Never caught the purpose of this 'HURD' thingy though. Isn't that some hardcore Stallman stuff?
I'm sure a lot of people thought the same about Linux when it started. It does provide the same functionality as other Unix like systems, but it is based on a different design philosophy. It is completly non-monolithic
Almost everything is running in userspace as a server, (except for the microkernel), it promises greater scalability through its massively multithreaded and highly granular design.
Yeah, it is Stallman's concept and part of his project, but it is different enough from everything else out there to be significant.
Offered or not, GNU chose Linux to be used as it's kernel. (at least some of GNU did).
Youc could make another set of utilities that would run on Linux that could either resemble GNU or not. Gnu/Linux simply states that the GNU tools are running on top of Linux in the same way that TCP/IP explains that the "Transmission Control Protocol" is being used on top of the "Internet Protocol" (as opposed to UDP/IP which is... I'll guess you already know that one)
The author of the article himself named his distrobution GNU/Linux, mostly because this is how it was understood in the early days by most of the developers.
They did not see Linux as a product. They saw the OSs they were creating with Linux as a kernel as the product. Debian offers proof of this concept with its Non-Linux Ports
Its not intended to be a religious debate, it's a matter of accuracy.
There are people out there - believe it or not - that think $199 is a good deal on an operating system.
And I'm one of them.
But I'm not about to pay $199.00 for an OS that I'm not going to use.
There is not "stick it to the man" attitude, message, or anecdote (nor any epigram of any sort whatsoever) in the article. The author is not attempting to "prove that licenses are evil". He is simply explaning what is necessary and possible when it comes to recieving one's proper refund for goods that one did not and will not use. The only opinion that seems to be implied by the article is that all parties should be held to the terms of a license agreement, not just the end user, and especially the company that is offering the license.
You misrepresent the authors assesment of the value of the software that was offered by ignoring the fact that the author valued the Windows software at $189.00 more than the manufacturer. The value was not what he was questioning, just the usefulness as it aplied to his needs. Then, in the same sentance you attempt to associate the author with persons who advocate software "piracy", when in fact the author is the only party to the license offer that is defending the terms of the license.
You also imply that the author's success is exagerated, and that he is clinging to false hopes of a most following in his steps, when the simple phrase that he uses states only that there be many, as in more than a few, or a good number, or any other relative amount that may be numerous but does not necessarily require a majority.
You can't have it both ways, and neither can Microsoft, the moanufacturer or the retailer. If you expect the customer to abide by the terms of the license, then you must abide by those terms yourself. If you wish for your customer to accept the published value of your goods, you must acknowlege that those goods are indeed valued at that amount. It's not as though the author in any way diminished the value of the software by not accepting the license, nor was he attempting to return used or damaged goods.
It really seems odd that so many customers of a company take such offense at persons choosing different tools than they do. No one is attacking Microsoft for being in business. It is simply about choice, and not allowing a large company to force us to pay for what we choose not to purchase.
Sometimes a troll is useful in that it may be presenting an argument that might be used to influence persons who do not understand the issue.
This gives an opportunity to construct arguments that may be useful in later debate with more worthy adversaries.
Politicians are known to plant trolls in crowds or press conferences in order to raise issues that might not otherwise be raised, or to point out flaws in an opponents platform with accurate parody.
This mean that people could come up with back door or understand certain keypresses to activate easter egg and other undesirable outcomes..
It is highly unlikely that an "easter egg" will be hidden in an open source voting system. It would be too easy for the coder to be caught. Having the source code available for review and testing increases the likelyhood that security flaws, whether resulting from coding errors, improper algorythms, or intentional backdoors, will be found and corrected before the election systems are used.
The more popular something is, the more it will be hacked.
This is no argument at all. The closed source voting systems used in the United States in recent elections are based on Microsoft Windows, and have likely been used to alter election results. It seems that you are right about this, it would be better to use "unpopular" Open Source software than popular closed source software in election machinery.
And does having source code in front of our eye really tell us that the voting system is legitimate?
No, not necessarily, but I'd trust a system that can be examined before I'd trust a system that cannot.
Do most of one billions people in India know to read source code or understand how it work?
For Open Source to protect the voting system, it is unecessary for all (or even most) of the voters to understand the source code. It is only necessary that a number persons from all sides of the political spectrum be able to understand the source. Transparency in a voting system will prevent any one interest group from being able to alter the results as no one interest group will be able to control (or identify) all of the potential auditors.
Again I think not, so open source is not too useful for checking legitimacy unless you are technical and understand to read source codes...
Only a moron (or a tool) would make the argument that if a single individual person does not understand the source code, then the source code is not legitimate.
You're trying to depict the FBI as an organization of jackbooted Gestapo thugs, and that's unfair.
Thats purely disingenuous. The poster describes a scenario where the FBI is unknowingly acting on bad information, and you cry Godwin.
Perhaps your expiriences with The Agency are limited to your dad's company picnics, but they can be pretty farkin scary if they're going after someone they think is a bad guy.
As for the examples you asked for, I decided to expand beyond computer error and include other abuses of FBI authority as well:
I don't share the hostility that most posters here feel towards the actual telemarketing employees.
I know people who have at various times held telemarketing jobs, and they all described thier jobs in similar terms to what is in some of the more hostile posts here. They took those jobs because it was what was available where they were. They took those jobs to get the last bit of cash needed to move on to the "greener pastures" we all dream about. The telemarketing employee is just a fleshy version of the email client being used to send spam. Thier employers, the clients who hire these firms, the DMA, the people who buy the crap that these poor sods are forced to sling over the phone for a couple of bucks are to blame for the plague of interrupted dinners. Not the employees who take these jobs.
Two Million jobs is a sh*tload of unemployment. The economy is not gonna "perk up" like that republican bastard promised us with two million people added to the unemployment ranks.
In other words I'm split on this one.
I'm on the do not call list.
I think the DMA and ATA need to shut up and go home instead of suing for the right to sell crap that very few people want over the phone. Maybe they will realize that a "no cold calls" policy is good for thier business AND their employees.
But I don't think that two million jobs lost in one fell swoop is good for anybody, and I don't for a second think that I'd be above taking a crappy telemarketing job if I had no other option to keep the rent paid and some food in the fridge.
For example, burning farms, businesses, and homes plus raping the women from Atlanta to Savannah and in the Shenandoah valley.
You mean, as opposed to burning slaves for learning to read (it was illegal for slaves to know how to read, or to teach a slave to read in most of the southern states) or raping the wives and daughters of your slaves (I guess this point is a little disingenuous, as the wives and daughters of your slaves would also be your slaves until you sold them)
Many STILL suffer from his policies.....
I assume you are talking about all those poor, unintelligent negro folk who would love to get back into the arms of yo' southern hospitality after they great gran' daddies were so cruelly thrust unto the winds of fate by the Northern Aggressor.
[/sarcasm} The great General Robert Lee was not "smarter than that", but a complex and intelligent thinker who was torn between his strong belief in the importance of preserving the Union of the states, and his loyalty to his family and the State of Virginia. (It is interesting that the person recommending Lee to lead the Union Army was a distant cousin of his, Blair Lee of Mongomery County, Maryland. I guess not every Lee suffered the curse of holding "family honor" in higher regard than the Rights of Man.)
The conflict that started the war was over the Crittenden Proposal, that would have allowed the "Southern States" to preserve the inhuman tradition of slavery without interference from the other states or the federal government. The proposal was defeated in comittee, largely due to the greater representation enjoyed by the predominantly Republican North. What amuses me greatly about this fact is that if the Southern States had allowed thier slaves to vote, and thus be counted for representation, then the South would have greatly outnumbered the North in congress, but then again, if the South had allowed their slaves to vote, I doubt that slavery would even have been a possibility.
Any app that supports xft supports anti-aliased fonts. There's no reason you need KDE or Gnome support for anti-aliased fonts. As for the choice of fg/bg colors, that's always up to the user.
You're probably right, they will eventually want to charge money, and, IMHO, thier solution looks overly complicated and manipulable (spammers pay for "trusted" members to list them as "trusted").
It would be better if ISPs participated in services like the ORDB, SORBS and Monkeys that have simple network testable criteria for listing open relays. Spews, Spamhaus, and DSBL have reputable lists of usernames and addresses that send spam. If ISPs and admins would participate in projects like these, the spam problem would be greatly reduced. And it seems that these projects are mostly run by admins who are interested in blocking spam, not selling a service.
But the reason it takes so long to fix them is stupid design.
The myth that complexity is only achieved through complicated design is pervasive in computer programming, typified in Windows, and becoming more prevalant in Linux applications as Gnome and KDE become the standards.
The UNIX operating system was highly complex even in the days when it was dominated by small programs that were designed with the The Unix Philosophy. Small programs that did one thing well were the rule and complexity was achieved by utilizing clean well documented interfaces, standard data storage formats (ASCII), and non-captive UIs. The result is that most bugs can be tracked down to a specific small program that can either be fixed relatively quickly by the maintainer, or be replaced with one of a number of equivalent programs (either permanantly, or until the bug is found and fixed).
Windows design is mostly large programs that try to do everything for themselves, although they do share library functions. The result is huge masses of code that can effectively hide bugs indefinately (shatter), cannot be replaced with another program without breaking the OS (integration), and that the company seems to think of as "not our problem".
The issue I have with the desktop environments is that they seem to be following in the footsteps of Windows design, creating a tangled mess of (what should be) unecessary dependancies, huge libraries, and code that no one person is inheirently familiar with. As yet, I am unaware of any security problems inherent in either Gnome or KDE, but I do consider it a bug that installing a spreadsheet requires also requires a sound library to work properly.
Complex ends can be achieved through simple means and complex programs or OS do not need to be complicated.
There will be no shortage of work, because our beloved Party will tax the masses to support subsidies for the top 5% of income "earners", who will, in turn, hire half of the the displaced workers to dig ditches and the other half to fill them back up.
If it happens that the masses start to complain, or don't seem to apreciate thier ditch digging/filling jobs, the government will stage a few "terrorist" attacks, go to war, and throw a recession to get everyone to shut up and get back to work.
The people who have the money will get to keep thier money and the people who don't have money will get to keep thier jobs, as long as they know what is good for them.
Everyone busy, everyone happy, no-one has enough time to complain.
but these companies and thier investors are dead serious. The music industry has been a cash cow for studio backers (read: Mob) for so long that they really will stop at nothing to prevent the industry from changing.
What they don't want to see is people migrating to independant musicians and smaller non-RIAA studios for thier entertainment, so they want to kill the idea of freely downloadable music before it becomes considered the norm, or before people begin to realize that there is good music available that is not encumbered by copyright.
So, support independent music, promote independent artists, and flood Kazaa and other filetrading systems with music that "steals" business from the record companies. If you don't like thier business, don't give them your money, your time, or your attention.
Although the RedHat platform is the prefered policy for the Large corporations, the left leaning lobby seems to support the Debian ideology.
Other inerest groups, including the Anarchists and the Willingly Unemployed Caucus, have called for "More Slack", but this reporter has been unable to determine any consistant policy in the Slackware platform.
So, MSNs getting a little self ritghtous about search engines in anticipation of the launch of the Microsoft search engine. Lets see how they stand up to thier own criticism. Just to be fair, well just count the first ten results on the page, as that is what we'll see on Google
Criticism 1: All Shopping, all the time:
flowers(MSN) Result: 7 sites selling flowers, 2 informative sites (one of which is part of MSN, and 1 site for searching yellow pages (also MSN). 80% comercial, 20% informative (and 20% self promoting).
apple(MSN) Result: 9 sites about Apple computers, 1 site about apple recipes (on MSN) 90% "skewed synonym", 10% traditional meaning (80% comercial, 20% informational and 10% self promoting)
apple(Google) 10 sites about Apple computers. 100% "skewed synonym" (80% comercial/promotional 20% tech support)
Criticism 3: Book Learning
This one's a little difficult to test, because what Mr. Johnson pretends to be concerned about is more due to the economics of publishing and the web than to anything that Google has control over. It seems that the concern is over Google's indexing of PDF files, but not indexing these files would leave out important archives of information that are published online in that format, such as most of the documents in George Washington University'sNational Security Archives. I don't think that there's a legitimate argument for not indexing PDFs, and I find it a little disturbing that some search engines do not. Google's ability to search for specific file formats has enabled me to weed out the nutcase sites, and returned a higher percentage of useful results when looking for Government documents for my research.
All in all, I find little difference between the two search engines when doing simple, one-word searches. MSN's web search is is just as guilty of Mr. Johnson's first two criticisms as Google. MSN's web search is intended as a marketing tool, not a user service. Looksmart accepts payment for better rankings and "expidited review". I doubt the new search engine Microsoft will unveil will be much different.
At least on Google, no one has to pay to get listed.
Although I didn't see any actual mention of anonymity in the article, it's not hard to imagine that this device does create a more private way to do business.
As for all of the posts about drug dealers, money launderers, adulterers, and terrorists, you're right, those people would use an anonymous method of payment/transfer if it were easily/readily available, but so would political disidents (are they terrorists if they dissagree with you?), persons worried about identity theft, and people like me, who simply resent the governments attempts to count every roll of toilet paper I buy and every book or magazine that I read.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue is not the developers, where LINUX is now strongest. The issue is the "mom & pop" end user that want's another toaster.
What I don't understand is why you are trying to make an issue out of this anyway.
If you want to sell Linux boxen to "mom and pop", then that's your issue.
The truth is that most of the people who developed Linux over the years were not trying to sell anything. To them it's "not a product".
To the guy who looks at it as an alternative to selling used cars, everything is a product, and "mom and pop" are target demographic.
Sort of like the guy who sees a beautiful valley as a thing to build houses all over.
Never caught the purpose of this 'HURD' thingy though. Isn't that some hardcore Stallman stuff?
I'm sure a lot of people thought the same about Linux when it started. It does provide the same functionality as other Unix like systems, but it is based on a different design philosophy. It is completly non-monolithic
Almost everything is running in userspace as a server, (except for the microkernel), it promises greater scalability through its massively multithreaded and highly granular design.
Yeah, it is Stallman's concept and part of his project, but it is different enough from everything else out there to be significant.
Check out the Debian Gnu/Hurd for a distribution, and the GNU Hurd page for some docs.
Offered or not, GNU chose Linux to be used as it's kernel. (at least some of GNU did).
Youc could make another set of utilities that would run on Linux that could either resemble GNU or not. Gnu/Linux simply states that the GNU tools are running on top of Linux in the same way that TCP/IP explains that the "Transmission Control Protocol" is being used on top of the "Internet Protocol" (as opposed to UDP/IP which is... I'll guess you already know that one)
The author of the article himself named his distrobution GNU/Linux, mostly because this is how it was understood in the early days by most of the developers.
They did not see Linux as a product. They saw the OSs they were creating with Linux as a kernel as the product. Debian offers proof of this concept with its Non-Linux Ports
Its not intended to be a religious debate, it's a matter of accuracy.
There are people out there - believe it or not - that think $199 is a good deal on an operating system.
And I'm one of them.
But I'm not about to pay $199.00 for an OS that I'm not going to use.
There is not "stick it to the man" attitude, message, or anecdote (nor any epigram of any sort whatsoever) in the article. The author is not attempting to "prove that licenses are evil". He is simply explaning what is necessary and possible when it comes to recieving one's proper refund for goods that one did not and will not use. The only opinion that seems to be implied by the article is that all parties should be held to the terms of a license agreement, not just the end user, and especially the company that is offering the license.
You misrepresent the authors assesment of the value of the software that was offered by ignoring the fact that the author valued the Windows software at $189.00 more than the manufacturer. The value was not what he was questioning, just the usefulness as it aplied to his needs. Then, in the same sentance you attempt to associate the author with persons who advocate software "piracy", when in fact the author is the only party to the license offer that is defending the terms of the license.
You also imply that the author's success is exagerated, and that he is clinging to false hopes of a most following in his steps, when the simple phrase that he uses states only that there be many, as in more than a few, or a good number, or any other relative amount that may be numerous but does not necessarily require a majority.
You can't have it both ways, and neither can Microsoft, the moanufacturer or the retailer. If you expect the customer to abide by the terms of the license, then you must abide by those terms yourself. If you wish for your customer to accept the published value of your goods, you must acknowlege that those goods are indeed valued at that amount. It's not as though the author in any way diminished the value of the software by not accepting the license, nor was he attempting to return used or damaged goods.
It really seems odd that so many customers of a company take such offense at persons choosing different tools than they do. No one is attacking Microsoft for being in business. It is simply about choice, and not allowing a large company to force us to pay for what we choose not to purchase.
How is this a "loophole"?
It seems like straitforward business to me, as in "if I don't want a product, why must I buy it?"
or
"If I am willing to return a product unused, why do I not get a refund?"
Why should a software vendor be allowed to force customers to purchase thier product if they are buying an item manufactured by a different vendor?
To call this refund a "loophpole" is certainly questionable logic. I think you are taking the joke about the "Microsoft Tax" a bit too seriously.
and we are surprised why?
(yeah, yeah. cheap shot. why does everyone on slahdot always bash... etc. etc. etc.)
The problem with this "theoretical problem" is that once it happens in most peoples reality (read: awareness), it will be too late.
It may have already happened
Sometimes a troll is useful in that it may be presenting an argument that might be used to influence persons who do not understand the issue.
This gives an opportunity to construct arguments that may be useful in later debate with more worthy adversaries.
Politicians are known to plant trolls in crowds or press conferences in order to raise issues that might not otherwise be raised, or to point out flaws in an opponents platform with accurate parody.
This mean that people could come up with back door or understand certain keypresses to activate easter egg and other undesirable outcomes..
It is highly unlikely that an "easter egg" will be hidden in an open source voting system. It would be too easy for the coder to be caught. Having the source code available for review and testing increases the likelyhood that security flaws, whether resulting from coding errors, improper algorythms, or intentional backdoors, will be found and corrected before the election systems are used.
The more popular something is, the more it will be hacked.
This is no argument at all. The closed source voting systems used in the United States in recent elections are based on Microsoft Windows, and have likely been used to alter election results. It seems that you are right about this, it would be better to use "unpopular" Open Source software than popular closed source software in election machinery.
And does having source code in front of our eye really tell us that the voting system is legitimate?
No, not necessarily, but I'd trust a system that can be examined before I'd trust a system that cannot.
Do most of one billions people in India know to read source code or understand how it work?
For Open Source to protect the voting system, it is unecessary for all (or even most) of the voters to understand the source code. It is only necessary that a number persons from all sides of the political spectrum be able to understand the source. Transparency in a voting system will prevent any one interest group from being able to alter the results as no one interest group will be able to control (or identify) all of the potential auditors.
Again I think not, so open source is not too useful for checking legitimacy unless you are technical and understand to read source codes...
Only a moron (or a tool) would make the argument that if a single individual person does not understand the source code, then the source code is not legitimate.
You're trying to depict the FBI as an organization of jackbooted Gestapo thugs, and that's unfair.
Thats purely disingenuous. The poster describes a scenario where the FBI is unknowingly acting on bad information, and you cry Godwin.
Perhaps your expiriences with The Agency are limited to your dad's company picnics, but they can be pretty farkin scary if they're going after someone they think is a bad guy.
As for the examples you asked for, I decided to expand beyond computer error and include other abuses of FBI authority as well:
WW2 internment
Black Panther Murders
Rescources at GWU's CNSS
Michael Riconosciuto who is serving time for dealing heroin after testifying against the government in Iran Contra.
and so on,
and so on,
and so...
According to the ACLU, because I'm consolidating public information, I'm a national security threat.
No, according to the ACLU, you are a personal privacy threat.
It's the Dept. of Homeland Security that thinks you're a national security threat.
I don't share the hostility that most posters here feel towards the actual telemarketing employees.
I know people who have at various times held telemarketing jobs, and they all described thier jobs in similar terms to what is in some of the more hostile posts here. They took those jobs because it was what was available where they were. They took those jobs to get the last bit of cash needed to move on to the "greener pastures" we all dream about. The telemarketing employee is just a fleshy version of the email client being used to send spam. Thier employers, the clients who hire these firms, the DMA, the people who buy the crap that these poor sods are forced to sling over the phone for a couple of bucks are to blame for the plague of interrupted dinners. Not the employees who take these jobs.
Two Million jobs is a sh*tload of unemployment. The economy is not gonna "perk up" like that republican bastard promised us with two million people added to the unemployment ranks.
In other words I'm split on this one.
I'm on the do not call list.
I think the DMA and ATA need to shut up and go home instead of suing for the right to sell crap that very few people want over the phone. Maybe they will realize that a "no cold calls" policy is good for thier business AND their employees.
But I don't think that two million jobs lost in one fell swoop is good for anybody, and I don't for a second think that I'd be above taking a crappy telemarketing job if I had no other option to keep the rent paid and some food in the fridge.
[/sarcasm}
The great General Robert Lee was not "smarter than that", but a complex and intelligent thinker who was torn between his strong belief in the importance of preserving the Union of the states, and his loyalty to his family and the State of Virginia. (It is interesting that the person recommending Lee to lead the Union Army was a distant cousin of his, Blair Lee of Mongomery County, Maryland. I guess not every Lee suffered the curse of holding "family honor" in higher regard than the Rights of Man.)
The conflict that started the war was over the Crittenden Proposal, that would have allowed the "Southern States" to preserve the inhuman tradition of slavery without interference from the other states or the federal government. The proposal was defeated in comittee, largely due to the greater representation enjoyed by the predominantly Republican North. What amuses me greatly about this fact is that if the Southern States had allowed thier slaves to vote, and thus be counted for representation, then the South would have greatly outnumbered the North in congress, but then again, if the South had allowed their slaves to vote, I doubt that slavery would even have been a possibility.
Any app that supports xft supports anti-aliased fonts. There's no reason you need KDE or Gnome support for anti-aliased fonts. As for the choice of fg/bg colors, that's always up to the user.
Thanks for the troll...
KDE, unfortunately, seems to be trying to look like XP.
KDE has looked like XP since long before XP saw the light of day.
IMHO, all of them (KDE, Gnome, and XP) look like ass when compared to BlackBox.
You're probably right, they will eventually want to charge money, and, IMHO, thier solution looks overly complicated and manipulable (spammers pay for "trusted" members to list them as "trusted").
It would be better if ISPs participated in services like the ORDB, SORBS and Monkeys that have simple network testable criteria for listing open relays. Spews, Spamhaus, and DSBL have reputable lists of usernames and addresses that send spam. If ISPs and admins would participate in projects like these, the spam problem would be greatly reduced. And it seems that these projects are mostly run by admins who are interested in blocking spam, not selling a service.
By the way, MAPS is currently free for individual use (look at the bottom of the page).
But the reason it takes so long to fix them is stupid design.
The myth that complexity is only achieved through complicated design is pervasive in computer programming, typified in Windows, and becoming more prevalant in Linux applications as Gnome and KDE become the standards.
The UNIX operating system was highly complex even in the days when it was dominated by small programs that were designed with the The Unix Philosophy. Small programs that did one thing well were the rule and complexity was achieved by utilizing clean well documented interfaces, standard data storage formats (ASCII), and non-captive UIs. The result is that most bugs can be tracked down to a specific small program that can either be fixed relatively quickly by the maintainer, or be replaced with one of a number of equivalent programs (either permanantly, or until the bug is found and fixed).
Windows design is mostly large programs that try to do everything for themselves, although they do share library functions. The result is huge masses of code that can effectively hide bugs indefinately (shatter), cannot be replaced with another program without breaking the OS (integration), and that the company seems to think of as "not our problem".
The issue I have with the desktop environments is that they seem to be following in the footsteps of Windows design, creating a tangled mess of (what should be) unecessary dependancies, huge libraries, and code that no one person is inheirently familiar with. As yet, I am unaware of any security problems inherent in either Gnome or KDE, but I do consider it a bug that installing a spreadsheet requires also requires a sound library to work properly.
Complex ends can be achieved through simple means and complex programs or OS do not need to be complicated.
The argument used is a classic False Analogy.
More definitions of logical fallacies can be found here.
For plenty of examples you can look here.
There will be no shortage of work, because our beloved Party will tax the masses to support subsidies for the top 5% of income "earners", who will, in turn, hire half of the the displaced workers to dig ditches and the other half to fill them back up.
If it happens that the masses start to complain, or don't seem to apreciate thier ditch digging/filling jobs, the government will stage a few "terrorist" attacks, go to war, and throw a recession to get everyone to shut up and get back to work.
The people who have the money will get to keep thier money and the people who don't have money will get to keep thier jobs, as long as they know what is good for them.
Everyone busy, everyone happy, no-one has enough time to complain.
but these companies and thier investors are dead serious. The music industry has been a cash cow for studio backers (read: Mob) for so long that they really will stop at nothing to prevent the industry from changing.
What they don't want to see is people migrating to independant musicians and smaller non-RIAA studios for thier entertainment, so they want to kill the idea of freely downloadable music before it becomes considered the norm, or before people begin to realize that there is good music available that is not encumbered by copyright.
So, support independent music, promote independent artists, and flood Kazaa and other filetrading systems with music that "steals" business from the record companies. If you don't like thier business, don't give them your money, your time, or your attention.
Although the RedHat platform is the prefered policy for the Large corporations, the left leaning lobby seems to support the Debian ideology.
Other inerest groups, including the Anarchists and the Willingly Unemployed Caucus, have called for "More Slack", but this reporter has been unable to determine any consistant policy in the Slackware platform.
In other news...
Then maybe I'd start believing all thier talk about "backbone".
So, MSNs getting a little self ritghtous about search engines in anticipation of the launch of the Microsoft search engine. Lets see how they stand up to thier own criticism. Just to be fair, well just count the first ten results on the page, as that is what we'll see on Google
Criticism 1: All Shopping, all the time:
flowers(MSN) Result: 7 sites selling flowers, 2 informative sites (one of which is part of MSN, and 1 site for searching yellow pages (also MSN). 80% comercial, 20% informative (and 20% self promoting).
flowers(Google) Result: 7 sites selling flowers, 2 informative sites, 1 selling flower themed e-cards. 80% comercial, 20% informative
Criticism 2: Skewed Synonyms:
apple(MSN) Result: 9 sites about Apple computers, 1 site about apple recipes (on MSN) 90% "skewed synonym", 10% traditional meaning (80% comercial, 20% informational and 10% self promoting)
apple(Google) 10 sites about Apple computers. 100% "skewed synonym" (80% comercial/promotional 20% tech support)
Criticism 3: Book Learning
This one's a little difficult to test, because what Mr. Johnson pretends to be concerned about is more due to the economics of publishing and the web than to anything that Google has control over. It seems that the concern is over Google's indexing of PDF files, but not indexing these files would leave out important archives of information that are published online in that format, such as most of the documents in George Washington University's National Security Archives. I don't think that there's a legitimate argument for not indexing PDFs, and I find it a little disturbing that some search engines do not. Google's ability to search for specific file formats has enabled me to weed out the nutcase sites, and returned a higher percentage of useful results when looking for Government documents for my research.
All in all, I find little difference between the two search engines when doing simple, one-word searches. MSN's web search is is just as guilty of Mr. Johnson's first two criticisms as Google. MSN's web search is intended as a marketing tool, not a user service. Looksmart accepts payment for better rankings and "expidited review". I doubt the new search engine Microsoft will unveil will be much different.
At least on Google, no one has to pay to get listed.
You just have to get linked.
Although I didn't see any actual mention of anonymity in the article, it's not hard to imagine that this device does create a more private way to do business.
As for all of the posts about drug dealers, money launderers, adulterers, and terrorists, you're right, those people would use an anonymous method of payment/transfer if it were easily/readily available, but so would political disidents (are they terrorists if they dissagree with you?), persons worried about identity theft, and people like me, who simply resent the governments attempts to count every roll of toilet paper I buy and every book or magazine that I read.
A schedule is a separate leg of the stool upon which a project sits; quality, scope and cost
Knowing that a proper stool only requires three legs, the Debian project decided to throw the schedule in the bin.