I hope they get the race issue correct, as most attempts to make film or TV from LeGuinn's books make the central characters white, despite her descriptions.
She never does specify a definate race, but all of her main characters are described as brown, red, or dark skinned. There may be a question as to what race Ged actually is, but he is definately not white.
The "Chronicles of Narnia" are a protestant, christian allegory that borrows heavilyy from Spencer's (absolutely atrocious) "Faerie Queen", and are very much of the same intent.
"Narnia" is full of overly heavy and contrived symbolism. Aslan symbolizes the Royal Family, the Church of England, and Christ all at once, taking the place held by Gloriana in Spencers sixteenth century gharbage, while the White Witch filling the roll of Duessa as an allegory for the openess of the Catholic Church. The entire work is chock full of symbols of racism (Northern, Anglo-Saxon = superior and good. Southern, dark-skinned = subservient and bad) and the "artistry" of it seems to have been wacked together with a sledge rather than crafted with a fine brush.
Is "Narnia" heavy-handed attempt at creating a new "nationalist allegory" (ie: brainwashing the youth) for the UK?
The only problem about this is, Debian is usually an elitist group of users.
It seems odd that so many people declare that Debian users seem elitist after my expiriences as a Linux newbie who was installing Hamm several years ago ('97? '98?...)
I found that the userlist is dominated by people who are more than willing to help out with answers if they can understand your question and help you figure out how to ask the question more clearly if they don't. They were quick to point me to the proper documentation whenever it was available, and every "RTFM" had an attached URL or more so I'd know what manual (or HOWTO, README, quickstart guide, etc) they were refering to.
At the time, I knew nothing about networking, knew only the DOS (6.22) command line (and even that I did not know very well) and had very little expirience with using current computers. (I hadn't used one in six years, and had only a little expirience with programming from high school.)
RTFM is not an insult! It was and is the best peice of advice that can be given to a newbie who wants to know how to use his brand new Linux box. It is nearly impossible for a person to ask a useful question if they haven't at least attempted to understand the docs.
I *did* switch to RedHat on the advice of a friend after about a month, then spent a while using SuSE before settleing on Debian about a month after Slink was released.
Why Debian? The support. All requests for help on the user list were answered in a useful manner within a few hours, usually less. There's people who lurk there just waiting to find a question they can answer. I never had such luck on the other lists, and I doubt that there's many lists out there that can compare with Debian's number of subscribers or the speed and quality of response.
The computers are down for uh... (maintenance? No we cant say that... used it in 1980...)
uh... (For updating to a new accounting system for this very account? Damn, used that in '92... there's got to be a good excuse here somewhere... I know!..)
Oh, yeah it's a security issue! That's it, a security issue... can't mess with security now, can we? Not after 9-11!...
(Good one!)
Yes, we'll get back to you about that $700,000,000.00 we owe you after all of this is sorted out...
Oh, sure. As soon as possible...
Don't worry about it, we've got everything under control. Thanks for being so understanding...
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, your access is going to be out for a while...
That's right, no email, no web...
Yes, there'll be no distance learning at the schools either for the time being...
Really, that's not fair. Why don't you people just hire more teachers?..
What's that?...
$700 Million?...
It's funny how technical problems always plague the DOI every time this issue comes up.
Maybe someday Microsoft and the rest will get a clue. There is a reason pop-up blockers are so widely used.
These companies have a clue, and they do understand why people use pop-up and image server blockers.
Unfotunately, they do not see this as an issue of user rights, but of instead view this as purely a business issue. They define the blocking of advertising as a damaging practice that is limiting the internets potential value as an revenue generator for business (because, of course, the only reason to have an internet is so people can make money off of the users, right?).
They view the usage of their websites without viewing the advertisements as a breach of an unwritten contract, much as network television executives view going to the bathroom instead of watching the comercials break to be "theft".
They do understand that the internet wasdesigned to be an end to end system where viewers and providers given similar control over each aspect of its usage, but they view this as a design flaw that interferes with current (read: out-dated) business practices that became standard in the broadcast media (television and radio) where a user must view or listen to the advertisements if he or she wishes to view or listen to the programming.
Now they are insisting on greater control of the users expirience, including the right to track your every use of a computer that you have purchased. Since the late 1990s, the software companies have endeavored to monitor your usage, not only by tracking your internet usage, but by embedding unique identifiers into the documents and emails you write that will verify that the same user on a specific computer wrote all of the documents with that embedded identifier.
These companies do have the option of blocking access to those who do not have cookies enabled, do not download the advert image, or do not permit the pop-up. Why haven't they taken these measures? I can onnly speculate that this would seem to be admitting defeat. It would be leaving the final choice in the hands of the users (I don't want to bother with the pop-ups, therefore I'll do without the content on that site) and that if they cannot prevent the user from having that choice, they would rather not make obvious that the choice is there.
This law is not so horribly written, and it does nothing to prevent the user from willingly installing tracking and advert software as long the user is fully informed of what the software does and has detailed information about what information is being collected, when it is being collected, who it is being collected by, and who it is for.
This is what these companies fear most, an informed and knowledgable user base. They want their relationship with the user to resemble the relationship enjoyed by the broadcasters with their viewers. They would like to reduce the internet to a platform for providing entertainment and collecting advertising revenue.
And that's why they are opposed to this law. Not because they don't understand the iternet, but because they do, and they're not quite sure that they like the way it's turned out.
Some people can come up with $300.00 on the spot and would have a hard time getting $800.00 together in a month. If they need the work they have on the computer, it's a good deal, even if it means waiting a bit longer to purchase a new one.
Half the population is earning less than $32,000 a year. a ot of them are earning less than $20,000. Their computer might be just as important to them as one is to someone who earns more, and it can be quite a hardship to purchase a new one if you've found yourself on the lower half of the employment lottery.
Why do you assume making money and making an effective OS are mutually exclusive?
They're not, but if profit is your primary motivation, eventually there will be a conflict between that profit motive and the secondary desire to build the best possible OS.
In other words if it is possible to make a profit while shipping an inferior product, it will happen (Windows 95, 98, ME). You've made your money, but your OS sucks.
If the quality of your OS product is the primary concern, then you can be losing money, but have a superior product (Amiga). You may not have made the money, but at least your OS was good.
Because Linux is developed by a community of (mostly) non-contracted volunteers, its development does not suffer from the uncertainty that plagues software products that are developed in a for-profit environment that depends on sales of the software developed for continuance. The current developers need to quit or take time off due to financial restraints or business obligations, the OS continues to be developed by others.
The point being made is that the majority of Linux contributers are people who depend on the quality of Linux to make their companies profitable. They may not be making money directly from developing the OS, but their businesses would lose money if they were relying on a less stable/reliable/featured, or more expensive, OS.
Linux is not a product. It is a community supported infrastructure for supporting your efforts to get your product to market, whether that product be physical goods, intelectual property, or a service.
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?
The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time. This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.
Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.
Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.
Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.
I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there. If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.
If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.
The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.
I'm glad that there's not, even though I don't live in Canada. Now if you can get the CRIA to realizethat they don't deserve special investigative powers, you'll still be far ahead of the US in respects to user privacy.
At leasty not if I'm working for the benefit of people who's "ideals" I find repulsive, but I do it anyway, because I'd like to improve my situation.
Thatattitude, and my openess about it has made be labeled a "welfare junky" when I have never applied or recieved welfare, an "unemployment cheat" when I have never applied for or recieved unemployment, even when eligible, and a "communist", even though part of what I am working toward is ownership of my own property.
There are those who work hard and recognise it as an unfortunate part of our reality. Those people I can agree with. But those assholes who are unable to allow anopther to slack at their own expense, or are so ready to blame the unemployed for not having a job when jobs are increasingly difficult to come by can go screw themselves. Sure, I am capable of work that is far more difficult, or far more contributory than the shit work I do now, but go fuck yourselves unless you are willing to give me that job on my terms.
I do not agree that anyone should be forced to work, because I know all too well what it is like to depend on someone who is acting out of force rater than will.
It is the same people who bitch about people who are unwilling to work that are lobbying for greater police powers. Wheher it is the broadband customer, the taxpayer, or it magically gets implemented for free, we all get screwed, except for those assholes who have never been hungry, have never been without support, and have never had to deal with the reality of not being born into a family that was not lucky enough top be in the top twenty percent of income earners. If you've hads the luxury of living off of daddy's tab, or the comfort of living in a $3,000.00 apartment for only $500.00 because your daddy owns it, then shut the hell up and get out of the way.
Yeah, I've lived with it too, but in my case it was a bitch who was unwilling to work, lived off her parents, and accused everyone in the house who was actually breaking as sweat for their living of being lazy, pot-smoking no-loads because they weren't able to buy a BMW to cart the bitch around in. I'm sure you've seen your share of assholes who should get a jopb, but from your post, I'm more certain that you've spent more time bitching about people you think were "lucky" or "undeserving" than you've spent actually attempting to make a difference in your own life.
A lot of people work their asses off theirb entire lives without ever seeing anything that resembles a fair payout. These people are targeted as "waste cases" as much as the welfare recipients are.
As for those "successful" assholes who parlay their daddy's connections into high-paying gigs doing little more than shopping for other spoilt brats, they are far worse than the welfare recipients, because they are living on familial charity while thinking that they've actually have done something of worth.
Let the welfare people collect their checks on my tax dollar, as long as I'm not forced to work along side people who would rather cause problems, I'm happy. As for the spoilt brats calling themselves "the new Libertarians", get a fucking life and mind your own business, stay out of mine, and quit asking your uncle to keep tabs on all the people you think are after your inherentance.
Our government was established to ensure the continuance of the Constitutional state, not to ensure that your families get to retain control in the face of a changing economy.
I thought that Canadians paid a "broadband tax" to cover the cost of "pirating".
Has anyone else here heard of this?
How can the record companies go after someone if they are already receiving a handout from the government to cover that loss?
Am I completely wrong about this?
Wouldn't this be "double jeopardy" if you've paid your share for using broadband, but they are still sueing users?
Re:Wow, they requested this?
on
Spam Bits
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Either that or some body is paying people to spam flood the net in hopes that there will be regulation and monitoring of email, and possibly an opportunity to create a newer, lucrative, replacement to the smtp protocol.
I know that's more than a little paranoid, but the high number of "charge for every email", "pay for a certificate", and "provide a list of all of your users including realname" proposals that have been floated this year looks more than a little suspicious.
Re:19% of commercial email? At least!
on
Spam Bits
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· Score: 1
Have you automated the process of removing addresses from the list after consecutive bounces?
This would make it easy to eliminate the false addresses, those people who signed up but later changed their minds, and those who were unfortunate enough to have been "pranked" onto the list.
Also, an initial form email requesting confirmation of the subscription is a good policy, and it eliminates the problem of "pranked" subscriptions.
The difference is how atom of N, P, or K is delivered, as in what compound that atom is delivered in. Many chemical fertilizers, as well as raw, unprocessed animal waste and sewage sludge, has a tendancy to "burn" or over fertilize due to the nutrients being part of a less stable compound that releases the active materiakls too quickly. The bacteria that are essential to the secondary, aerobic composting "fix" the nitrogen into a usable form, while the inclusion of a carbon source, such as corn stalks, hay, sawdust, or wood chips, will buffer the mix so as to prevent overferilization. Atmospheric nitrogen is fixed into the soil in very high concentrations when you grow alfalfa or clover as a fallow crop.
I'm not going to claim that it is impossible (or uncommon) for organic fertilizers to "burn" a feild when there's too little rain, or for them to contribute to the polluting of our waterways when there's too much (I grew up in farm country, but in the east where there's sometimes, but not often, years that are "too wet").
But organic fertilizers are less soluble than chemical preparations, and tend to stay put where you place them rather than wash out in a heavy rain. Plus, the plants have a harder time breaking down the larger compounds that make up composted natural fertilizers, causing a slower release of the nutrients that last for a greater portion of the growing season. Sometimes this makes it difficult for the plants to make use of the phosphate (P) and potassium (K), so the composted natural fertilizers are sometimes innoculated with mycorrhizal funguses that are necessary for some plants to make use of these fertilizers.
Yes, all fertilizers can be damaging to both crops and the environment when applied at the wrong time or in the wrong amounts, but properly prepared composted natural fertilizers (PSU's AG department has some good materials here) are a much safer alternative than most chemically prepared solutions. All the crap from the "Organic Produce" lobby has given natural fertilizers the appeaerance of some sort of hippy shit, but they've been used sustainably for a thousands of years, and our grandparents knew that there was more to taking care of the soil than chemical powders and sprays were capable of doing. There's something to be said for farmers that see the land as being part of their life and their family instead of simply the investment the banks and the agribusinesses tell us it is.
And nevermind the fact that most of the shit (including human) is more valuable as a fertilizer
The biogas fermenters produce fertilizer as well as gas, and it's much higher in nitrogen content than if it had not been reduced in the fermener.
It's not an either-or proposition.
The using the fuel cells to convert the energy is far more efficeint than burning natural gas. Even the most efficient gas burning plants (gas turbine engines driving alternators for generation) are only 40%-45% efficient (at most 45% of the energy contained in the natural gas is converted to electricity) while fuel cells currently available are capable of converting 85% of the energy available in natural gas to electricity, and the rest is converted into heat, some of which can be used to accelerate the fermentation process, or to heat the facility.
Why? Well, how much did you shit today? Does that amount of shit convert into the electricity you used?
So maybe I only shit out about half a watt today, but over the years that adds up, and in total, the city I live in shit about 773,000 watts, in a year that's 282,145,000 watts that might just keep my sewer bill from rising.
It may be better to burn that fuel we can't eat,
As I noted above, burning is a very inefficient method of converting chemically stored energy to a useful, transportable form. Fuel cells are far better at generating electricity than the power plants we now rely on, which first need generate heat (and lose a fair portion of it up the flue), then pressure, which is redirected into torque, which moves an alternator. Every step of the process loses energy either through conduction or to friction (or both, steam has friction too). Fuel cells are able to be more efficient due to a more direct path by which the energy is converted directly from chemical energy to usable electricity.
and eat the fuel we can.
Use the compost produced by the fermenter to fertilize the fields (after first using the excess heat produced by the fuel cell to accelerate a secondary aerobic decomposition at 145 degrees F). It will be a highly efficient fertilizer due to the removal of much of the carbon during fermentation, leaving behind readily available "fixed" nitrogen that plants can use. Reduced dependance on chemical fertilizers and safer fertilizer than is currently produced from sewage sludge.
These ideas bring the community (and man) back to being a part of the environment in which he exists, a part of nature as opposed to battling against it. If we can reduce our impact on the environment and get it to pay for itself, then this is a winning proposition.
Re:slightly different approach....
on
The Power of Sewage
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· Score: 4, Informative
Locate the plant where the waste is being treated, like they do already in LithuaniaGermany and Oregon.
You are already moving the sewage around as it is, so that expense is already there. The waste output of the biogas fermener is much safer than the sludge that existing sewage plants produce, and it can be further composted to produce safe, high quality, organic fertilizer.
There are also existing farmwaste facilities (as was previously discussed here on/.) and existing technology to tap land fills in the same manner. It's energy that can be easily converted to a usable, transportable form (electricity) that wopuld otherwise go to waste. The gasses that are being converted are greenhouse gasses (mostly methane) that are not readily sinkable, and the waste products from the fuel cell are only (easily sinkable) CO2 and water.
The other implication of this technology that is less spoken about is that it decentralizes the source of energy away from the fossil fuel companies and spreads the profits closer to the community where the energy is being produced, either through lower costs for waste treatment, or through direct profit from the sale of the electricity if the facility is privately owned. This means lower costs for energy and lower trade deficit.
It's a winning situation for those who live in communities that take advantage of this, and the only people who lose out are the energy companies.
Even though this was expunged from my record nearly ten years ago,
localhost:~$ dict -d gcide expunged 1 definition found
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Expunge \Ex*punge"\ ([e^]ks*p[u^]nj"), v. t. [imp. & p. p.
{Expunged} ([e^]ks*p[u^]njd"); p. pr. & vb. n. {Expunging}
([e^]ks*p[u^]n"j[i^]ng).] [L. expungere, expunctum, prick
out, expunge, settle an account, execute; ex out + pungere to
prick, puncture. See {Pungent.}]
1. To blot out, as with pen; to rub out; to efface
designedly; to obliterate; to strike out wholly; as, to
expunge words, lines, or sentences.
[1913 Webster]
2. To strike out; to wipe out or destroy; to annihilate; as,
to expunge an offense. --Sandys.
[1913 Webster]
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts.
--Pope.
I guess "expunge" means something different to law enforcement. It must be nice to be legally permitted to use words without any regard to thier actual meaning. If you or I were to takle the same liberties with the language when speakeng to a judge, we'd be charged with perjury.
I'll go one further, it's for living in. I'ts your chosen environment, not a personal statement. The reason that geodesic domes never caught on is that people hate living in them. They are interesting looking structures, extremely modern, and less expensive to build than many more traditional designs, but people tend to not stay in them long. There's two in the town I grew up in that have never housed an owner for longer than three years at a time. They think it's cool when they buy them, as I'm sure the original owners did in the seventies, but they never quite adjust to the asthetic.
Make a nice one and don't worry about your indviduality over much.
A nice house that is appropriate for it's environment and the family living inside. In my hometown, people sat on their porches and talked to their neighbors. The houses were built to be part of a community, unlike those we see springing up in today's "planned communities" which have no front porch, are set back from the street that has no sidewalks anyway. Of course these houses were built over two hundred years ago, and people's lives were more involved in their communities by necessity back then. Many of todays homes are designed to have the appearance of older homes, but the designers seem to have no understanding of how or why the designs of the home effected and reflected the way of life that the inhabitants had chosen. Rather, it seems that many homes built today are an assemblage of unrelated parts that might fit together, but do not necessarily build a consistant and comfortable whole.
Starting March 31, major portions of the internet will slow to a crawl as Symbiot's customer installed DDOS zombie army takes out one innocent machine after another along with the zombies controlled by the "warring script kiddie gangs" we've been hearing so much about while the script kiddies spoof both random addresses, the addresses of their competitors zombies, and the addresses of a few notable corporate sites.
Shortly after this, congess will introduce legislation mandating backround checks and licenses for people who wish to write software in reaction to "the dangers of irresponsible software development" and "national security", but Symbiot will have nothing to fear from such legislation, as they will undoubtably be granted licenses for all of their employees.
This is yet another step toward making the internet (and the CS feild in general) totally suck.
It's the refusal to allow a programmer to hold up the delivery of a [product while looking for an error that he is not sure is there.
It's the idea that reducing the bottom line is an allowable business practice when working on critical systems.
It's the idea that programmers are an expense rather than an asset.
It's the practice of hiring accountants to calculate "acceptable risk" from wrongful death lawsuits while making engineering decisions.
There are many many places in the software development world where profit is a truly acceptable basis for making decisions, but there are clearly situations where profits should be secondary, and it is difficult to bring a business culture around to acknowledging when and why profit must take a back seat. Cheaper is not always better. Computerized is not always superior (abs systems). "Time to Market" is almost never a correct way to determine when a project is ready for release.
For-profits will almost always be more concerned about return on investment than they will be about the quality and saftey of a product, especially when they are prodicing goods in a market with a limited number of suppliers (specialty medical equipment), or an outright "granted monopoly" (military defense manufacturing). In those cases there is litle motivation to provide the better product and there is even less opportunity for the client to be sure that they are getting what they've paid for.
But it's OK, cause the stock valuation just increased, and we all know that that's the end-all, beat-all, purpose of our existance.
Re:You're having trouble reading tonight.
on
Gates on Spam
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· Score: 1
Now back to the original question why won't anyone do it?!?!?!
The same reasons nobody did it five (maybe more) years ago when it these ideas were first being incorporated into the server capabilities.
1) The larger ISPs (msn, yahoo, aol, etc) would rather find a way to make money from spam than eliminate or minimize it.
2) As ISPs consolidate and grow, more of thier policy decisions are made by business types (MBAs) who often feel that blocking spam is somehow "anti-business". Many executive types equate anything that interferes with advertising or trade with "Communism".
3) The same management types usually do not like solutions that are designed, proposed and implemented by the "techies", as they would prefer techs that follow instructions and nothing else.
4) Large companies are run by people who usually prefer centralized solutions that include the gathering of information which can be resold, such as lists of email addresses. They fail to see the irony inherent in using an anti-spam measure to gather marketing data.
5) The best methods for accomplishing tasks on the internet are difficult to monetize to the extent that a large amount of money can be made from a single customer, but large businesses will spend a lot of time working on a difficult to implement, hard to administer proposal rather than use the existing protocols to solve a problem in an elegant way that does not imply "guarenteed" additional revenue streams.
Perhaps if someone were to attempt to propose an RFC with these proposals already fleshed out, including nearly complete configuration examples for the various smtp servers that are commonly used, then there might be a possibility of making some headway against spam. If it is left up to the larger ISPs, ICANN, or the government, it's likely that there will be several incompatible, unnecessarily complicated, and intrusive measures will result and nothing will be adopted.
You're having trouble reading tonight.
on
Gates on Spam
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· Score: 1
Quit taking statements out of context.
You quote a part of my post that adresses the problem of determining valid users after the legitimacy of the mail server has already been determined by the mx record in dns. Did you even attempt the command line I gave you. This eliminates all home based machines that are not hosting a legitimate domain. There is a large probability that spammer-owned machines will get mx records for thier servers, but they will be easily blacklisted without the current risk of misidentification.
Once you have determined that the mail is being sent from a legitimate server, you know you can trust that server to authenticate that the sender is one of its legitimate users.
Under the proposal I am describing, you are never trusting the authority of a mailserver that has not already been identified by its mx record in dns, you are not adding anything to the protocol that is not already included in the existing software, and you are not supplying any information unnecessarily to an additional and unecessary party.
There is no reason to offload the verification that a user exists and is authorized to use a particular server to the dns system (as you seem to be suggesting). You verify that the remote system is to be trusted using dns, and all other negotiation happens between the two mailservers. If you cannot verify that the remote server is a server for that domain (via mx record), no further communication is carried out and the (most likely) spam never leaves the originating server.
The only requirements that this proposal has is properly configured mailservers, accurate dns zonefiles, and responsible anti-spam policies that the providers are willing to enforce upon their users.
Slashdot Mirror
No shark, no bridge, no helicopter.
Of course it's not real.
I hope they get the race issue correct, as most attempts to make film or TV from LeGuinn's books make the central characters white, despite her descriptions.
She never does specify a definate race, but all of her main characters are described as brown, red, or dark skinned. There may be a question as to what race Ged actually is, but he is definately not white.
The "Narnia" series is escapist.
The "Chronicles of Narnia" are a protestant, christian allegory that borrows heavilyy from Spencer's (absolutely atrocious) "Faerie Queen", and are very much of the same intent.
"Narnia" is full of overly heavy and contrived symbolism. Aslan symbolizes the Royal Family, the Church of England, and Christ all at once, taking the place held by Gloriana in Spencers sixteenth century gharbage, while the White Witch filling the roll of Duessa as an allegory for the openess of the Catholic Church. The entire work is chock full of symbols of racism (Northern, Anglo-Saxon = superior and good. Southern, dark-skinned = subservient and bad) and the "artistry" of it seems to have been wacked together with a sledge rather than crafted with a fine brush.
Is "Narnia" heavy-handed attempt at creating a new "nationalist allegory" (ie: brainwashing the youth) for the UK?
Definately, but escapist it is not.
The only problem about this is, Debian is usually an elitist group of users.
...)
It seems odd that so many people declare that Debian users seem elitist after my expiriences as a Linux newbie who was installing Hamm several years ago ('97? '98?
I found that the userlist is dominated by people who are more than willing to help out with answers if they can understand your question and help you figure out how to ask the question more clearly if they don't. They were quick to point me to the proper documentation whenever it was available, and every "RTFM" had an attached URL or more so I'd know what manual (or HOWTO, README, quickstart guide, etc) they were refering to.
At the time, I knew nothing about networking, knew only the DOS (6.22) command line (and even that I did not know very well) and had very little expirience with using current computers. (I hadn't used one in six years, and had only a little expirience with programming from high school.)
RTFM is not an insult! It was and is the best peice of advice that can be given to a newbie who wants to know how to use his brand new Linux box. It is nearly impossible for a person to ask a useful question if they haven't at least attempted to understand the docs.
I *did* switch to RedHat on the advice of a friend after about a month, then spent a while using SuSE before settleing on Debian about a month after Slink was released.
Why Debian? The support. All requests for help on the user list were answered in a useful manner within a few hours, usually less. There's people who lurk there just waiting to find a question they can answer. I never had such luck on the other lists, and I doubt that there's many lists out there that can compare with Debian's number of subscribers or the speed and quality of response.
The computers are down for uh... (maintenance? No we cant say that... used it in 1980...)
..
...
...
uh... (For updating to a new accounting system for this very account? Damn, used that in '92... there's got to be a good excuse here somewhere... I know!..)
Oh, yeah it's a security issue! That's it, a security issue... can't mess with security now, can we? Not after 9-11!...
(Good one!)
Yes, we'll get back to you about that $700,000,000.00 we owe you after all of this is sorted out...
Oh, sure. As soon as possible...
Don't worry about it, we've got everything under control. Thanks for being so understanding...
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, your access is going to be out for a while...
That's right, no email, no web...
Yes, there'll be no distance learning at the schools either for the time being...
Really, that's not fair. Why don't you people just hire more teachers?
What's that?
$700 Million?
It's funny how technical problems always plague the DOI every time this issue comes up.
Maybe someday Microsoft and the rest will get a clue. There is a reason pop-up blockers are so widely used.
These companies have a clue, and they do understand why people use pop-up and image server blockers.
Unfotunately, they do not see this as an issue of user rights, but of instead view this as purely a business issue. They define the blocking of advertising as a damaging practice that is limiting the internets potential value as an revenue generator for business (because, of course, the only reason to have an internet is so people can make money off of the users, right?).
They view the usage of their websites without viewing the advertisements as a breach of an unwritten contract, much as network television executives view going to the bathroom instead of watching the comercials break to be "theft".
They do understand that the internet wasdesigned to be an end to end system where viewers and providers given similar control over each aspect of its usage, but they view this as a design flaw that interferes with current (read: out-dated) business practices that became standard in the broadcast media (television and radio) where a user must view or listen to the advertisements if he or she wishes to view or listen to the programming.
Now they are insisting on greater control of the users expirience, including the right to track your every use of a computer that you have purchased. Since the late 1990s, the software companies have endeavored to monitor your usage, not only by tracking your internet usage, but by embedding unique identifiers into the documents and emails you write that will verify that the same user on a specific computer wrote all of the documents with that embedded identifier.
These companies do have the option of blocking access to those who do not have cookies enabled, do not download the advert image, or do not permit the pop-up. Why haven't they taken these measures? I can onnly speculate that this would seem to be admitting defeat. It would be leaving the final choice in the hands of the users (I don't want to bother with the pop-ups, therefore I'll do without the content on that site) and that if they cannot prevent the user from having that choice, they would rather not make obvious that the choice is there.
This law is not so horribly written, and it does nothing to prevent the user from willingly installing tracking and advert software as long the user is fully informed of what the software does and has detailed information about what information is being collected, when it is being collected, who it is being collected by, and who it is for.
This is what these companies fear most, an informed and knowledgable user base. They want their relationship with the user to resemble the relationship enjoyed by the broadcasters with their viewers. They would like to reduce the internet to a platform for providing entertainment and collecting advertising revenue.
And that's why they are opposed to this law. Not because they don't understand the iternet, but because they do, and they're not quite sure that they like the way it's turned out.
Some people can come up with $300.00 on the spot and would have a hard time getting $800.00 together in a month. If they need the work they have on the computer, it's a good deal, even if it means waiting a bit longer to purchase a new one.
Half the population is earning less than $32,000 a year. a ot of them are earning less than $20,000. Their computer might be just as important to them as one is to someone who earns more, and it can be quite a hardship to purchase a new one if you've found yourself on the lower half of the employment lottery.
Why do you assume making money and making an effective OS are mutually exclusive?
They're not, but if profit is your primary motivation, eventually there will be a conflict between that profit motive and the secondary desire to build the best possible OS.
In other words if it is possible to make a profit while shipping an inferior product, it will happen (Windows 95, 98, ME). You've made your money, but your OS sucks.
If the quality of your OS product is the primary concern, then you can be losing money, but have a superior product (Amiga). You may not have made the money, but at least your OS was good.
Because Linux is developed by a community of (mostly) non-contracted volunteers, its development does not suffer from the uncertainty that plagues software products that are developed in a for-profit environment that depends on sales of the software developed for continuance. The current developers need to quit or take time off due to financial restraints or business obligations, the OS continues to be developed by others.
The point being made is that the majority of Linux contributers are people who depend on the quality of Linux to make their companies profitable. They may not be making money directly from developing the OS, but their businesses would lose money if they were relying on a less stable/reliable/featured, or more expensive, OS.
Linux is not a product. It is a community supported infrastructure for supporting your efforts to get your product to market, whether that product be physical goods, intelectual property, or a service.
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?
The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time. This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.
Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.
Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.
Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.
I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there. If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.
If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.
The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.
That must be what I heard about.
I'm glad that there's not, even though I don't live in Canada. Now if you can get the CRIA to realizethat they don't deserve special investigative powers, you'll still be far ahead of the US in respects to user privacy.
No, I don't like to work.
At leasty not if I'm working for the benefit of people who's "ideals" I find repulsive, but I do it anyway, because I'd like to improve my situation.
Thatattitude, and my openess about it has made be labeled a "welfare junky" when I have never applied or recieved welfare, an "unemployment cheat" when I have never applied for or recieved unemployment, even when eligible, and a "communist", even though part of what I am working toward is ownership of my own property.
There are those who work hard and recognise it as an unfortunate part of our reality. Those people I can agree with. But those assholes who are unable to allow anopther to slack at their own expense, or are so ready to blame the unemployed for not having a job when jobs are increasingly difficult to come by can go screw themselves. Sure, I am capable of work that is far more difficult, or far more contributory than the shit work I do now, but go fuck yourselves unless you are willing to give me that job on my terms.
I do not agree that anyone should be forced to work, because I know all too well what it is like to depend on someone who is acting out of force rater than will.
It is the same people who bitch about people who are unwilling to work that are lobbying for greater police powers. Wheher it is the broadband customer, the taxpayer, or it magically gets implemented for free, we all get screwed, except for those assholes who have never been hungry, have never been without support, and have never had to deal with the reality of not being born into a family that was not lucky enough top be in the top twenty percent of income earners. If you've hads the luxury of living off of daddy's tab, or the comfort of living in a $3,000.00 apartment for only $500.00 because your daddy owns it, then shut the hell up and get out of the way.
Yeah, I've lived with it too, but in my case it was a bitch who was unwilling to work, lived off her parents, and accused everyone in the house who was actually breaking as sweat for their living of being lazy, pot-smoking no-loads because they weren't able to buy a BMW to cart the bitch around in. I'm sure you've seen your share of assholes who should get a jopb, but from your post, I'm more certain that you've spent more time bitching about people you think were "lucky" or "undeserving" than you've spent actually attempting to make a difference in your own life.
A lot of people work their asses off theirb entire lives without ever seeing anything that resembles a fair payout. These people are targeted as "waste cases" as much as the welfare recipients are.
As for those "successful" assholes who parlay their daddy's connections into high-paying gigs doing little more than shopping for other spoilt brats, they are far worse than the welfare recipients, because they are living on familial charity while thinking that they've actually have done something of worth.
Let the welfare people collect their checks on my tax dollar, as long as I'm not forced to work along side people who would rather cause problems, I'm happy. As for the spoilt brats calling themselves "the new Libertarians", get a fucking life and mind your own business, stay out of mine, and quit asking your uncle to keep tabs on all the people you think are after your inherentance.
Our government was established to ensure the continuance of the Constitutional state, not to ensure that your families get to retain control in the face of a changing economy.
I thought that Canadians paid a "broadband tax" to cover the cost of "pirating".
Has anyone else here heard of this?
How can the record companies go after someone if they are already receiving a handout from the government to cover that loss?
Am I completely wrong about this?
Wouldn't this be "double jeopardy" if you've paid your share for using broadband, but they are still sueing users?
Either that or some body is paying people to spam flood the net in hopes that there will be regulation and monitoring of email, and possibly an opportunity to create a newer, lucrative, replacement to the smtp protocol.
I know that's more than a little paranoid, but the high number of "charge for every email", "pay for a certificate", and "provide a list of all of your users including realname" proposals that have been floated this year looks more than a little suspicious.
Have you automated the process of removing addresses from the list after consecutive bounces?
This would make it easy to eliminate the false addresses, those people who signed up but later changed their minds, and those who were unfortunate enough to have been "pranked" onto the list.
Also, an initial form email requesting confirmation of the subscription is a good policy, and it eliminates the problem of "pranked" subscriptions.
The difference is how atom of N, P, or K is delivered, as in what compound that atom is delivered in. Many chemical fertilizers, as well as raw, unprocessed animal waste and sewage sludge, has a tendancy to "burn" or over fertilize due to the nutrients being part of a less stable compound that releases the active materiakls too quickly. The bacteria that are essential to the secondary, aerobic composting "fix" the nitrogen into a usable form, while the inclusion of a carbon source, such as corn stalks, hay, sawdust, or wood chips, will buffer the mix so as to prevent overferilization. Atmospheric nitrogen is fixed into the soil in very high concentrations when you grow alfalfa or clover as a fallow crop.
I'm not going to claim that it is impossible (or uncommon) for organic fertilizers to "burn" a feild when there's too little rain, or for them to contribute to the polluting of our waterways when there's too much (I grew up in farm country, but in the east where there's sometimes, but not often, years that are "too wet").
But organic fertilizers are less soluble than chemical preparations, and tend to stay put where you place them rather than wash out in a heavy rain. Plus, the plants have a harder time breaking down the larger compounds that make up composted natural fertilizers, causing a slower release of the nutrients that last for a greater portion of the growing season. Sometimes this makes it difficult for the plants to make use of the phosphate (P) and potassium (K), so the composted natural fertilizers are sometimes innoculated with mycorrhizal funguses that are necessary for some plants to make use of these fertilizers.
Yes, all fertilizers can be damaging to both crops and the environment when applied at the wrong time or in the wrong amounts, but properly prepared composted natural fertilizers (PSU's AG department has some good materials here) are a much safer alternative than most chemically prepared solutions. All the crap from the "Organic Produce" lobby has given natural fertilizers the appeaerance of some sort of hippy shit, but they've been used sustainably for a thousands of years, and our grandparents knew that there was more to taking care of the soil than chemical powders and sprays were capable of doing. There's something to be said for farmers that see the land as being part of their life and their family instead of simply the investment the banks and the agribusinesses tell us it is.
Actually you were smelling the sewage treatment plant across University Drive from the campus.
Either that or the Burger King next door to it.
Never did find out who thought that was a good location for a fast food joint.
And nevermind the fact that most of the shit (including human) is more valuable as a fertilizer
The biogas fermenters produce fertilizer as well as gas, and it's much higher in nitrogen content than if it had not been reduced in the fermener.
It's not an either-or proposition.
The using the fuel cells to convert the energy is far more efficeint than burning natural gas. Even the most efficient gas burning plants (gas turbine engines driving alternators for generation) are only 40%-45% efficient (at most 45% of the energy contained in the natural gas is converted to electricity) while fuel cells currently available are capable of converting 85% of the energy available in natural gas to electricity, and the rest is converted into heat, some of which can be used to accelerate the fermentation process, or to heat the facility.
Why? Well, how much did you shit today? Does that amount of shit convert into the electricity you used?
So maybe I only shit out about half a watt today, but over the years that adds up, and in total, the city I live in shit about 773,000 watts, in a year that's 282,145,000 watts that might just keep my sewer bill from rising.
It may be better to burn that fuel we can't eat,
As I noted above, burning is a very inefficient method of converting chemically stored energy to a useful, transportable form. Fuel cells are far better at generating electricity than the power plants we now rely on, which first need generate heat (and lose a fair portion of it up the flue), then pressure, which is redirected into torque, which moves an alternator. Every step of the process loses energy either through conduction or to friction (or both, steam has friction too). Fuel cells are able to be more efficient due to a more direct path by which the energy is converted directly from chemical energy to usable electricity.
and eat the fuel we can.
Use the compost produced by the fermenter to fertilize the fields (after first using the excess heat produced by the fuel cell to accelerate a secondary aerobic decomposition at 145 degrees F). It will be a highly efficient fertilizer due to the removal of much of the carbon during fermentation, leaving behind readily available "fixed" nitrogen that plants can use. Reduced dependance on chemical fertilizers and safer fertilizer than is currently produced from sewage sludge.
These ideas bring the community (and man) back to being a part of the environment in which he exists, a part of nature as opposed to battling against it. If we can reduce our impact on the environment and get it to pay for itself, then this is a winning proposition.
Locate the plant where the waste is being treated, like they do already in Lithuania Germany and Oregon.
/.) and existing technology to tap land fills in the same manner. It's energy that can be easily converted to a usable, transportable form (electricity) that wopuld otherwise go to waste. The gasses that are being converted are greenhouse gasses (mostly methane) that are not readily sinkable, and the waste products from the fuel cell are only (easily sinkable) CO2 and water.
You are already moving the sewage around as it is, so that expense is already there. The waste output of the biogas fermener is much safer than the sludge that existing sewage plants produce, and it can be further composted to produce safe, high quality, organic fertilizer.
There are also existing farm waste facilities (as was previously discussed here on
The other implication of this technology that is less spoken about is that it decentralizes the source of energy away from the fossil fuel companies and spreads the profits closer to the community where the energy is being produced, either through lower costs for waste treatment, or through direct profit from the sale of the electricity if the facility is privately owned. This means lower costs for energy and lower trade deficit.
It's a winning situation for those who live in communities that take advantage of this, and the only people who lose out are the energy companies.
It would be more scary if the humor was recognised but the insight was not.
It's supposed to house you.
I'll go one further, it's for living in. I'ts your chosen environment, not a personal statement. The reason that geodesic domes never caught on is that people hate living in them. They are interesting looking structures, extremely modern, and less expensive to build than many more traditional designs, but people tend to not stay in them long. There's two in the town I grew up in that have never housed an owner for longer than three years at a time. They think it's cool when they buy them, as I'm sure the original owners did in the seventies, but they never quite adjust to the asthetic.
Make a nice one and don't worry about your indviduality over much.
A nice house that is appropriate for it's environment and the family living inside. In my hometown, people sat on their porches and talked to their neighbors. The houses were built to be part of a community, unlike those we see springing up in today's "planned communities" which have no front porch, are set back from the street that has no sidewalks anyway. Of course these houses were built over two hundred years ago, and people's lives were more involved in their communities by necessity back then. Many of todays homes are designed to have the appearance of older homes, but the designers seem to have no understanding of how or why the designs of the home effected and reflected the way of life that the inhabitants had chosen. Rather, it seems that many homes built today are an assemblage of unrelated parts that might fit together, but do not necessarily build a consistant and comfortable whole.
Starting March 31, major portions of the internet will slow to a crawl as Symbiot's customer installed DDOS zombie army takes out one innocent machine after another along with the zombies controlled by the "warring script kiddie gangs" we've been hearing so much about while the script kiddies spoof both random addresses, the addresses of their competitors zombies, and the addresses of a few notable corporate sites.
Shortly after this, congess will introduce legislation mandating backround checks and licenses for people who wish to write software in reaction to "the dangers of irresponsible software development" and "national security", but Symbiot will have nothing to fear from such legislation, as they will undoubtably be granted licenses for all of their employees.
This is yet another step toward making the internet (and the CS feild in general) totally suck.
It's the profit motive.
It's the rush to get a product out the door.
It's the refusal to allow a programmer to hold up the delivery of a [product while looking for an error that he is not sure is there.
It's the idea that reducing the bottom line is an allowable business practice when working on critical systems.
It's the idea that programmers are an expense rather than an asset.
It's the practice of hiring accountants to calculate "acceptable risk" from wrongful death lawsuits while making engineering decisions.
There are many many places in the software development world where profit is a truly acceptable basis for making decisions, but there are clearly situations where profits should be secondary, and it is difficult to bring a business culture around to acknowledging when and why profit must take a back seat. Cheaper is not always better. Computerized is not always superior (abs systems). "Time to Market" is almost never a correct way to determine when a project is ready for release.
For-profits will almost always be more concerned about return on investment than they will be about the quality and saftey of a product, especially when they are prodicing goods in a market with a limited number of suppliers (specialty medical equipment), or an outright "granted monopoly" (military defense manufacturing). In those cases there is litle motivation to provide the better product and there is even less opportunity for the client to be sure that they are getting what they've paid for.
But it's OK, cause the stock valuation just increased, and we all know that that's the end-all, beat-all, purpose of our existance.
Now back to the original question why won't anyone do it?!?!?!
The same reasons nobody did it five (maybe more) years ago when it these ideas were first being incorporated into the server capabilities.
1) The larger ISPs (msn, yahoo, aol, etc) would rather find a way to make money from spam than eliminate or minimize it.
2) As ISPs consolidate and grow, more of thier policy decisions are made by business types (MBAs) who often feel that blocking spam is somehow "anti-business". Many executive types equate anything that interferes with advertising or trade with "Communism".
3) The same management types usually do not like solutions that are designed, proposed and implemented by the "techies", as they would prefer techs that follow instructions and nothing else.
4) Large companies are run by people who usually prefer centralized solutions that include the gathering of information which can be resold, such as lists of email addresses. They fail to see the irony inherent in using an anti-spam measure to gather marketing data.
5) The best methods for accomplishing tasks on the internet are difficult to monetize to the extent that a large amount of money can be made from a single customer, but large businesses will spend a lot of time working on a difficult to implement, hard to administer proposal rather than use the existing protocols to solve a problem in an elegant way that does not imply "guarenteed" additional revenue streams.
Perhaps if someone were to attempt to propose an RFC with these proposals already fleshed out, including nearly complete configuration examples for the various smtp servers that are commonly used, then there might be a possibility of making some headway against spam. If it is left up to the larger ISPs, ICANN, or the government, it's likely that there will be several incompatible, unnecessarily complicated, and intrusive measures will result and nothing will be adopted.
Quit taking statements out of context.
You quote a part of my post that adresses the problem of determining valid users after the legitimacy of the mail server has already been determined by the mx record in dns. Did you even attempt the command line I gave you. This eliminates all home based machines that are not hosting a legitimate domain. There is a large probability that spammer-owned machines will get mx records for thier servers, but they will be easily blacklisted without the current risk of misidentification.
Once you have determined that the mail is being sent from a legitimate server, you know you can trust that server to authenticate that the sender is one of its legitimate users.
Under the proposal I am describing, you are never trusting the authority of a mailserver that has not already been identified by its mx record in dns, you are not adding anything to the protocol that is not already included in the existing software, and you are not supplying any information unnecessarily to an additional and unecessary party.
There is no reason to offload the verification that a user exists and is authorized to use a particular server to the dns system (as you seem to be suggesting). You verify that the remote system is to be trusted using dns, and all other negotiation happens between the two mailservers. If you cannot verify that the remote server is a server for that domain (via mx record), no further communication is carried out and the (most likely) spam never leaves the originating server.
The only requirements that this proposal has is properly configured mailservers, accurate dns zonefiles, and responsible anti-spam policies that the providers are willing to enforce upon their users.