabited spot if you tried to make him or her do it
You need a lot of structual engineering/demolition expertise to pull off such a thorough demolition - apparently they picked jsut the right spot and height to cause a neat implosion, rather than a toppling or anything.
This kind of thing would take one hell of a lot of resources...
Millions of people are dying everywhere all the time without any media coverage. More people will die in the roads this year than any American in terrorist attack. Death is horrible but it will catch us all sooner or later.
True, but if you get killed on the road, it is generally speaking an accident, about which all the survivors are sorry. Whereas this was a highly-organised ring of people setting out to kill tens of thousands.
The US as a sanctuary of democracy/capitalism has nothing to do with it. It just happens to be where most of us live. Wipe that froth off your mouth and show some respect to the people killed.
At the very least, invasion of the country that either sponsored, or allowed to happen, this terrorism must be made.
Now that's a good one. So you would, without hesitation, invade the country that these terrorists belong to. Sound OK so far?
Right. Now imagine that the terrorists were domestic. I know that seems unlikely, but imagine that it were the case. Would you still pursue sanctions against the country that harboured them, failed in its duty to stop them? But of course, that's different, isn't it. Oh, no, when the US can't stop them (eg Oklahoma), it's OK, but if some poorer state with far less resources can't stop a ring with enough resources to hijack several planes at once, blow them all to hell! Yeah, that makes sense...
Drop a few nuclear bombs on the middle east.
Hmm...that would work. No really. I mean, who would mind dying slowly and painfully from cancer after the retaliation? And who cares about whose who didn't do anything...I mean, one you've bumped of a few thousand, a few million is just a couple more zeroes...
Anyway, from the sound of this post, you'd be dancing quick as anything is we retaliated...
"But Miss, Miss, they started it!" - maybe they did (remember that nobody even knows at the moment), maybe they didn't. Anyway, whether or not they did, that kind of thing is how wars start. Do you really want a war? If so, volunteer for the army. For preference, 101st Cannon-fodder Division.
About the partying Middle East - remember what makes good news. From the sound of some of the frothy-mouthed hatred going on here (and I'm not accusing you), there are people around here who would party if something similar happened over there.
My hopes & prayers too for your brother's girlfriend.
Well, in which case I'd assume that you've already volunteered for cannon-fodder duty then...
Nuclear force is acceptable.
Really? Again, would you enjoy being poisoned by the radiation (and don't think you wouldn't get any, most of the people with the resources to do this could get their hands on a nuke)?
But where is the target????????
Oh, why not just ask around? It seems that half of the/. population has already gathered convincing enough evidence to decide who it was, or at least I must assume that they have, and are proudly announcing it to the world. I'm not sure we'd have enough nukes for them all...
Let's keep the truly remarkable thing in mind about this: we heard about it on Slashdot first. Great job, guys.
The truly remarkable thing is that someone can get news of such a huge disaster and comment that they heard it on/. first. A sense of perspective would be nice...
Because it's not about law, it's about lawyers. M$ can hire more and better lawyers, therefore it has more of a chance of winning any said legal argument about such agreements. Anyway, I believe (warning: second-hand info) that some states regard the MS EULA as not binding, which is worrying to GPL users...
That blasted KB article is IE-only! If you open it in konqueror, it redirects you to a page entitled "unsupported.asp", which has a "cyclical link"...now call me paranoid, but does that not sound like something intended to send a poor browser into a tailspin? Of course, use Opera (which pretends to be IE5), and you get the article, in all it's galling arrogance ("we've dumped all these plugins, go stick it"). I try to keep an open mind, I really do, but MS are crossing all the boundaries, plus a couple I didn't know existed.
OK, calling them PHBs was a little mean, but the fact is that most managemant types won't have put in the free-time research-cum-hobbyist-wnderings that most of the/. crowd have. Therefore, quick executive summaries are actually very useful.
I would agree with you completely, but (you saw that coming, didn't you) only if my friend were the only people who I was helping.
In your case, I suppose, it's a good idea, as you are, as you say, helping your friends in the games industry, where the rules are all the same - closed source, making our bread and butter. But if I, ooh, say, wrote a networking stack for a free OS, and say, just hypothetically, that a massive corporation grabbed my code and integrated it into a product that they then used to attempt to squash the OS that said networking stack was taken from, I'd be a bit annoyed, to say the least. That's where Win9x got its net stack from, and it will sure as hell never happen to any of my code.
...Other than that, these licenses are too restrictive, except maybe for BSD and X licenses. They may bring a feeling of assurance to developers, but users do suffer.
That's a common misconception. As long as the user does not mess with the source, the GPL has no effect (except, of course, that the software is freely redistributable). These things only rear their heads if you want to modify the source. Users are not affected.
The irritating thing is that M$ are using this argument against using GPL'ed software vs their own. As long as you only use the software, not modify it, the GPL does not affect you - and it certainly doesn't harm your IP. That's only if you modify the software, which you couldn't even *do* with proprietary licences of M$ Shared Source.
...one or more maintenance tasks comprise at least one of the following: compression of software, compression of data...
Goodbye, gzip, RPM, WinZip, bzip...! Actually, M$ ZIP support native in XP, don't they...ooh, UGLY!
...search for software that needs to be upgraded, search for data that needs to be upgraded, upgrade of software, upgrade of data, search for obsolete software, search for obsolete data, deletion of obsolete software, deletion of obsolete data,
Ooh...there goes apt...
archival of software, archival of data...
Nooooooooo! Give me my TAR back........aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh! (falls backwards off cliff).
...hardware diagnostics,
Ah. Well, there went my BIOS. Damn. Now how am I going to boot, hmm? ...and software diagnostics.
hmmm...does checksumming software count? If so, apt goes again...
Why don't the just patent all computer software while they're at it? They've already made every Linux distro - heck, every operating system on this planet a violation of their patent (what OS doesn't install from compressed files?), what else do they wat?
This really is *insane*. I mean...something that would make TAR a patent violation? Wake up, USPTO!
MS will have to duke it out with someone else playing the dirty monopoly game...let the fun begin!
However, at a guess, McAffee will realise that they don't have too much chance against such a giant, and will conveniently ignore the big fish while ruthlessly using the patent against anyone who dares to think that they can write virus removal software...
Well, thankfully McAffee don't seem to have designs on the *NIX market, but I'm still worried.
No matter how many times you say it, a name,
- Really? Cool! Would you like to go and tell that to any company?
...word, sentence, story,
- Oh, dammit, you know, there went my professional author friend's livelyhood. I guess I'll have to lend him a cardboard box, shaln't I?
...idea, song,
- OK, you got me there. Oh, whoops, I forgot those people, what's it, oh yes, pop stars. They'd better start looking for cardboard boxes too then...
...or image will not be property.
Oh yes they can... even if only for a while, or in a way, this kind of property is essential to keep entrepreneurism (is that a word?) alive...
Not only that, not very many people are too concerned with that the FSF's definition of "Open Source" is. If I can download the source for free (economically speaking) and look at it, it's open
Kodak wants users to use their services, but as long as they don't make it difficult for users NOT to use their saervices, they're fine.
(note that "there" != "their" != "they're")
We're talking lowest common denominator here. Having a default is putting up as effective a barrier as they need. MS have made it easier to select Kodak's software, but as theirs is still the default, they've as good as captured all the non-techies who wouldn't be able to figure the process out and wouldn't be bothered to call tech support. Kodak is doing the same as MS...
I would MUCH rather see distributions like Debian allow the distribution of binaries or source for PINE in a non-free section.
Debian does - there is a package with PINE in it in nonfree. What's more, it even Debianises it, by having the source, and then a package that patches and makes it.
There oughta be a category for software like this.
OK then, now, I do not want to start a flamewar, I just want to hear a different point of view. Why is vi so fast? How on earth can a text editor be low-bandwidth? What *are* the advantages of vi? (A link to a pro-vi webpage would be nice, as discussion forums get quite heated...). Thanks in advance!
Pico is the 'lazy' way for NT admins to edit unix files.
Excuse me? That's just flamebait, there, so I'll try to resist it, but that remark was uncalled-for.
Slashdot Mirror
Hitting a building at precisely the right point to cause such an efficient collapse would, I imagine, require at least as much skill as landing the plane...
If not for heightened security tomorrow, I could have pulled this off with 20 like minded and loyal friends. 5 per plane, and no flight crew of 3 pilots and 5 flight attendents would be able to stop me.
Hmm...a few facts missing here:
This kind of thing would take one hell of a lot of resources...
Millions of people are dying everywhere all the time without any media coverage. More people will die in the roads this year than any American in terrorist attack. Death is horrible but it will catch us all sooner or later.
True, but if you get killed on the road, it is generally speaking an accident, about which all the survivors are sorry. Whereas this was a highly-organised ring of people setting out to kill tens of thousands.
The US as a sanctuary of democracy/capitalism has nothing to do with it. It just happens to be where most of us live. Wipe that froth off your mouth and show some respect to the people killed.
At the very least, invasion of the country that either sponsored, or allowed to happen, this terrorism must be made.
Now that's a good one. So you would, without hesitation, invade the country that these terrorists belong to. Sound OK so far?
Right. Now imagine that the terrorists were domestic. I know that seems unlikely, but imagine that it were the case. Would you still pursue sanctions against the country that harboured them, failed in its duty to stop them? But of course, that's different, isn't it. Oh, no, when the US can't stop them (eg Oklahoma), it's OK, but if some poorer state with far less resources can't stop a ring with enough resources to hijack several planes at once, blow them all to hell! Yeah, that makes sense...
Drop a few nuclear bombs on the middle east.
Hmm...that would work. No really. I mean, who would mind dying slowly and painfully from cancer after the retaliation? And who cares about whose who didn't do anything...I mean, one you've bumped of a few thousand, a few million is just a couple more zeroes...
Anyway, from the sound of this post, you'd be dancing quick as anything is we retaliated...
"But Miss, Miss, they started it!" - maybe they did (remember that nobody even knows at the moment), maybe they didn't. Anyway, whether or not they did, that kind of thing is how wars start. Do you really want a war? If so, volunteer for the army. For preference, 101st Cannon-fodder Division.
About the partying Middle East - remember what makes good news. From the sound of some of the frothy-mouthed hatred going on here (and I'm not accusing you), there are people around here who would party if something similar happened over there.
My hopes & prayers too for your brother's girlfriend.
I have no issue at this point with ALL OUT war.
/. population has already gathered convincing enough evidence to decide who it was, or at least I must assume that they have, and are proudly announcing it to the world. I'm not sure we'd have enough nukes for them all...
Well, in which case I'd assume that you've already volunteered for cannon-fodder duty then...
Nuclear force is acceptable.
Really? Again, would you enjoy being poisoned by the radiation (and don't think you wouldn't get any, most of the people with the resources to do this could get their hands on a nuke)?
But where is the target????????
Oh, why not just ask around? It seems that half of the
Let's keep the truly remarkable thing in mind about this: we heard about it on Slashdot first. Great job, guys.
/. first. A sense of perspective would be nice...
The truly remarkable thing is that someone can get news of such a huge disaster and comment that they heard it on
Here, here...
Pity I'm Anglican, the Romcan Catholic "mass for the souls of xxx" is a tradition with its uses...
Because it's not about law, it's about lawyers. M$ can hire more and better lawyers, therefore it has more of a chance of winning any said legal argument about such agreements. Anyway, I believe (warning: second-hand info) that some states regard the MS EULA as not binding, which is worrying to GPL users...
That blasted KB article is IE-only! If you open it in konqueror, it redirects you to a page entitled "unsupported.asp", which has a "cyclical link"...now call me paranoid, but does that not sound like something intended to send a poor browser into a tailspin? Of course, use Opera (which pretends to be IE5), and you get the article, in all it's galling arrogance ("we've dumped all these plugins, go stick it"). I try to keep an open mind, I really do, but MS are crossing all the boundaries, plus a couple I didn't know existed.
Guess I'm not elitist enough for this site.
/. crowd have. Therefore, quick executive summaries are actually very useful.
OK, calling them PHBs was a little mean, but the fact is that most managemant types won't have put in the free-time research-cum-hobbyist-wnderings that most of the
I would agree with you completely, but (you saw that coming, didn't you) only if my friend were the only people who I was helping.
In your case, I suppose, it's a good idea, as you are, as you say, helping your friends in the games industry, where the rules are all the same - closed source, making our bread and butter. But if I, ooh, say, wrote a networking stack for a free OS, and say, just hypothetically, that a massive corporation grabbed my code and integrated it into a product that they then used to attempt to squash the OS that said networking stack was taken from, I'd be a bit annoyed, to say the least. That's where Win9x got its net stack from, and it will sure as hell never happen to any of my code.
...Other than that, these licenses are too restrictive, except maybe for BSD and X licenses. They may bring a feeling of assurance to developers, but users do suffer.
That's a common misconception. As long as the user does not mess with the source, the GPL has no effect (except, of course, that the software is freely redistributable). These things only rear their heads if you want to modify the source. Users are not affected.
The irritating thing is that M$ are using this argument against using GPL'ed software vs their own. As long as you only use the software, not modify it, the GPL does not affect you - and it certainly doesn't harm your IP. That's only if you modify the software, which you couldn't even *do* with proprietary licences of M$ Shared Source.
Goodbye, gzip, RPM, WinZip, bzip...! Actually, M$ ZIP support native in XP, don't they...ooh, UGLY!
Ooh...there goes apt...
archival of software, archival of data...
Nooooooooo! Give me my TAR back........aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh! (falls backwards off cliff).
Ah. Well, there went my BIOS. Damn. Now how am I going to boot, hmm?
hmmm...does checksumming software count? If so, apt goes again...
Why don't the just patent all computer software while they're at it? They've already made every Linux distro - heck, every operating system on this planet a violation of their patent (what OS doesn't install from compressed files?), what else do they wat?
This really is *insane*. I mean...something that would make TAR a patent violation? Wake up, USPTO!
Oh, I love it!
MS will have to duke it out with someone else playing the dirty monopoly game...let the fun begin!
However, at a guess, McAffee will realise that they don't have too much chance against such a giant, and will conveniently ignore the big fish while ruthlessly using the patent against anyone who dares to think that they can write virus removal software...
Well, thankfully McAffee don't seem to have designs on the *NIX market, but I'm still worried.
...if I remember from the credits, Toy Story 2 was rendered on Sun boxen...(I'm lame, aren't I? I read that stuff... ;-) )
Seriously, though, it's nice to see OSS out in the specialist fields too...
So how come it is OK for MAPS to claim copyright and charge for access to community-submitted data, but NOT OK for CDDB to do exactly the same thing?
It's not OK, and people are angry about it. Is anyone here agreeing that it's a morally good thing? I think not.
43rd Law of Computing:
It'll probably be almost as bad as when the emails for "system security" clog up and crash the mail server...
Ooh...a backlog like that can crash your mailserver? Man, you need to look at your system stability... =)
43rd Law of Computing:
Attempting to code MSN features for everybuddy (blatant plug) was rather hard with no MSN...oh well, back to bughunting =)
43rd Law of Computing:
No matter how many times you say it, a name,
...word, sentence, story,
...idea, song,
...or image will not be property.
- Really? Cool! Would you like to go and tell that to any company?
- Oh, dammit, you know, there went my professional author friend's livelyhood. I guess I'll have to lend him a cardboard box, shaln't I?
- OK, you got me there. Oh, whoops, I forgot those people, what's it, oh yes, pop stars. They'd better start looking for cardboard boxes too then...
Oh yes they can... even if only for a while, or in a way, this kind of property is essential to keep entrepreneurism (is that a word?) alive...
43rd Law of Computing:
Not only that, not very many people are too concerned with that the FSF's definition of "Open Source" is. If I can download the source for free (economically speaking) and look at it, it's open
That's why the FSF don't call it "Open Source software", they call it "Free Software". Take a look at the FSF's definition of free software, and their argument as to why Free Software is better than open source.
43rd Law of Computing:
Kodak wants users to use their services, but as long as they don't make it difficult for users NOT to use their saervices, they're fine.
(note that "there" != "their" != "they're")
We're talking lowest common denominator here. Having a default is putting up as effective a barrier as they need. MS have made it easier to select Kodak's software, but as theirs is still the default, they've as good as captured all the non-techies who wouldn't be able to figure the process out and wouldn't be bothered to call tech support. Kodak is doing the same as MS...
43rd Law of Computing:
I would MUCH rather see distributions like Debian allow the distribution of binaries or source for PINE in a non-free section.
Debian does - there is a package with PINE in it in nonfree. What's more, it even Debianises it, by having the source, and then a package that patches and makes it.
There oughta be a category for software like this.
Isn't that what the nonfree section is for?
43rd Law of Computing:
(fire-retardant suit on)
OK then, now, I do not want to start a flamewar, I just want to hear a different point of view. Why is vi so fast? How on earth can a text editor be low-bandwidth? What *are* the advantages of vi? (A link to a pro-vi webpage would be nice, as discussion forums get quite heated...). Thanks in advance!
Pico is the 'lazy' way for NT admins to edit unix files.
Excuse me? That's just flamebait, there, so I'll try to resist it, but that remark was uncalled-for.
43rd Law of Computing: